I’ve written before about the lessons we can learn from Research In Motion’s failure to keep ahead of their market (and we all saw how the market reacted to Netflix’s little flub), but with 2011 now behind us, I think there are some lessons worth revisiting.

Let’s take a closer look at two companies that were clearly top players: Research In Motion (RIM), once again, and American Airlines. Notice: the key word in that sentence is, “were.”

Here’s the bottom line, and the biggest lesson we’ve learned from 2011: even though you may be on top, it doesn’t mean you’re invincible. The problem with rising to the top is getting too arrogant – too cocky – and not bothering to maintain your competitive edge. We saw this hubris clearly displayed by RIM and American Airlines.

RIM taught us that even though you may be on top – even though you were the first in your industry to release a groundbreaking product – it doesn’t mean you can get away with releasing bad products. The customers are too smart for that, and they will take their smartphone business somewhere else (and, in fact, they have).

American Airlines taught us that it doesn’t always pay to be the lone wolf, and that there is safety in numbers. In the wake of a faltering airline business, we saw two great mergers: United and Continental, and Delta and Northwest. While the other major airlines combined forces, American tried to tough it out alone… And they failed: AMR went from being the largest airline in the US to small potatoes, barely eking in at third place behind the other major carriers.

What were the underlying culprits behind such poor business decisions? What were the causes that issued these companies their death sentences? Without being on the inside, it’s hard to say, but we can certainly take heed of the warnings in these tales of woe.

1) Stay On Your Game (Don’t Be Lazy)

When you’re on top, you could easily buy into the lie that you’ve done the work, and now is your time to reap the rewards. Not so fast. This is an ever-changing, dynamically-demanding world. Every day, technology is evolving and customers want the newest and flashiest technology available (e.g., iPhone 4S). If you decide to take a break from researching and releasing groundbreaking products, expect the customers to take a break from you (and possibly never return).

2) Stay In Your Game (Don’t Lose Touch with Your Market)

While the rest of the world was rapidly moving to touch screens, RIM was releasing the same old models. What’s more, they weren’t even good models. The promised QNX-based smartphones have been delayed twice, and RIM’s customers (and stockholders) are rapidly losing hope. Failure to keep your head in the game – and pay attention to what your competitors are doing and what your customers want – will cost you your competitive edge, your stockholders, and your customers.

3) Gather Your Allies (Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help)

All seemed hopeless for the airline industry until the two mergers were announced. Combining forces was the way to go, but American Airlines missed out. Either they thought they were untouchable in this market, or they just missed the boat. In either case, it’s better to ask for help than file for bankruptcy. Allowing your past success to cloud your current judgement might result in the collapse of your company.

4) Treat People With Respect (Don’t Forget the People that Make Your Business Run)

When you’re on top, it’s an easy trap to start thinking of yourself as better than the people who work for you. American Airlines went into tense negotiations with their pilots, and the reality is that how you treat your staff translates into how your staff treats your customers (i.e., not well). So not only was AMR receiving bad press from filing for Chapter 11, but now they were playing the “bad guys” in the battle with their own staff. Not a great move. When you’re calling the shots in a company, make sure you respect the people who work for you; they are a huge part of the reason you’re succeeding, and should be treated as such.

So as we get into the swing of 2012, take these lessons from 2011 to heart. As a business leader, it’s your job to say “when” – when to jump ahead of your market, when to protect your business, and when to show your customers/employees/stockholders you appreciate them. But, as we witnessed through various companies in the past year, just make sure you say “when” before it’s too late.

We’re all familiar with this story.

A business is at the top of its game, makes a trajectory-decision based on an assumption, and subsequently misses the mark. In this case, the business is Netflix, the assumption was about its customer base, and – as we all witnessed (and were perhaps, as Netflix customers, privy to the news via e-mail) – Netflix missed the mark.

