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a step for step plan for a successful launch

Selma — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 20:14:39 +0000

a step for step plan for a successful launch Selma di, 09/27/2022 - 22:14

A step for step plan for a successful launch

Here we are we have a new product that we want to launch and offer to customers, but we are not sure if we have the right audience in mind for example. Do not worry that is what a Go-To-Market strategy is for. A Go-to-market strategy is a step-by-step plan to successfully launch and deliver a product or a service to your customer, relaunch a brand or a company or bring a current product to a new market. Where you can test and launch demos of your product in a calculated and organised manner to save you time and money.

WHAT

WHAT: identify your product or service, is your product a new concept, is your product an updated version in the market, etc… It is essential to know your weaknesses and strengths and who your competitors are.

WHERE

WHERE: The first stage of developing a Go-to-market is establishing a clear definition of the target market. Start with the question are we targeting a B2c customer or a B2B customer? The purpose of your target market should be broad to be able to give more room for potential income objectives, yet specific enough to customize your marketing material and sales approach.

WHO

WHO: Identity your customer. You need to look at your service or product from the consumer's viewpoint. At this stage, we take several elements into consideration such as location, demographic, buying potential, interest, buying habits, etc… This stage will result in a customer profile “ buyer persona”

HOW

HOW: so we have established our market as well as customer how are we going to reach them? This how needs to cover aspects of how you are going to approach them and how are we delivering the product.

Let us start with the delivery as that is more straightforward. Are we applying a direct or indirect distribution model? Direct distribution enables the in-home team to sell and deliver directly to the customer as there is a distribution network set within the company, As for indirect distribution we rely on third-party distributors. As for the methods of approaching the customer is it better to apply a marketing strategy or a sales strategy? We need to understand the potential response of the customer.

WHY

WHY: this is the brand messaging. This message needs to speak to the consumer and the stakeholders simultaneously. When it comes to the consumer you need to address why this product or service is useful and valuable to them. The stakeholders on the other hand will want to see the value proposition of your product or service.

WHEN

WHEN: We have created a clear process now it is time to carry out the plan in an organized manner and use good communication skills within your team. This is also relevant to the timing of releasing your product and service if you calculate it right you might be ahead of the competition or have a first-mover advantage. If you are too late your product or service might not launch as smooth as expected.

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Download: Segmentation spreadsheet

For example, the ebike company is starting in Belgium

East Flanders
West Flanders
Antwerpen
Limburg
Flemish Brabant

In each segment, there is another segment is the audience type in this case

Hotel with 4 and 5 stars
Hotel with 3 stars
Hotel with 2 and 1 stars

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Start with location research

Selma — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 11:32:56 +0000

Start with location research Selma di, 09/27/2022 - 13:32

Start with Location Research

When people hear location research they often associate it with industries such as retail, real estate and warehouses. However, location research can be implemented in any tangible product industry. For example, placing EV chargers will not be efficient and optimal if they were placed randomly therefore location research is carried out to decide where EV chargers should be installed so that they are used optimally and effectively. The same goes with a shared bicycle provider, conducting location research will illustrate the best spots to have this service available.

Location research = understanding prospects

However, location research is not only limited to determining the location where a product should be available for optimal performance it can also provide information regarding how many units should be placed, what is the acceptable price point within the region, and who the competitors are in this region.

And before conducting location research an effective site screening method should be put in place. Meaning that if we have 500 potential locations only the most potential location should go through extensive location research that way you will save money and time by weeding out the not-so-successful locations.

Customized to each industry

Location research is customized to each industry or company as the selling points and focus points of one industry will be different to the other. Therefore it is important to establish the criteria that will make a location a winning or a losing location. For example, an EV charging location will take into consideration the population, pricing competition, and how many cars will pass the location where the EV charger is installed at.

Another major point to consider is the fact that a product might not be solely a home-based business source meaning that it does not only serve the local but also the passing by, for example, taking the EV charger again as an example they do not only serve the neighbourhood they may also get traction form highways and passing traffic.

Using models and methods

We use the multivariate statistical models and analogue method, such as stepwise multiple regression analysis for individual sites. As for networks we use gravity models which are commonly used for petrol stations and retail chains.

Why this is for you?

