Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Is the Customer Always Right?




Recently Cisco has become quite the headliner amongst different news sources in what seems an unexplainable discrepancy in a bidding process for California State University requested by the Director of Cyber Infrastructure at California State University, Michael Davidoff.  Business Insider posted an article: Here's How Cisco Execs Explained A $100 Million Foul-Up” which substantiates Davidoff’s claim that Cisco ran a bad sales cycle by way over bidding (450% higher than the winner Alcatel-Lucent). Is it possible that the customer was wrong in this situation? If HP's bid came in at the same range(HP was 86% higher than Alcatel-Lucent), I wouldn’t have much of an argument, but something went awry in the interpretation of those bids to have such a major discrepancy.  Maybe the seller isn’t wrong here but the buyer is to blame. At the very least, we should evaluate where to point the fingers and not just go straight to Cisco.


How is it possible that Alcatel-Lucent came in at 22 million, HP at 41 million and Cisco at 123 million? Take a second.  This is a huge disparity. Why did this happen?  Is this a question of a bad-selling process or a bad-buying process? Davidoff would blame the selling process, but it might be worth considering that the buyer might be to blame.  Do we blame Cisco for way over shooting?  Or is this a question of the buyer, in this case, Davidoff, for not understanding what he is actually paying for in the bid?  Let’s take a step back.

To begin with, there is no way that Cisco had only two people who are responsible for putting together a bid that is worth over 100 million dollars?  In millions of dollar deals there are teams of people that are sitting at the table giving their input: Pre-Sales, Product Specialists, Account Supervisors, Product Managers, Sales Managers, VP of Regional Sales Managers, Competitive Analytics teams—just to name a few.  Here is what it isn’t: two folks sitting at a table over the weekend throwing around 100 million dollars—not at this level.

There is also no way that Cisco wanted to lose this deal?  So, if Cisco knew what it would take to deliver the services and the products that California State University required, what did Davidoff not understand?  And what were the other companies leaving out of their bids that Davidoff might realize he needs later on during implementation. Were there assumptions of services needed?  The reason it is important to ask these questions is because you have three major companies that surely have an idea of their competitor’s prices, but come out with a bids in wildly different ranges – to be exact: HP was 86.36% higher than Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco was 459% higher than Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco was 186% higher than HP.  

Let’s think about this on a smaller scale: you want a new car.  You research what you want and then go to different dealers looking for the best price.  You know the range that your new car is going to cost you, so if one of the dealers gave you below market value and two that were far above market value, wouldn’t a big red flag go up and you would start asking questions?  You wouldn’t just blindly go with the cheaper one. So instead of Davidoff beating his chest and pointing fingers at Cisco wouldn’t you like to know what questions Davidoff asked, if any?

Time will tell (and realistically, we might never know), but a cheaper deal isn’t always a better deal.  Like probably all of our grandfathers told us at one point; “You don’t get somethin’ for nothin’” So, what is the something that Davidoff is going to be missing? Did Davidoff just lose because he didn’t question the disparity?

What do you think?

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Friday, November 16, 2012

President Obama's Winning Sales and Marketing Strategy


At iLantern we subscribe to selling methodologies byCustomerCentric Selling® that focus on understanding the buyer’s behavior in order to mitigate risk and shorten the selling cycle.

Understanding CustomerCentric Selling’s® methodology, a good seller can lead the buyer through all phases of the sales cycle, both mitigating risk and elevating the benefits of their product to assist in their pain points and to shorten the sales cycle. A multi-dimensional methodology at its core, there are at least four main concerns for the buyer: need, cost, solution and risk.  At each stage, the level of these concerns ebbs and flows making it imperative to stay educated and tuned into the buyer through the entire process.

Here is how President Obama’s campaign unfolded in relation to a sales cycle:

1.     Marketing – President Obama’s team had a deep understanding that data makes all the difference. They tapped into the voter’s behaviors, unlocking their “lead score”, therefore, letting marketing create the right messaging based on their behaviors.   As the campaign was underway the team continually tracked voters and created optimal messaging that would help bring the voter into the sales cycle.

2.     Phase One of the Selling Cycle – In this stage the voter self-educates and begins to formulate an opinion by listening to sound bites from TV, social media, and radio.  President Obama’s team was ready with messaging before the voter even started listening or even contributing.   Using the marketing data, the team could formulate their messaging; leaving less need for re-education in Phase Two.


3.     Phase Two of the Selling Cycle – Consider this the evaluation phase.  The voter takes their time to evaluate the candidate and whether or not the candidate’s solutions can fit their pain points.  Will the candidate alleviate x problem?  Will the candidate deliver on their promises? Again, the data reveals that the voter’s risk is escalating.  Armed with that information, using TV ads, twitter, social, and radio, the messaging can be tailored to address risk.  What type of messaging is needed to help mitigate risk coupled with the voter’s understanding of what the solution will do for them?  Obama’s team was able to optimize that data to target the unsure voters.  There was less of a need to re-educate the voters because during every step, the data informed the strategy teams, allowing for nimble and agile readjustments along the way.

4.     Phase Three of the Selling Cycle – Calling all Hail Mary plays. This is commitment time. Risk is at the zenith.  Making decisions make most hesitate, holding up the deal or the vote. How did President Obama seal the deal? There was certainly some mud-slinging going on, which isn’t what a good seller should do, but ultimately the mud-slinging became mute based on the right strategies through the rest of the cycle. President Obama’s team stayed tuned in every step of the way.  This means data.  Understanding the voter’s behavior, the TV shows that the target groups likes to watch, the times when they go on Facebook, re-tweet, post, or speak during polls; this data matters and the Man who best used it won.

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Friday, November 2, 2012

Understanding Leverage Can Move the World and Close More Deals



Archimedes famously said: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world."  A pretty bold statement, but Archimedes was a visionary. In the basic understanding of leverage there are three main components that determine how an object can be moved: the “fulcrum”, the “load” and the “force”.  The most important feature in leverage is the position of the fulcrum, as this dictates how much force is needed to move the load.

Finding the position of the fulcrum, as it relates to sales and marketing, can be tricky, but using event data can help you discover the position of the fulcrum, so that you can determine the appropriate force you need in order to move the load.


Load – The object you are trying to move.  Think of this as your leads and clients.  In order to lift them to the desired position you need to figure out how to move them. Event data helps to determine the position of the fulcrum, so you can determine the necessary force required to move them forward towards a close.

Fulcrum –This is the point that allows the capability for action. In sales and marketing, event data is the key to the position of the fulcrum.  By figuring out where the fulcrum is, allows you to figure out the optimal force you need to move the load.

Force – This is the action you take in order to move the load.  Using event data allows you to apply less force but return higher load results. Focusing on the temporal pain points of your leads will allow you to determine the position of the fulcrum, and therefore, the correct amount of force you need to activate the lever to move the load.

The discovery of leverage helped us to do more work with less energy expenditure.  Even if you don’t want to increase your productivity, wouldn’t you want to work less and still sell the same amount?  And for you over-achievers, you have the opportunity to do more based on the simple leverage principle.  Move more leads to clients by determining the fulcrum point based on their pain points and then, applying force with the right messaging at the right time, delivering higher results.  The most important thing to understand about leverage it that these three components work together.  Without understanding the position or point of the fulcrum you will have no understanding of leverage, which means you won’t know the force you need in order to move the load.

In simpler terms: 


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