When business is going fine or booming, it is due to the vision and capacities of management as salesmen are only the executors of the plans of management.

When business is crap, it is because of the market or the salesmen who don’t perform.

Booming business

In reality business success is never because of management alone.
But due to the market, the efforts of marketing, sales and even development or production. The entire chain from planning, design, developing, marketing, production, sales and after sales service needs to play in tune.
Management gets big bonuses and salesmen get their well deserved commissions.

Revenue is low

On the other hand when business is not running smoothly, lacking orders and leads there can be many reasons why for this:
- Market is bad
- Wrong products for the market
- Design failures
- Development issues
- Production problems
- Marketing insufficiency
- Sales not able to sell the products for many reasons: availability, pricing

Management should have foreseen all of this or at least most of this.
Thus management is mainly to blame. marketing can only promote the products decided by management and the salesmen can only try to sell those products. Salesmen are at the end of the chain without much control or input at the beginning of the process.

As management runs the company they will blame everybody instead of themselves.
Management gets no or minimal bonuses and the salesmen have little or no commissions.

Who’s to blame? Management

When business is fine management consider themselves as the Masters of the Universe.

When business is lagging behind plans and performing under budgets, everybody else is blamed by management.

However it should be the reverse:
- Business is great when all work together smoothly producing the products in demand. Management and salesmen should get their bonuses and commissions.

- Business is problematic when management got it all wrong and executes it all wrong. Maybe management should repay their previously earned fat bonuses to distribute it to the salesmen in order to keep them motivated to sell as they have been put up with these hard to sell products.
Without motivated salesmen, the business will drop even further.

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Revenue interruptus

When selling products or solutions a salesman has one shot at getting big revenue from a customer. One shot at getting a commission.
Then the salesman has to wait until the expected life-time comes to an end before having a second chance to make any revenue. The risk of not getting the second sale is real.
The exceptions to this case are customers that have a fast expanding or growing business making them buy more appliances, devices or software. Only then there is more commission for the salesman.
Still it is revenue interruptus.

Bridging: maintenance and upgrades

In order to bridge the intermittent sales over the life-time span of the product the maintenance concept was introduced.
By selling the fear of not getting the service required in time, maintenance contracts were presented as the solution for business or production continuity. Reducing the perceived risk for the customer, while generating more revenue for the vendor and commissions for the salesman.

Clever businessmen went even further by introducing upgrades: especially in the software business. As a company you shouldn’t run behind, but keep up-to-date with the ever evolving technology. The more upgrades the more revenue.
In some cases upgrade contracts were sold in combination with maintenance contracts.

Avoiding the risk at the decision point: streaming revenue

Still the big lump sum in revenue is when a new appliance, device or software gets bought. However there is a risk involved at the decision point: the risk of the customer deciding to buy from a competitor. The more the market matures, the more the customers can switch between competitors.
As with any business the goal is to make profit at the least risk for both vendor and customer.

Newspapers have understood this a long time ago: instead of selling one newspaper at a time, subscriptions were introduced in order to smooth the printing numbers and avoid risks.
Other businesses have adopted subscriptions too.

As software and hardware as services are moving into the cloud space: the number of appliances, devices and software are no longer the unit of measurement for the revenue.
Time and the number of users have become the units of measurement for these investment goods too.

As time is a continuum, the revenue becomes also a continuous stream: subscription.

Benefits of subscription

Due to the ongoing service process there is no decision point at the end of the life-span of an appliance, device or software as the invoices have a steady flow (every month).
The advantage an benefit is that there is no catalyst in the process that induces a review or a decision as the service just continuous.
Additionally the resistance to change will keep the invoice flow streaming over a long time – if the supplier doesn’t screw up.

Additionally subscriptions are paid in advance of the supply of the service, whereas devices, appliances and software will bring revenue after delivery. Prepayment is always beneficial as the main risk of the vendor gets eliminated: getting paid.

The income has changed from an intermittent process to a steady stream of income for both the company and the salesman. Decreasing the risk for both.

Can your business become subscription based?
What are the technology hurdles?
What are the business hurdles?