Why should you invest your time and money in a location research service as it will help you:

Grow your product coverage strategically
Save cost by placing your product effectively by avoiding costly mistakes
Target your selling scoop which will lower your sales cost and higher your closing rate and well success rate
Grow to different regions, cities or countries strategically
It improves the ROI of a business as it indicates the efficiency of an investment

Feel free to contact us for help we have researched hundreds of locations (prospects) and enjoy helping you become more successful

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Market sizing is all about potential

eigenaar — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 10:09:39 +0000

Market sizing is all about potential eigenaar di, 09/27/2022 - 12:09

The art of understanding and calculating your market size - Market sizing is all about potential

To make Healthy business decisions you must have a fair understanding of the market you are occupying. Knowing the market size that you can attract aids with setting realistic goals and profit broadcast. This step is also important when branching out to new cities or countries, expanding into a new vertical, or launching a new product or service.

The TAM SAM SOM model helps you map out your market size and aids with calculating the market share that you want to capture. This model can also be used to prepare an investor’s pitch, business plan or drawing out sales strategies. This is the model that helps you to identify what your market target will be.

We are going to explain the model as well as use an example to make the information clear and simple. Our example is a company that provides ebikes within the hospitality industry at Hotels to be more specific.

What is TAM SAM SOM

They are acronyms that describe the different types of markets

TAM represents the Total Addressable Market. How big is the Market that you could reach with your product or service? It also represents the maximum revenue that you could make if you are able to capture 100% of the market by selling your product or service. It is important to Identify your TAM first before setting a go-to-market strategy as it illustrates the potential of a new product or business venture.

For our example: When we take the ebike company, they can start by looking into how many hotels there are worldwide. To put it into perspective it is estimated that there are over 700.000 hotels worldwide.

SAM Is a smaller subset of TAM that represents the Serviceable Available Market. How big is the market you could reach now? It represents the market that you are actually able to reach due to limitations or specialisations such as location or target group. Although it is a limitation It will make your sales target segments more precise which aids in setting up efficient and well-targeted sales campaigns.

Continuing with our example: the ebike company they are not located in every country in the world they are located in Belgium therefore their SAM are all the Hotels that are located in Belgium which are about 1505 hotels.

SOM: This is a smaller subset of your SAM that represents the serviceable obtainable market. The SOM takes additional factors into consideration such as current resources and competition, What is the market you can reach with your current resources? It can be used to illustrate the potential market in a short time with your current resources. When it comes to resources we can take into consideration: staff, money, brand coverage, competition, location, and logistics.

Completing our example: the ebike company we mentioned in our SAM is located in Belgium adding to our SOM elements of current resources they are located in the East Flanders province and their salespeople can extend their reach to covet the Flemish region. Taking these limitations into account we end up with about 864 Hotels.

How to calculate TAM There are three ways to calculate TAM:

Top-down, using industry research and report
Bottom-up, using data from early selling efforts
Value theory (based on assumptions about customer willingness to pay)

Top-down approach

This approach starts with the biggest size market and reduces in size based on data and assumptions as well as studies within your industry.

Ofcours there are limitations to this approach as the industry data might not be as accurate or up to date. It can also be the case that the market data does not take into consideration certain characteristics that make your company stand out within the market space.

Bottom-up

This approach depends on previous pricing and sales data. Where you divide the average sales price by the number of current clients to reach the value that indicates your yearly value of contact. Then, divide the yearly value of contracts by the number of clients which results in the Total Addressable Market

Your Annual Contact Value AVC * number of customers for the entire segment of the targeted market. AVC is calculated by multiplying your average sales price by the number of your current clients.

(You own a fragrance company that distributes your fragrance products to beauty supply stores in your state. Your product costs an average of $95/bottle, and you sell an average of 100 bottles to each store. 100 * $95 gives you an ACV of $9,500. You’d then multiply your ACV by the total number of beauty supply stores in your state (150) for a Total Addressable Market of $1,425,000)

Value Theory

This approach sheds the focus on adding value to capture the market. Where you asses the value that your product or service will deliver to your potential clients and how much the client will be willing to pay for that value.

Let us take an example of a bicycle shop, the TAM (Total Addressable Market) would be the global bicycle shop market. However, this is only a possibility if you are located in every country in the world and you are the only bicycle shop as in there is no competition. Therefore we get into SAM (Serviceable Available Market) as it represents the demand for the bicycle within your reach let's say it is one country and you are the only one in that particular country. That is where we transition into the SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) You can not have the entire market as there are other competitors that totals to the specific market that you can supply

Why use TAM SAM SOM

Helps you take steps to evolve your product or service
It gives a clear insight into the potential market
Set up more effective sales strategies
Build effective campaign segments
Dynamic targeting
Estimate potential profit

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Use top-class leads

Blue Marloc — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 08:10:03 +0000

Use top-class leads Blue Marloc di, 09/27/2022 - 10:10

We know how hard it is to get high quality leads

Generating leads is a significant part of sales success. Many organisations struggle with getting clear lists of prospects.