A year ago, if anyone had said that within the span of one month, Netflix would lose 800,000 customers and its stock would plummet, that person would have been laughed out of the “society of business punditry.” Netflix was the game-changer of how people consumed movies – arguably responsible for the closure of Blockbuster Videos around the country, as well as much of the Internet’s traffic. There was basically no current competition for Netflix; the business was at the top, gaining two-plus million new customers every quarter. Things were golden, until…

…until a haphazard blog post announced a price hike of 60%.
…until CEO Reed Hastings issued a disarmingly casual “I-messed-up” e-mail.
…until they decided to split the service into two different services
     (instant streaming staying as Netflix, and “Qwikster” for DVDs by mail).
…until they retracted that decision.

Netflix had a good business model. They had loyal customers. They had happy stockholders.

What went wrong?

First: Netflix made an assumption about their customer base, and this assumption was egregiously incorrect. They assumed that their customers were passionate enough about Netflix to stick by the business – that no matter what, these customers wanted their movies and would continue to use Netflix’s services. Although Netflix was right about their customers being passionate, they didn’t realize the passion would be railed against the company itself. In response to a price hike and change of services, Netflix’s customer base passionately informed the company of their disappointment and disapproval, and 800,000 of them jumped ship.

Second: Netflix employed poor communication and execution of the changes in service. Whether or not the new business model was good or necessary is one thing, but the way Netflix both announced and unveiled the changes fell short of their game. The announcement of changes first came through a seemingly slap-it-together blog post late at night, which sent the Internet ablaze in fury. Then Reed Hastings sent out an e-mail one might expect from a college buddy rather than the CEO of a company.

Finally, they retracted their decisions within a month of the first announcement. In the meantime, amidst all of these embarrassing communication flubs, the Qwikster website was not ready when the service launched, and the Twitter account was already in use by a drug-using teenager with foul language. All in all, the launch was sloppy. It seemed uncoordinated – like a last-minute decision gone awry.

We could spend all day disputing and defending the good and the bad and the ugly of Netflix’s recent business decisions, but I’m more interested in discussing the implications every business can take from this situation.

So what can we learn here?

What we can learn is that when you’re on top – when you’ve positioned yourself as a leader in your market, even if its just your local market – each decision must be well thought out (and hopefully the right one).

In the fast changing business world of today, it’s sometimes necessary to make drastic changes to a working business model. But before you are ready to go to the presses (or your customers) with these changes, make sure the model is carefully thought through in minute detail. Not analysis paralysis – but at least a thorough vetting with trusted voices. You have to at least try to do everything right or don’t do it at all.

If you are going to make business decisions based on assumptions, make sure they are the right assumptions. Validate them. Test them. Make sure you have the data to back it up before you go ahead and change your business model.

Once you have your facts in place, make sure you communicate well to all affected stakeholders. When you’ve amassed a loyal customer base, you need to keep them by respecting them, and respect comes through how you communicate. When all of these factors are set in place, ensure that your new business model is ready to launch from all sides of the company. You can’t cut corners – the market is too demanding and too connected for that.

Recently, there’s been lots of news covering Research in Motion, the Canadian-based company behind Blackberry. Although Blackberry has entered the lexicon as a standard reference to smart phones – frequently referred to in movies, TV shows, etc. – the reality is that for the last five years, Blackberry has been losing market share, and losing its position as the definer of email-enabled phones to iPhones and Android.

What must be particularly galling to Research in Motion, more so than the iPhone’s success – which was a truly groundbreaking product (which RIM tried to imitate with their touch product) – is the onslaught of Android, coming at the market from a completely different angle and making major headway. All in all, it has not been a good couple of years for Research in Motion.

So, what’s the lesson here for us?

Well, there are a couple. One is that when trends start shifting, you have to look down the road to see what’s really going on, and what you might need to do to respond.

The fundamental problem with the iPhone being better than the Blackberry was that it wasn’t really better, at least by many measures. Some people prefer a physical keyboard. Some people thought (and for a while it was quite true) that for corporate networks, Blackberry email had much more advanced security than Apple’s initial offering, and more so than Google’s Android system.

