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R. Shekar

By electing to call on customers along with the Heads of Sales and Marketing, Rajat had unwittingly invited this predicament upon himself. The moment of truth for any CEO, and Rajat was no exception to it, is to hear about some unpalatable home-truths about the organisation from its well-meaning and most loyal customers. He was told that the company’s sales personnel were making over-commitments which the production had difficulty living up to.

While the Head of Marketing professed to sell value, the Head of Sales saw no alternative to competing on costs. By contrasting the positional appeal of the company’s offerings (Y axis) with the market space claimed by the company (X axis), as illustrated across, the Head of Marketing pointed to four positions open for bidding in the marketplace, that the Head of Sales could wish to assume by design. Progressively, every one of the offerings, he claimed, could be maximised for product appeal and played to the greatest segmented advantage.

Vanilla offering provided the volumes necessary to justify the breakeven sales targeted for each revenue/product stream. Offering a low price here was not as much a crime as being unable to hold the price line there. The sales personnel worked with the Value Engineering team to ensure that the margins were protected on this product line all the time.

Limited number-limited time offer: Sales personnel were encouraged to look for tactical variants to the vanilla offerings that could tap into ‘seasonal’ demand like the Valentine’s Day and such like.

Segmented offering meant taking the same product to different segments of users each of who were distinct from the other. The test of distinctiveness was that the strategies applied to one segment should not affect the purchase decisions or sales prospects of the other.

Uniquely exclusive meant almost personalising the product to an individual that he/she felt the offering to be a designer-ware giving him/her almost a sense of exclusivity and did not mind paying that much extra for that exclusivity.

The Head of Sales began to get convinced that the choice of customers and assignments fielded and the ensuing strategic points of vantage coveted, can translate into improved win rates and EBIDTA margins.

Instead of playing to the dictates of the clients and competition, they may create precisely those effects they wish to originate with a definitive purpose to secure an unshakable footing in the market space that could be uniquely theirs to keep.

Rajat felt justifiably optimistic about the progress he was making!

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