With current technologies we are able to identify leads in many ways, but doing it manually is a nowadays a near impossible task. The information you need to identify quality leads is not available in place. Data must come from websites, from the financials, from public information and by combining multiple social media like sources.

AI selecting and filtering

Once contact information is found, the task turns to identifying the potential of a lead. Leads with low potential create costs in the sales process and offer little benefit. But identifying what makes a lead a profitable lead is not a simple task as well. In our dataproduction we add specific information to the leads to make selecting and filtering possible. Filtering by hand on a single criteria is a common strategy, however using AI tools we can identify promissing leads more accurately by combining many factors.

For example for our eMobility client we offer high quality selection of Hotels leads. But which hotels have the most potential? Research has show it is a combination of location, type of guests, their financial situation, competition in the area and more. With our tools we rank thousands of opportunities to select the most promissing first.

A one size fits all approach is no long necessary

Sales arguments vary with different types of leads. To identify the lead type again various information most come together. In our practise we present a full 360 of all available information of a lead. Taking the hard data, financial data and even reviews and social media into account. In the end the goal is to arrive at those arguments that fit the prospect most closely.

Create personalised material

With our modern tools it is just a press of a button to produce personalised sales arguments.

Be convincing

Having the right prospect selected and understanding the most suitable arguments is key in sales success. When one-size-fits-all sales material is used we see that 7% to 35% of prospects do not convert. To make a prospect a happy client, sales materials-, approach and organisation must be convincing.

We estimate personalised sales material to be 60% more convincing. For this we collect additional information which is used to create convincing material,

For example we collect competitor information, we collect location information, we collect current actual status of the prospect and create sales material which communicates: "We are professionals, we did our homework, you can rely on us".

Winning leads is more that just getting contact information, it's about selection, filtering, personalisation and closing the deal with convincing sales material.

Feel free to contact us to help your sales process become personalised as well.

Revenue , Sales Leader Sales services Sales intelligence Sales lead dataHeader Menu White 2NoneFooter base 2Winning leads reduce cost of the sales process and increase close rate.Blog Style 1Right/bmfiles/2022-09/image_2022-09-26_175419044.pngSales in a box

Compelling arguments and materials

Blue Marloc — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 07:49:32 +0000

Compelling arguments and materials Blue Marloc di, 09/27/2022 - 09:49

So you reached the best prospect, now what?

We have spent much time on analysing what it takes to reduce lead times and increase closing rates. It starts with reaching out to prospects with higher potential of success. When we analyse the 'reasons' of win and loss patterns emerge in the data. Using our tools the significance of data items (like number of rooms for a hotel or the distance to city centers) starts to give meaningful input for lead scoring.

Back to "Now what?"

So when a prospect is contacted it is all about making the sale. We have found that providing prospects with professional and personalised sales material improves close rates with 5% to 17%. Which gives a significant reduction in sales-cost (customer acquisition cost).

Don't just do it once, do it all the time!

The effort of creating compelling sales material is not (only) in a good looking design; everyone has that. It is about two or three things: the prospect must be convinced you made an effort to understand the prospects situation, the prospect must experience interesting facts applicable to her situation, the prospect must experience your solution was tailored for her.

Doing it once is a marketing effort; where large sums are spent on nice sales brochures and such. But it doesn't work (enough). It is at best a better me-too approach.

At BlueMarloc we have taken a different approach; we collect sales compelling data directly with the lead contact data. We (or better our systems) connect with information like financials, history, management changes, the competition the prospect is in and lots of local data. We also produce sales brochures, spreadsheets and powerpoints which we feed directly from this personalised information.

With these tools sales can contact prospects with personalised materials, as if every prospect is special.

And isn't every prospect special for you to take this effort and benefit from better close rates?

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Increase sales success

Blue Marloc — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 02:07:03 +0000

Increase sales success Blue Marloc di, 09/27/2022 - 04:07

Sales success in trying times,

With markets in turmoil and margin under pressure of energy prices we can say these are trying times. For our commercial departments it means to step up to the plate; now is the time to make a difference. But making a difference is not a simple task but fortunately companies like BlueMarloc offer support.

Fix long standing issues.

Now is a good time to fix long standing issues. In a bullish market, there are customers enought and selling is not to hard. In a bearish market potential customers are much more hesitant and weigh their options.