Where Research in Motion dropped the ball for Blackberry, however, was not looking at the trajectory of things. What was happening was that people were taking to the touch model very easily, and so that became a major new trend. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, they were looking at the empowerment of a large screen. Third, consumers become almost instantly enamored with having an almost infinite array of creative applications at their fingertips. So in many ways, the App Store and all the things related to customizing your experience were what set apart the iPhone, and later Android-based phones.

Look down the road at where your competitors are going. This is especially true in a highly-competitive market, and particularly if you are a leader in a category. Do not be dismissive of what the new competitor’s bringing to the table. Instead, ask yourself, What really changes, if I could fast-forward where they’re taking this? What is possible? What has been impossible for us, but maybe is possible for this new model – and can we adapt? Can we “join in”?

Without asking those questions – and it’s not likely that RIM’s executive suite were asking those questions, because that’s what happens when you’re on top – it’s easy to look down your nose at everything else that’s coming. It’s easy to only see the deficiencies of those players, missing where their strengths could develop, given enough time.

Given that this was Apple and later, Google, entering the market, it was arrogant to be dismissive of their ability to hammer away at a potential advantage, and make it the actual point of differentiation of their value proposition.

Apple didn’t just represent email, but functionally – from a user interface point of view – better email, and not just phone, but equal phone capabilities. The iPhone doesn’t just have download-able widgets – which Blackberry already had in some interesting little applications – but formed an entire ecosystem of completely flexible applications, that would not feel like, look like, or function like everything else that was previously available.

It was truly groundbreaking stuff, which of course is Apple’s strength. For all of us not competing against an Apple-caliber corporation, there still is a lesson to be learned about really “fast-forwarding” your competitors’ advantages to Where does that leave us – one-, three-, five years from now?

5 Reasons Why Social Media is a Fad and Not Relevant for my Business.

Social Media is a fad. It’s something that will go away soon. It clearly is not going to be all that it’s being presented to be by the press and the pundits who want to promote it as something new and important.

Social media clearly does not apply to my business. This is true for the following five reasons:

1. It really doesn’t matter what people say about my company on the web. The only people who care about finding recommendations via the web are people who have too much time on their hands, and are not likely to be my real customers.
2. Being plugged in to social media can only give me an inaccurate view of my competitors. In fact, it will often mislead me, in terms of thinking they are more important or relevant, or being talked about more than they really are.
3. Social media is a real “time sink”– an almost total waste of time. I can’t “tweet,” update Facebook, update LinkedIn, participate in discussion groups, and still run my business effectively. After all, it’s not like that really impacts my customers.
4. I have a website, literature, and brochures. My sales teams do a more than adequate job of communicating why my products and services matter to my customers, and I believe my customers really make their evaluation based on those materials, not through social media.
5. I’ll always be able to catch up later… even if it is a real, significant trend in the way companies communicate with prospects and customers. I’ll just hire the right consultants and apply the right techniques then. After all, what can it hurt me to be a year or two late on something, if I have the budget to just throw at it later on?

If you read the above, and it sounded like what you’ve been thinking about, be prepared for your cheese to get stolen out from under you.

First of all, it’s important to remember that Social Media, and the proper use of it, is self-reinforcing. What this means is that the sooner you start and the more (of the right things) you do, the stronger your position vis-à-vis your competitors. You can’t suddenly create an active conversation around things that you could listen to and learn from your customers, and things you want your customers to listen to and learn about you – from scratch, overnight. It takes time.

Social Media for business is more like a farmer planting seeds, tending the field, and reaping the harvest than going shopping at Acme.

Top strategists have noted that social media is different from everything else in at least three key dimensions:

1. It’s bi-directional – and it’s not just communication that is bi-directional, it’s also bi-directional in terms of determining what happens in the conversation. “Listeners” or the other participants have as much to say about what happens as the people who might be sponsoring the venue.
2. It takes longer to gestate, but…
3. It also connects deeper with people in their passions – the things that really matter to them.

So does your business connect with your best prospects and customers on a dimension that really matters to them?

That’s really the question, and social media and the variety of tools, technique, approaches, and strategies available to businesses of all sizes afford a new opportunity to connect with your audience, in a deeper way and on a different timeline than traditional marketing and advertising.

