Tight Economies & Tough Tactics

Late September, with economic clouds and headwinds in full tilt I wrote about the buying and selling climate for data and information services/content-enabled tech. And it’s sure been playing out.

We see the patterns of the industry emerge in our client’s inquiries, in the consulting requests we receive, and in the need for more customized research through Tailored Analyses we deliver to select clients, or the high-touch concierge-like white glove treatment delivered to clients of our Premier and Outsell Leadership Community offerings. (A client got upset at me once because I was blogging about TAM analysis being a hot item. He thought I was writing about a conversation he and I had just had (no names of course) but indeed our conversation was # 6 that week on that very topic.) Not so original and certainly no secrets being breached!

So, what are we seeing in spades right now continues to be two sides of the same coin all about the buying and selling of data and information services and solutions:

Heads: Vendors asking about product-level competitive comparisons — attribute by attribute for the purposes of sales enablement, win/loss analysis, and competing more effectively in the market. Sometimes it fuels product roadmaps, more often it’s about fighting for market share, and sharpening the saw to win. It’s about making money.

Tails: Buyers asking us about data and product-level competitive comparisons — attribute by attribute for the purposes of reducing vendor spend, optimizing vendor spend and having the appropriate data sourced at the best price for the organization’s or department needs. It’s about saving money.

We are also getting a lot of inquiries from buyers about benchmarking their content spend so they can justify things like average spend per person, content spend by size of organization, # of vendors in the portfolio, and other important benchmarks.

With others we’ve shared our Vendor Portfolio Matrix Tool — a place to rank vendors across a portfolio across dimensions/attributes important to that organization and rank vendors in a way that provides some rationale for the decisions. And we always advise that buyers look at their solutions in the context of user need — what decisions they’re trying to make or that the information solutions are supporting as a key driver of comparison.

It’s also important for users to evaluate whether their enterprise is in a vendor’s target market. Just a couple months ago in my blog Sales as a Disservice I described the night and day between NetSuite and QuickBooks and how we were treated after eons on NetSuite’s platform (now Oracle.) Some of this havoc was mired in target market roots. None of it was acceptable from a customer point of view and that’s how sales are won and lost.

At the end of the day — heads you win — vendors are competing for market share, and tails — you lose when the buyer deems your solution is no longer a viable fit. Buyers win when they streamline the portfolio, stretch their budget, and figure out what they can live with. Many clients right now are honing their vendor portfolios in a big way. Enterprises budgets are centralizing again as that pendulum swings back with the economic rhythms we’ve seen time and again since our inception in 1998.

Buyers — make sure your Internal market needs assessments are complete and current. Evaluate the vendor’s competitive offerings attribute by attribute including things like ease of doing business, service, support, and target-market fit. We’re here to help.

Vendors — do you know where you stand in the market? Not just in market share but in the eye of the user and buyer? In the eyes of how your products compete (or don’t) side by side attribute by attribute. We’re here to help.

Our opinions and recommendations are fact-based, data-driven, and unflinching.

The market is operating at this level of detail right now. Tighter economies lead to tougher tactics. And when the tough get going they call Outsell.