Business problem addressed

What is marketing? Although everyone knows the importance of marketing, many companies, both start-ups and large organizations fail to effectively market their products, especially to corporate customers. Marketing is often confused with sales, advertising, promotion, etc., all of which are components of marketing, but these elements by themselves do not create a market-driven company. In this exercise, participants will learn the key elements of marketing which will allow their company to be truly a market-driven organization:

1. Identifying your customer
2. Understanding customer needs
3. Designing a product that suits customer needs
4. Satisfying different needs for different customers
5. Listening to customers: Incorporating customer feedback into product design

In this exercise, participants will use a generic high-tech product but the lessons learned can be applied to marketing any type of product or service in any industry.

Overview of the exercise
In the book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore analyses the high-tech market and classifies buyers into the following categories:

1. Innovator
2. Early adopters / Visionaries
3. Early majority / Pragmatists
4. Late majority / Conservatives
5. Laggards

High-Tech Marketing brings this model to life, as participants try to design and sell products to two corporate customers. Each corporate customer has 4 buyers, each representing one of Moore’s categories (excluding Laggards, who will never buy).

Participants who are playing the role of companies need to:

1. Identify the correct entry point into the customer
2. Understand the needs of the first buyer at the customer
3. Design their product to address those needs
4. Balance features and cost in their product design
5. Work out how to make additional sales at the customer to other buyers
6. Identify the needs of those buyers
7. Redesign their product to address these needs.

In order to successfully penetrate the customers, make sales and earn profits, the participants need to learn the lessons of high tech marketing.

Ideal group size: 12-50 people (participants can be divided up differently)
Duration: approximately 1.5 to 2 hours, plus a 30 minute follow up discussion
Manpower: 1 facilitator and 1 assistant facilitator
Materials: Excel model for calculating the results (supplied), Information sheets for companies and customers (supplied), Sales invoices for companies and customers (supplied), Meeting schedule templates (supplied), Labels for the different groups

Target participants
• Senior, Middle and Junior managers in large organizations who would like to improve their ability to market their products to customers
• Entrepreneurs who would like to improve their ability to market their products to customers

Some of the key areas for learning and discussion are:

1. Understanding the complete marketing process
2. Identifying who is your customer
3. The importance of understanding customers’ product requirements and the consequences of not doing so
4. Designing a product with the right mix, balancing customers’ requirements with cost incurred
5. Different requirements of different buyers at each customer
6. Different requirements of different customers
7. Applying the “whole product” concept and how it differs from customer to customer
8. The challenges in penetrating a market
9. The challenges and strategy to crossing the chasm – to continue to generate sales after the first few initial sales
10. Incorporating customer feedback into product design
11. The importance of approaching the right people and selecting the right customers
12. Negotiating a win-win solution for both the company and the customer