Ignore at your own peril.

The Bottom Line:

• Every part of your organization has to work toward sales transactions.
• Pricing establishes the revenue and profits from those transactions.
• Pricing determines the volume, velocity, and value of your sales.

Every part of your organization, from product development, to manufacturing, to marketing and sales, is working toward one thing: sales transactions. Customer service supports those transactions, looking to create repeat and referral transactions.

Pricing is the mechanism which establishes how a company generates revenue and profits from transactions. That is, pricing establishes what a company expects customers to be willing to exchange for your offering.

When you price correctly, your revenue stream will be as profitable as possible. Set the price too low, and you are exchanging margin (and total profitability) for volume – too high, and you may limit or throttle sales altogether.

Therefore, pricing determines the volume, velocity, and value of your sales.

• Volume: The total amount of sales revenue generated by an offering. This can also be seen as potential share of a given market realized by the offering.
• Velocity: The speed with which sales transactions take place. This can be the speed of transaction growth between time periods (i.e., month to month growth), as well as the typical “sales cycle” for transactions.
• Value: The profitability of transactions at a given price point. Marginal revenue and marginal profits are largely a function of optimal pricing.

What would be the likely impact on total sales and total profits, if we lowered our prices by 10%? Raised our prices 10%?

It would be great if pricing were a simple gradeschool math equation:

A + B * (X / Y) = Ideal Price

If you’ve priced anything before, you know it’s just not that simple. Pricing is complicated. Finding the ideal price for your product, in your target market, accomplishing your revenue goal, is NOT simple.

The key to remember is that, as much as any factor regarding your value proposition, pricing establishes the competitive context for your product.

Now, a multitude of factors play into the equation, so the math is messy.

You can get solid numbers like Fixed and Variable Costs from your Finance department. Competitors prices can be gleaned via a little research.

Then there are the fuzzier numbers, like price elasticity, the demand curve and perceived number of potential buyers. Demand will change when price changes (think back to Econ 101). Estimate the impact each potential price point will have on demand. The change in demand will also impact the number of transactions or volume you’re likely to generate.

And finally, the marketplace comes into play: expected rate of price increase, relative position in the market, customers’ perception of value, and regulatory oversight costs.

Just about everything is important in understanding the context of the pricing environment. Leave out one factor and you may have left out the component that eats your profit margin. And of course, customers don’t always make rational buying decisions, either. Your pricing has to make sense to the buyer, not just your team.

You need to be relentless in managing your pricing strategy. Wow! That’s depressing.

Ok – here’s the thing: no one can dial in on this 100%, 100% of the time. It’s a discipline and it requires vigilance. But remember, literally perfect pricing is impossible because the market doesn’t stand still. Your special deal pricing will prompt your competitors to counter. The new level of pricing sets a new expectation among your customers. And.. new entrants can price above or below you with some new features (or trim some features) – so it starts looking like new product categories have appeared within your space.

Keep your head about you. Test. Talk to customers. Watch competitors. Test again. Check the financial return. Watch costs. Rinse. Repeat.

Quick questions to ask yourself:

• How do you get a handle on all this?
• How are you testing pricing and its effect on sales?
• How often do you check your competitors?
• How deep a dialogue have you had with your best customer on your proposed pricing?

As an entrepreneur, product manager, or CEO, you have to be vigilant of what is going on in the marketplace. Are you taking a holistic view of both competitors and even more importantly, trends? Ask yourself: are you really offering something that has a truly distinct Value Proposition? If not, someone else will.