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The tale of a market leader encountering open standards

This is a tale of a market leader who since many years made good sales and profit in a market niche using proprietary technology.
Management believed they were the ‘Masters of the Universe’ having high margins and ever growing sales volumes.

As the news of the ever increasing profits spread and the growth of the market had become evident as it was no longer a niche market, more companies became interested to become a supplier for this expanding market.

Due to the fact only proprietary solutions were available to the market, an industry organization or a competitor gathered a several vendors in order to define open standards.
As one of the market leaders the company was invited to participate, however management decided not to participate as the standardization didn’t seem to bring any immediate benefit but was considered as a waste of time. Management estimated it was certainly no threat for business of the company.
They considered themselves as the people with vision who had spotted the market long before (in reality it was probably just a lucky shot).

Slowly the open standards gained field as more vendors adopted them. Even the company enabled the open standard on some of its’ products in order to be able to present it to their customers but without the intention selling it.

Over time the open standard matured, got more features and gained field in the market. It became a real competition to the products or solutions of the company.
Customers preferred the having the freedom of choice and switching of vendors at almost no cost.

Open standards vs legacy technology

Once a technology is available as open standard the barrier to enter the market is lowered significantly as almost any vendor in the world can propose the solution (even Chinese manufacturers).

The sole differentiators that your company still can use for selling the legacy technology based products are:
- The installed base: all the references acquired since many years
- The quality of products and services
- The presence in local markets (if this has been achieved)

It will become hard to explain the premium price to be paid for the legacy technology as the open standards can rely upon components available on a large scale at a lower price and hardly any investment on development to be depreciated.

Proprietary or legacy technology is only possible in emerging or niche markets as innovation still counts.
Once a market grows and becomes significant in size, open standards are introduced, then you have the choice:
- Embrace open standards
- Look for a different market or a different solution as prices and margins will only decrease.
Your competitors will be lean and mean as they never had big margins on these products.

Do you sell solutions based on proprietary technology or open standards?

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Except for the big corporations sales and marketing departments are managed by one person: the VP Sales and Marketing.

However it is unlikely this is really feasible:
- As VP Sales he needs to generate sales: having a short term view – easy to measure
- As VP Marketing he needs to plan events, efforts and investments all with a long term view and the results are hard to measure.

Sales: the Executors

In order to keep the company running th pressure is on sales and generating revenue. Hence the VP Sales and Marketing will invest most of his time in sales as selling drives the company.

- Deal flow and closing sales is now.
- Sales people have mainly one to one verbal communicators.
- Sales will detect demand and sell the solutions.
- Sales is easy to measure in the accounting dept using the invoices.
- Aggregated analytics are not required as each case is different.
- Sales are the executors of existing opportunities.

Marketing: the Invaders

Due to the fact Marketing:
- Has less pressure for delivering instant results
- Requires a longer term to see any return on investment
Marketing will get less attention of the VP Marketing & Sales.

- Marketing is for the future revenue.
- Marketing is one to many using written or visual communications.
- Marketing needs to create demand.
- Marketing requires analytics to measure its’ effectiveness.
- Marketing can be seen as the invaders into new territories.

Short term vs long term

The mission of a VP Sales & Marketing is impossible as he needs to split up his time between both:
- Sales giving almost immediate return: Action – Result.
- Marketing efforts and investments having an uncertain long term return: Action – Patience.
It is obvious he will have a tendency to focus primarily on selling as company management demands it.

Moreover in most cases the VP Sales & Marketing has previously been in sales not in marketing, hence their nature and attitude is more fast paced not matching the required nature of patience for building slowly a brand or awareness which is required for marketing.

Having one person as VP Sales and Marketing is probably not such good idea: he has a Mission Impossible to achieve.

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Consumers

People and people in companies want many different things.
People and companies only buy a limited number of things.

We all want many things that could make life better or to have a better feeling about life.

Companies

Managers want or aim for getting many things or solutions for different reasons:
- Productivity increase
- Convenience for their employees or workers
- Social status – enterprise status
- Ego
- Expressing of their power
- Spending lots of money or running an expensive department can help a career.
- Clearing out the budget at the end of year

Decision takers who are employees of a company mainly think or consider themselves first and the company comes in second position.
- They want a lot of things.
- They get little.

