BEN Investability 2011

Sales & Marketing

Greville Commins

Overview

What is Marketing?

Marketing content in the business plan

Developing your Marketing Strategy & Marketing Plan

How will you take you product to market?

What does a marketing plan look like?

What mix of activities should you define in your marketing plan?

What should you look out for when investing?

Developing your sales activity

Definition of the sales process – for your marketplace

What sales methodologies can you consider?

How does a well defined sales process help the investment decision?

What is Marketing?

Finding profitable things

to do

What product?

Where?

Who?

When?

How much ?

Checking the product has;

Untapped potential

Disruptive influence

Competition that are not ready

A route to market

Barriers to entry

Investors

focus here

Entrepreneurs

focus here

Why is Marketing important?

To discover and define a need or problem a customer has

To research and quantify markets with potential customers

To promote the product in the eyes of your customer….to

generate demand

Good marketing is needed by all businesses…..and investors

Make sure you do some market

research

Talk to/survey potential customers

Research the web, dig deep

Analyse announcements from potential competitors

Gather information from independent sources

Don’t forget your experience, of the market, is valuable too

You will always learn something of value from research

Enables the building of a well defined target market.

Choosing the right attractive market

Markets where: profit potential is high

No company is in market control

At right point in the life cycle

Growing

the right price (profitable) is possible

Route to market

Defining an attractive market is a key component of your

business plan. You need evidence to validate your choice of market

Update your data regularly, the world changes all the time

Investors are often looking for a market in excess of $1Bn

before they get interested.

Product price position in market…

Formulation of price/value positioning

Examine similar products

Study/analyse competition

Look at customers behaviour and buying power

Define price that reflects the value delivered….not a cost of delivery

Who appropriates value out of the product…

Assess value to end customer (what will they pay?)

Value added by others

Customer vs Consumer

Consider costs of different levels of distribution

Direct sales, Distributors, Wholesalers, Retailers

Internet sales, Mail order

Understanding the competition • The competition: SWOT analysis

Who are they?

Their size & market share?

What do you have that’s better?

Where are their weakness’, what are yours?

How can they be beaten?

Which customers are using the competition?

Where are there opportunities that you can win?

Your advantages and disadvantages?

For example, price, quality, performance, brand, customer loyalty.

Why will customers buy your product or service instead?

Investors deeply sceptical about markets with no

competition

Marketing strategy (How will you deliver the business)

The Marketing Strategy is how the company will

Go to market and establish a position

Build a brand identity

Target customers

Define products and prices

Promote products

Sell through which channels

Define Objectives & Measure results

Investors: If a company cannot clear define HOW they will deliver

the business – you should pass!

Only

THREE!

Leadership,

Differentiation

or Focus

Porter (1980)

Strategy influencing factors

Many factors in your business influence your strategy

Financial stability, funding, profits

Product h/w and/or s/w invention, patents

Team skills and experience

Market/Application/problem knowledge

Problem importance

Good

will

Brand recognition/reputation

Sales channels

Customer

&

Market

Knowledge

Technology

&

Skills

Reputation

& Trust

Future

Roadmap

Differen

tiation

Developing your Marketing plan (The strategy in action)

Marketing strategy is “HOW”, Marketing plan is

“WHAT,WHEN,WHO”.

A good marketing plan, inside the business plan, builds

confidence that you know HOW you will drive demand

The marketing plan is your strategy in action.

What mix of activities should be defined in the marketing plan

to achieve marketing objectives?

Create awareness of a problem or need

Build awareness of the solution (your product) and Brand recognition

Sales lead generation activities (and customer acquisition costs)

Key investor questions

How to win customers, cost of getting each customer, cycle time to

business

Marketing communications (what you say and how you say it)

Various activities

Brand building, Logos, market positioning

Web presence – targeting who?

Social networking plan, blogs / Facebook / Twitter

More in skill session 3, Social Media for marketing, 1st Nov

Product and/or Brand launch plans

Launch timing/location

analysts meetings, briefings before launch

press launches, stimulate articles

PR (Press release) activities

Sales tools, flyers, brochures, datasheets

Support sales demand

Developing your Sales strategy

The sales strategy is how the business objectives are

delivered in sales terms

Sales leads generated by Marketing activities or Sales activities

Selling brings in today's orders

To which targeted customers (your focus of efforts)

Who will you contact first?

Why should they buy?

How will they buy?

How will you support them?

Through which sales channels

Direct, Distributors, Tele sales, Web/internet, mail order

The sales “Hopper”

All businesses have a sales pipeline

(“Hopper”)

Depends on the nature of your business,

your sales cycle time

your success rate

Sales leads feed your pipe line to achieve your

sales targets.

The Marketing plan defines how leads will be

generated

Ongoing sales activity generates leads too

Sales leads

Sales orders

Selling is a process

In Business to Business selling

as opposed to retail sales

Rarely (maybe never) does anyone in business buy at the first

meeting.

Need to understand your customer(s) buying behaviour

Large companies / organisation structures take time

Counterparts have different roles & responsibilities

Personalities & Behaviours

Experience (of you and them)

Even web sales need to observe a sales process

Investors need to understand each companies sales process, it affects cost of business, growth, profitability, risk, return….

Understanding the Sales Process

Relating

Prospecting

Create solution

Discovery Advocating

Supporting

Closing

You need to define the sales process for your business

What do we do with this process?

Need to understand each stage in the selling process

It’s all about them NOT you!

Define what key messages to convey at each stage

Prospecting Relating, etc

Marketing tools support each stage of the process

Assisting in transitions between stages

Track the process

use feedback to fine tune to suit your marketplace

How you will sell to customers needs to be defined in your business plan

Conclusion: Focus on

What, When, Who, How In your business plan Sales & Marketing section be clear and

specific about;

What you will do

How you will do it

When will you do it

Who will be responsible

Thank You