The following are practical suggestions for keeping up with Competitors, Alternatives, and Disruptors in the Marketplace:

1. Talk to your customers and prospects. Tell them that you really want to understand them and the marketplace better. Ask them: what other companies and products have you been looking at? Make this a conversation, not a survey process (although a survey is valid and good – it’s just different than talking to them).
2. Talk to your sales force. As hard as it may be to get real answers, you have to ask them about lost deals. Have you lost deals to specific competitors? Who else are prospects mentioning they are considering? Track this information but keep it simple. If you’re a one-person sales force, still do this as a “getting real” exercise.
3. The Internet. This one’s obvious – but it still requires that you take the time to do it! With the breadth and depth of web resources available, you can find out a lot about your competition at the click of a mouse. Enter key words of your value proposition into google and you will most likely locate your competitors. Create a Google (or other RSS-based) news feed with the key words included in your Value Proposition and check it daily. This low cost and easy dashboard is useful in keeping up with the marketplace. The more tightly defined your value proposition is, the more quickly you can start doing research and locate your competitors quickly.
4. Commission or purchase market research. While news may sometimes be “after the fact”, industry research houses (such as Gartner and Forrester in IT) discuss new products and technologies with vendors before they enter the marketplace. Professional research provides insight into the direction of companies within your industry. Analysts develop opinions about where a market is going. While no one is right all the time (most research firms overstated the dot-com revolution, for instance) – they provide another valuable voice to the discussion your firm needs to have regarding competitors, alternatives, and especially, disruptors.
5. Build relationships with key people within your specific trade press. These professionals closely follow your market and they can be critical for not only providing press coverage of your company and product, but also for sharing conversations about what’s going on in the marketplace and what’s coming down the pipeline.

Buyers are, after all, only human.

By their nature, humans do not always make rational decisions.

Their buying decisions are no different. Not only are not not always rational – they don’t even repeat the same decision with certainty.

Pricing is a critical component of your product, service or business’ Value Proposition. And good pricing strategies must take into account the psychological effect a given price has in the customers’ mind. A price is not just seen as the amount a brand wants in exchange for their product. Prices are relational. That is, they are related to your product, to customer expectations of features and value, and even to customers’ perceptions of themselves.

Within every product category there are pricing anchors. These are prices for services the buying public is conditioned to accept as reasonable and expected for a given category. To go above those anchor price points your product needs to have significant value added features which resonate with the buyer’s sense of value. In other words, bumping your price up to the next price range in the category, buyers expect your product to have certain features. If they conclude your product doesn’t meet that higher expectation, their disappointment is startling.

Buyers who pay a bumped up price, higher then the expected “anchor,” may not be buying your stated feature package. They may be buying based on their perception of themselves, “I can afford better than the cheapest model.” In other words, overbuying to ensure quality, hoping to lengthen the time before needing to replace their purchase (“I bought the Sony because it’s more reliable than the Vizio” – although both could be the exact same TV!)

If you chose to go with a bumped up price, set the price so it’s clear that it’s an upgrade from the anchor. When a price is only slightly higher than anchor pricing, buyers’ perception may be that you are “just slightly better than,”  or even “just more expensive than” – and not truly an upgrade from the low-price alternative. And of course you must deliver quality that fits hat perceived position. Your product must rise to meet buyer expectations.

One of the most common and obvious other pricing strategies is charm pricing – setting prices slightly below a round number, such as $29.99 vs $30. There is a proven rationale for this, even for luxury brands – it works! Consumers rationally know $29.99 is $30, but their perception is that the price is in the $20-$29 range rather than the $30-$40 range. Therefore, they perceive the price as lower.

• What anchor price exist in your product niche?
• What bump price points exist and what feature expectations do buyers have at those price points?
• Does your price point end in 9? If not, why?

Ironically, the least successful and most difficult task for companies is often not development of go-to-market strategy, but actually the execution of those plans. It is critical that you keep the elements of your overall strategy at the center of your conversations and current strategic discussions.

When you consider new business opportunities that might interfere with your current go-to-market tasks, ask: Is this consistent with our overall objectives? Our timeline? Our goals? Will this take the focus off our strategic business initiatives?

Also, go back to the four question areas. They are simple yet valuable tools. Consider the simplicity and power of asking:

• Is this an issue that really requires more discussion and understanding?
• Do we need to make a decision which presupposes a defined set of outcomes to choose from?
• Is this an information gap (a lack of appropriate or sufficient information)?
• Do we have a “know-how” gap (the lack of a specific skill or domain expertise to fulfill the mission)?