Decision takers who are founders of the company are entrepreneurs who will take risks in order to grow the company faster.
- They want a few things.
- They get almost all.

Both want different things for different reasons giving salesmen different chances to actually sell to them.

The ROI in sales: the expertise of the salesman

However when it comes to the actual purchase the gap between wanting and buying becomes clear and evident: a budget or an economic reason needs to be present. The power of a decision maker is a big parameter.

All capacities in a company are limited. Also the capacity required for selling is limited. Hence a Return On Investment (ROI) needs to be made based upon estimated chances.

The salesman, using his expertise acquired over many years, needs to differentiate between the wanting or the needing demand of the lead.

This is where the salesman plays an important role by evaluating, qualifying and deciding whether a suspect or lead is a prospect or not.
His experience and expertise are is required to estimate the chances for success (= sales) with a suspect or lead as he (or the VP Sales) decides to invest more or less time in a potential customer.

However he needs to take the power of the decision maker into the calculation as his ego, his social status, his enterprise status or his need for expressing his power can overrule any rational or economic reason.

How many times have you mistakenly took wanting instead of needing?

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Since years you have been fighting your main competitor on:
- Products
- Services
- Pricing
- After sales service
- Marketing events

It was a neck to neck race or even a cut-throat competition turning in advance for them in most cases.

However since a few months it seems you are winning easily deals that previously would have been won by the competitor.

The reason of change
You need to know why this sudden change:
- New management
- End-of-life products
- Pricing issues due to technology lagging behind
- Change of focus to other products or services
- Underpaid sales men
- Changed commission schemes
- Reorganization
- Acquisition ahead
- Change of technology

The main thing you need to find out is if the cause related to:
- Their internal affairs
- Management vision or focus changes
- Management anticipation for yet-to-come changes
- External causes: Market changes or Technology advancements

Maybe the company management of your competitor has already anticipated on an external fact or developments that will hit your market soon.
These type of changes could make your products or solutions almost obsolete overnight.
You have to find out if the change or the reason of change of your competitor could be a threat to your company or market soon.

Don’t cheer – Watch out instead
Don’t cheer and consider yourself as the Master of the Universe when overnight you start to win market share without making any significant changes.
Instead be careful and investigate if your main competitor all of a sudden decreases fighting for deals as their might be a bigger problem lurking around that just might change your market.

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Sales bonus plans for continuous growth
If sales bonus systems would be the perfect motivator, then market leading companies would only grow bigger as the sales bonus system would continue to fuel the sales(men).

However this seems not to be the case.
Could it be that sales bonus systems are not really stimulating and motivating?
Or stimulating the wrong or less effective sales actions and efforts? Not optimal ?
Even the most complex commission plans (that are hard to understand) can miss their initial beneficial goal for the company.

Salesmen will optimize their benefit
As with any mathematical system based on rules and conditions, salesmen will optimize for their own benefit.
Thus the smallest mistake in any of the assumptions made during the design and development of the bonus plan will generate less optimal sales efforts as the salesmen will optimize their bonus – not the benefit or bottom line of the company.
Their bonus is the most important.

Salesmen have no full control
On the other hand the salesman is not completely in control of the products or solutions he can propose to his potential buyers: R&D, development, quality control or production can be late in delivering the new product, version or the specific adapted solution for a market segment. Delayed delivery means fewer bonuses for the salesman.

The assumptions are wrong due to constant change
All bonus system are based upon assumptions and starting from a given fact or measurement.
However during the course of just one year the market changes, new products are introduced by the company and the competition. Hence the assumptions or starting point are no longer reflecting the reality of the market and the level of competition.

Sales bonus systems are locked-up systems that reward sales efforts in a changing market.
Commission systems will always fail as the market is constantly changing.
As sales people are driven by their commissions much effort is wasted to achieve the wrong goals.

As the salesmen of the bigger or leading companies have the wrong focus or goal, it creates opportunities for the competitors or smaller companies to step in or start-ups to have a window of opportunity. the larger the company the slower it will react to the ever changing market.