As a first step to improve, we support our clients to fix any obstacle which we can identify. It is a good starting point to check every prospect touch point with your organisation. We check and improve the webpresence, social media, the scripts, the email wording, the materials sent and contacts between prospects and our organisation. Where a reasonable pricelist was OK in the past, now an excellent one is needed.

This can be hard on the clients organisation and resources as many experts are required to fix all these issues. An expert team such as BlueMarloc brings to the field. IT, AI, Marketing, Sales and Business.

Work with better material

The second major thing to make your sales more succesful is a better targeting. Going after the real-potentials is essential. Any prospect which is not converting is a loss. We see many clients who target either to wide a group or target to small a group. Services such as from BlueMarloc can define the potential prospects much more accurate. This results in a much better understanding of the persona's involved. Which results in a much better offer and approach.

With this analyses lead generation is fed. We use an elaborate definition of the prospects where each data-point has a meaning in the process.

Better leads better results

Better leads have large impact on the result. BlueMarloc is especially focussed on stopping 'weak' leads from going into the pipeline. Weak leads create cost of contact and in the end have a low chance of conversion. In a campaign BlueMarloc helps their clients track the lead progress and cut-off the long tail of lesser leads. When leads are sorted correctly the first part of the campaign is very succesful while later parts become less and less succeful.

It is the art of knowing when to move to a next segment and not waste resources on lesser opportunities.

Feel free to contact us to discuss how we can help you become more succesful.

Revenue , Sales Leader Sales services Sales intelligence Sales lead data Sales TechnologyHeader Menu White 2NoneFooter base 2Trying times? get some support to increase sales success!Blog Style 1Right/bmfiles/images/svg/Succeeding_graphline_up_celebrating.svg

Run an optimal campaign

Blue Marloc — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 15:57:09 +0000

Run an optimal campaign Blue Marloc ma, 09/26/2022 - 17:57

What is an optimal campaign?

"An optimal campaign converts the target amount of target prospects into customers."

What do we mean with target prospects?

Let's take the example of where our prospects are hotels where we want to close a contract with for them to rent out our ebikes. For this campaign we would have an addressable market of all the hotels. However with some preselecting we take out the hotels who are financially to far in debt to be able to get a lease agreement. So our prospect list now contains thousands of hotels. Our optimal business case is when Hotels contract 6 eBikes at a time. So we sort the list (using added criteria) on potential size of the contract. We next add a close-rate indication to the list. We know from our pilot that a certain close rate should be met.

Our target prospects are those which check all the boxes, the location, the size of the potential contract and will close within the set close rate.

But do we have what it takes to close at the optimal close rate?

It means that when we do sales and drop below the optimal close rate we will potentially loose money instead of earning it. It means something is wrong in the assumptions, which is potentially a problem. Using an outbound call-center it could easily mean burning a large part of the budget before some detects the sales close rate is not okay.

What does it take to get to that optimal close rate?

Let's consider the steps.

Having the right leads
Having the right -script, trained optimally for natural contact
Having the right follow-up email
Having the right follow-up brochure or flyer
Having your website link in place
Is the site confirming the message and converting?
Is your business in Social Media, Chamber of Commerce, etc listed correctly?
Having setup appointments - optimally spaced in time?
Having setup appointments - optimally spaced geographically?
Having setup appointments - taking revisits in account?
The account manager makes the call to the prospect
Having the right tone, information and personalisation
Having a meeting - illustrating the proposal with the right material, company presenation, product presentation, location research?
The quotation having the personalised offer
The contract having the right information
The service desk follow up in a professional manner?
The delivery process in place
The invoicing process in place
..

Prevent half-hearted approaches

Many organisations try with a 10 out of 20 approach. Which results in 50% of prospects not converting due to one or other obstacle.

Make it a successful campaign

We analysed hundreds of 'loss-reasons' to identify every issue along the way.

In our clients organisations we first "fix" all those fixable issues; setup a great site, make professional sales material.
All this to also make the account manager feel optimally comfortable, provide self-confidence building leads, professional quotations, contracts and ensure that the follow-up is in place. By organising an optimal campaign, you organise an optimal business.

"Account managers are perhaps twice as convincing, when they feel all their bases are covered and can speak with confidence with their prospects."

Campaigns Sales intelligenceHeader Menu White 2NoneFooter base 2 What we learned from analysing prospect responses about running an optimal campaignBlog Style 3Right/bmfiles/images/svg/Screen_working_database_70percent.svg