Teams can develop a “shorthand” that moves them quickly from an emotional read of the situation to an objectively based one. Be sure to round out your discussions and conversations with an action orientation. You should always “map back” to your overall project plan, and stay rooted in your overall messaging strategy.

Former Avaya CEO Louis D’Ambrosio’s frames strategic planning this way: “We’ve established three key priorities: strategy, execution and culture. What’s most important is the interrelations between the three.” Given the formation of the your go-to-market strategy and its objectives, actions and resources, four question areas will arise:

• What major issues must be faced?
• What key decisions must be made?
• What information are we missing?
• What expertise or “know how” will we need to carry out this plan?

First, identify major issues as they surface, noting where “gaps” still exist. These issues are either internal or external roadblocks to success. Some issues will require conversations or actions to mitigate their impact on your plans. In other cases, these issues might not be obstacles but rather create other, unintended complications. For example, a particular launch may negatively affect a long-term partner because it has competitive elements within it. This doesn’t necessarily hinder your go-to-market efforts, but it has ramifications in other aspects of your business.

All issues require one or more decisions – even “do nothing” is a decision. So, break down these major issues into key decisions that need to be made while going to market. Frame the decision along with its stakeholders and its impact on the key factors in the overall strategy.

Finally, what information and expertise is needed to execute your plan? How will you fill these gaps? All elements should be articulated and measured in terms of their relationship and interrelation to the strategic and tactical objectives of your go-to-market messaging process.

In previous posts, we’ve looked at your historic customer‒ who you’ve sold to before, aligned prospects‒ who you haven’t dealt with before but you think would be receptive to your offering, and negatively aligned customers‒ who you’re better off not selling to. Considering those three, you should be able to distill all that down to a few key attributes and zero in on your target‒ your ideal customer.

It’s worth noting that you might, in fact, have multiple targets. Much as you’d have concentric circles in an archery target, you may have your main target, the bull’s eye, and surrounding that, those that are not quite the bull’s eye but are still also valuable targets.

To make sure you hit that target, you need to get to know that ideal “bull’s eye” customer, and there are several things you want to look at. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, at the end of the day, the person who makes the purchase is a person. It is a human being‒ not an organization, not a company, not a household, not a family‒ a person. It’s always going to come down to somebody, somewhere deciding whether or not to buy what you’re offering.

The first thing you want to look at is what the personal or business objectives (or maybe both, in B2B) of your target market are. What are they trying to accomplish? Those accomplishments tend to look like either pain reduction or pleasure enhancement, but basically, broadly speaking, they are trying to do something within a certain period of time. If someone is buying an iPad, for instance, perhaps their objective is to lighten the load of the technology they have to carry around with them in order to have the internet at their fingertips wherever they happen to be.

Secondly, they have problems‒ unresolved issues. By that I don’t mean personal issues, necessarily, unless the solution you’re selling happens to be counseling for troubled psyches. The point is that they are trying to resolve something that they perceive to be increasing in pain‒ it is a bother for them, and that’s what they want to get rid of.

Challenges are things that are more aspirational in nature. They’re things that it may look like problems on the surface, but really have more of a measurement or goal associated to them. For instance, somebody who wants to lose weight, at the first stage they just want to get started on the weight loss process, but at some point it becomes more about getting fit, and the challenge is how do I get fit, and they move from losing weight to getting fit. It’s more positive. It’s an objective that actually is something they can get a little bit excited about.

That brings us to the fourth dimension in this‒ fears. Your ideal customer has fears. What are they afraid of? They’re afraid of yet another weight loss routine that will not work for them, or another lawn care service that will fall short of their expectations, or cost more. You have to understand this in the context of your ideal customer. You won’t resolve that fear for everybody, depending what your selling. If they’re afraid they can’t afford a new car, and you’re selling new cars, you have to break through that fear. Kia did that very well with their “hip-hop hamster” commercials, going right at the used car market, saying, “You can go with this, or you can go for that,” ‒and that’s an important message in marketing.

