Sales and Product Configurator Software

How Product Configuration Can Power Blue Ocean Strategies

Louis Columbus
Cincom Systems

One of my goals every year is to re-read Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, one of the most insightful and well written business books I’ve ever seen.  What makes this book valuable as a yearly read is the depth of insight the authors pack into each paragraph.  It is evident from the depth of insights delivered both authors had invested years in research before writing this book.

Great books have the ability to re-cast your current perspective on what you are working on, and the same holds true with Blue Ocean Strategy with regard to product configuration.

Key Take-Aways

• Blue oceans are not created purely by technologies or companies but by strategic moves over time. Product configuration strategies orchestrated with all channels, through manufacturing, fulfillment and service to ensure the highest levels of customer responsiveness possible, matters most.  It is not just the investment in the process; it is the commitment to an entirely new approach to making moves over time with product, selling and service strategies.

• The essence of any blue ocean strategy is the creation of uncontested markets, which is exactly what mass customization does. Consider the work of Joe Pine on how mass customization now delivers experiences over just products, and this point becomes clear.

• Product configuration strategies are crucial for new product introductions and new product development. The complexities involved in launching a new product can be simplified and automated using product configuration.  The configurations customers attempt to complete yet abandon are clear signals of product line extensions – even new markets as well.  Mass customization as a customer listening strategy can be a contributor to blue ocean strategy creation, if only companies would take the time to use this approach.

• Blue Ocean Strategy delivers frameworks equally adaptable to product configuration including value curve, four actions framework and buyer utility maps. The paradox of measuring the contributions of product configuration over and above all other channel management and IT strategies is a complex one.  With the frameworks in Blue Ocean Strategy one can get close to quantifying the performance of product configuration strategies over time.

Bottom line: Make a point of reading Blue Ocean Strategy this summer and apply its concepts to your products and companies.

Flickr attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanchom/2843356328/

Sales and Product Configurator Software for SAP, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Cincom Control

Integrating Social Networks into Channel Strategies, Part I

Louis Columbus
Cincom Systems

Being able to capitalize on the customer insights that social networking applications are delivering can completely re-define a channel strategy.  In fact we’re seeing social networking become the catalyst of change as our customers are more focused on capturing the preferences of their customers more closely than ever before.

In this short webcast I’ve put together a few slides to cover how social networking is redefining B2B marketing and channel management initiatives, plans and programs.

This is the first of a five part series titled Integrating Social Networks into Channel Strategies, each of which will be a short webcast that will deliver the lessons learned by Cincom in providing selling and product configuration solutions to our clients.

Thank you for your time and I hope you find the webcast interesting.

Sales and Product Configurator Software for SAP, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Cincom Control

Why Selling Needs To be So Much Like Teaching

Louis Columbus
Cincom Systems

The best sales professionals I’ve ever known are also the most focused - call it obsessed - with their prospects and customers’ unmet needs.  They live to make an impact for their prospects and customers.  There are many stereotypes of sales people however; the loud, often overbearing old school sales professionals that relied not on product knowledge or new techniques, but purely on cronyism.  If there is one very welcome change to selling in this century it is that knowledge and intelligence is killing cronyism.

So how do you get your sales force away from the cronyism and unprofessionalism and get in step with this century?  Making smart sexy, making intelligence cool, making an overwhelming impact on behalf of customers must be the new path to promotions and career advancement.

Delving into this more, here are several recommendations:

• Transform product tribal knowledge into a taxonomy you can use to support selling strategies over time.  Instead of continually hounding the  top performing pre-sales engineers, product managers and product experts for their expertise, consider creating a taxonomy, or data structure, that can serve as the foundation for getting entirely programs and strategies.

• Developing customizable learning systems for sales is critical. There are those companies that concentrate on just having their sales force know just enough to get by.  This is never good - as markets change so fast it is critically important to stay in step with change.  You can do this by using channel management systems as a means to personalize training programs for each sales team.  Called scaffolding, this can greatly increase overall selling performance based on using knowledge, not just storing it.

• Your reward for using knowledge and intelligence to serve customers: You stay relevant. Considering the fact that no one has the time anymore for long, drawn-out research and instead needs quick, accurate responses now, the need for automating product knowledge through sales and product configuration is critical.

Bottom line: If you want to excel at selling be a knowledge servant first - then you’ll win the trust you need to sell again - and serve again.

Sales and Product Configurator Software for SAP, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Cincom Control

Making an Impact Begins With Scalability

Louis Columbus
Cincom Systems

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, presented recently at the Stanford Technology Ventures ProgramSpotlight on Scalability. Her insights into how to make an impact with your business based on scaling key processes, from sales channels, to service, to content delivery, are well worth listening to.  Below is a 4 minute video excerpt of a 57 minute presentation she did titled

Take-aways for Channel Management and Mass Customization Strategies

• Scalability is increasing the expectations that customers have of your company. Just as time is compressed in development due to the scalability of programming applications and techniques (AJAX, XML, et.al.) there is a corresponding increase in customers’ expectations of performance too. The bottom line is that B2B and B2C customers, regardless of industry, expect faster response times, more accurately completed, with greater savings - all made possible through scalability.

• Channel strategies no longer need be constrained at the revenue management and pricing levels. So often companies struggle to make an impact through pricing strategies that go after competitors or a volume target instead of concentrating on profitability.  Scaling the pricing workflows of your company and automating them can take advantage of the points made in this video.

• Scalability of service is key to customer retention. Holding onto customers through exceptional service - again concentrating on exceeding customer expectations through scalability - is key to any ongoing marketing strategy.

Bottom line: Seeking scalability of channel management, sales and product configuration, and pricing strategies is critical to stay relevant and make an impact for customers today.

Sales and Product Configurator Software for SAP, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Cincom Control