Lastly is opportunities, which could be business pleasures‒ market share gains, revenue success, those kinds of things, or it might be personal‒ looking for a promotion, or a way to look better to your boss. It might be where a company wants to do something that would otherwise cost them a lot of money to accomplish, so the opportunity would be to take advantage of what’s in front of them, and if you can show them that while you are, for example, looking at ways to save money on your human capital, if you have a service or a solution that actually makes hiring better people cheaper, better, faster, that’s an  opportunity. They want to grow their company, they’re seeking to exploit an opportunity.

How well do you know your ideal customer? What are their objectives, problems, challenges, fears, and opportunities? How can you shape your offering and messaging to meet those?

According to former Navy Captain and airline pilot, Scott Davies, before a commercial airliner is allowed to take off, it must file a flight plan. A flight plan is the official report that aircraft operators file with controlling aviation authorities. Prior to the advent of flight tracking and navigational technologies such as radios, radar, and GPS, there needed to be some record of intended flight operation.

A flight plan documents the intention of the aircraft operator prior to flight. In the early days, it included the point of departure, the point of arrival, and the intended route of flight in between. It also included a physical description of the aircraft and contact information for when the aircraft failed to show up at the intended destination.

Over time, as airspace saturation began to occur, requirements were added to the flight plan to enable ground controllers to manage traffic. As radio communication became more common, it became standard procedure to update changes in flight plan parameters such as TAS, altitude, and time estimates, via radio while en route.

Throughout the decades of changes in air traffic monitoring, the flight plan has continued to serve as the basic document for filing the initial intentions of the aircraft operator prior to flight. This way, in the event of lost radio or radar contact, there remains a base plan that pilots and controllers can refer to in order to anticipate the continued conduct of the flight.

These regulations allow thousands of planes to fly every day – largely without incidence. The essence of these rules and process can be summarized as readiness, clarity, and direction.

These are also the vital elements of your go-to-market strategy – your marketing flight plan, if you will.

Have you clarified your destination – and the route you will take to get there? Have you done your “pre-flight” check on resources and the condition of your “craft” – your value proposition?

If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t much matter which direction you take the organization. Objectives are necessary in order to have a clear and clean cut view of where the organization is going.

There are strategic and tactical objectives, which document the future of the firm or a specific market roll-out. They should be built around concept of messaging must be central, so both strategic and tactical objectives support the validation, communication and execution of the product’s Value Proposition– representing a set of promises that your target market will agree is innovative, indispensable and inspiring.

Strategic objectives are the high-level goals that drive strategy and long-term direction. These include corporate goals (which lay out the major, grand-scheme plans of the organization), financial goals (the key financial metrics that drive the firm’s success), and market impact goals (the key metrics that will allow you to measure your position or success in the marketplace, such as market share, markets served, number of customers, etc.)

Tactical objectives aren’t tasks, per se, but are more immediately tangible than strategic objectives. They reflect the key areas of project management, overall efficiency and time management, and translate easily into “to-do list” items for your Action Plan, and benchmarks for your timeline.

Keep objectives as clear and specific as possible. Use time-bound targets that are as measurable as possible. For example: Sell 100,000 units by May of 20xx for revenue of $$$ million.

IT Industry research leader, Gartner, Inc. comments on the importance of tying goals to actionable strategy and results: “Aspiring ‘to be the market leader’ or ‘to be seen by our clients and partners in their success’ is admirable, but lacks the specificity and clear linkage to action and measurable results to propel go-to-market efforts.”

Do you know where you’re going? Have you established major strategic objectives as well as tangible tactical objectives? Are these goals clear, specific, and measurable?

As you formulate and refine your value proposition, the best thing you can do for it is to simplify. There are few practical steps will help you get to the “pearl of great price” of your offering, and really let it shine. By this, I mean highlighting and not hiding the true main point (the net-net “goodness”) that proves most compelling to prospects.

Simplify by reducing the number of features or benefits in your story. Obviously, don’t reduce the actual features that make up your offering, but do reduce the number of features you communicate. Even this may seem counter-intuitive, in that it is easy to feel that “more is more.” However, given the crowded marketplace and ever increasing levels of market noise, it is a strategic imperative to deliver a simply understood story to your market.

I find that the more complex the product, the less effective it is to deliver the proverbial “fire hose” of information to an already overwhelmed audience. The point of reducing the number of features communicated is twofold: to force you to evaluate which features really matter to prospects, and to enable you to deliver those points more clearly.

Simplify by reducing the number of words you use to communicate a feature. Use simpler language such as “this means…” and “this doesn’t mean…” to frame key points. There is a time and place to introduce the twenty-page PDF with detailed schematics and charts… it just isn’t at the front end of the communication and sales process.

Simplify by reducing the use of jargon and dense wording. I don’t mean language that’s simplistic or condescending— I do mean language understood by a non-technical executive who understands business terms and concepts.

Finally, simplify by reducing the number and depth of slides in your PowerPoint presentation. The old adage of “tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them” is a simple and still effective way to approach any presentation. The middle part is where many business product and services companies fall into their own snare of complexity.

PowerPoint is a wonderful tool to capture and share new ideas—and is also a collector of “dust balls” of too many ideas and details. We’ve all sat through (or given) one-hour PowerPoint talks that left everyone, including the speaker, more confused than when the talk began. You can clarify and simplify any presentation (or document) by taking this simplification test:

• Can I capture my essential offering in one slide? You can state your Value Proposition (using the Offering Concept Statement) and add a few short clarifying bullets—but that’s it!
• Can I describe what my product does in one slide of less than 50 words (adding up all the bullets)?
• Can I describe, on one slide, what our product/service brings to the market that is new, useful and exciting (your offering’s I3 dimensions)?
• Can I describe, on one slide, what in our company’s history points to our distinct ability to deliver this specific value proposition (credibility from your corporate foundation)?
• Can I describe, on one slide, a way of looking at our offering financially that is compelling—emphasizing a key financial benefit or dynamic unique to your offering (Cost Effectiveness from your Corporate Foundation)?
• Can I describe, on one slide, what in our present people, processes and resources points to our distinct ability to deliver this specific value proposition (Capability from your Corporate Foundation)?

Be direct. Be clear. In short—keep it short. Your prospects will appreciate it and understand your story better as a result.

We tend to think of “mission” in the singular. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” and such. As a marketer, however, your mission is two-fold – you have both the corporate mission, and your product’s mission to consider.

The corporate mission is your company’s overarching mission – why you are in business. Most likely, some version of this is already spelled out somewhere, in a “Mission Statement” or similar declaration of purpose and/or vision for the organization.

Your product’s mission is, similarly, why it exists.

This isn’t a recitation of what your product does, but rather, why your company funded its development, and what the overall expectations and requirements for it are. These expectations are at least financial, market impact (share, prominence) and organization (reduced cost to deliver, replace older technology, etc.)

Look at both of your statements and ask yourself, “are these aligned?” – do they look like they belong together? It doesn’t matter whether you are in a position of authority to change your corporate or product mission – what matters is that you note the degree of or lack of integration – and start thinking about the ramifications of these distinctions.

A tightly aligned corporate and product mission (and by “product” I mean product and related services that together make the “offering”) can just mean that your company is newer and has fewer product extensions… or … your company has a very tight overall focus.

A loosely aligned mission profile isn’t necessarily “bad”, but could mean challenges ahead for acquiring resources to fulfill your product’s mission. An example of this would be a packaged software vendor launching a Software as a Service (“SaaS”) offering. The culture and norms in such an organization could be at sharp odds with a nascent product group – pushing the envelope and making everyone uncomfortable. However, if this company’s Mission was tied to delivering Business Process enablement via technology, services, “any means necessary,” – the new product offering might actually be a very consistent and meaningful addition to the company’s capabilities.

The point here is to be aware of both your larger corporate mission, and specific product mission, and how they fit together. How much sense does this offering make in light of the company’s general mission? What impact does this have on your go-to-market strategy?