What if there would be a bonus system for R&D or development dept.?
– A bonus system for delivering products on time
– A bonus plan for delivering products with a minimal number of bugs
Or should salesmen have no commissions a constantly changing commission plan is not manageable?

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The main competitor:

The main competitor for:
- Coca Cola isn’t Pepsi but water, tea, nimbupani and Pepsi
- Vittel isn’t Evian, but tap water
- ABInbev (Anheuser-Busch InBev) isn’t Heineken, but wine
- Visa isn’t Mastercard or American Express but cash
- Newspapers isn’t Google but Twitter, Facebook or the web as a whole
- Microsoft isn’t Google or Open Source but pirated software and older Microsoft software
- Banks in BRIC and emerging countries it isn’t the other bank, but the un-banked people
- Many software solutions are pen and paper.

The unmarketed market

You nearest competitors aren’t always the other leading brands but often the replacement products that are in place since ever.

The biggest challenge is to get people move from a certain solution or service to an innovative or new solution. Once people are convinced of products or services then they have taken the big step.

Now as these newly acquired customers have gotten used to these services, the competition between brand competitors will start. They might shop around in case better deals or more features are offered.

Two competitors is a market – just like two is a crowd

In any market it is always better to compete with several competitors instead being sole in this market. In that case you need to ask yourself if there is a real market and a market demand.

Together with your competitors you will send more marketing messages to the potential buyers and you will create more interest than alone. The competition creates interest.
People like to compare between products or solutions.
Alone is alone – Two is a crowd.

You have to investigate into your direct competitors.
However you should look beyond them and try to obtain a picture of the entire market or the problem that you are solving

Who are you really competing with ?
What is the problem that you are solving ?
What competition are you really in ?

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When your main competitor gets acquired you probably should be happy about it.
Instead of becoming a bigger threat your competitor is likely to become less threatening – at least for the first couple of years.

Executives – Management

If a company gets acquired the main objective of all CxO’s, VP’s, directors and managers of the company is not to increase or improve business, but to keep their job and position. Some might even hope getting a better position or more power.
For every CxO, VP, director and manager in the company there is at least one person having a similar function in the acquiring company. The battle of survival will start as soon as the acquisition negotiations start.
Internal politics and shifts of power will make executives and managers spending their time on internal matters.
Politics, perception, image and status become more important than achievements or business.

Wasting time and money

After an acquisition the two companies need to unify in products and solutions.
Time and money will be wasted in meetings, forecasts, budgets and reports on products or services, business plans and human resources.

Once the new visions and plans for the future have been agreed upon (if ever) and laid out, then this vision or message needs to be shared and explained to the employees of both companies.
Next the market with potential customers needs to be informed, educated or ‘brainwashed’ with marketing.

During all this wasting of time and money, the existing marketing spending of both companies will keep on being executed not having a unified or complete fitting message. The main change executed is the new logo or a mention of the acquiring company next to the brand name of the company.

Less business – more internal affairs

Thus instead of doing business, the newly emerged company will need to spend a lot of time and money on:
- Their internal affairs
- Their execs, managers and employees will waste efforts on politics
- Defining a plan for the future
- Laying off excess personnel
- Informing and motivating the employees
- Laying off (excess) employees
- Unifying the company cultures (or not)
- Building branding awareness the new company to the market and potential customers

In most cases these matters and issues will take a few years.

Window of opportunity

In case your main competitor gets acquired, you have a window of opportunity of a few years for expanding your market presence and market share, while your competitor is fighting internal struggles instead of doing business.

Your actions during this window of opportunity can be:
- Increase your marketing spending
- Hire salesmen from the company: promising them stability and income
- Sign-up their resellers or partners: stability, continuity of products and support
- Go after their customers: better service – better customer relation

After this window of opportunity time has elapsed, you need to be prepared for fierce competition.
However in some cases the new competitor starts to focus on another market segment: typically high-end as more operational or overhead costs need to be carried.
The best thing to happen is when the acquisition was a bridge to far: too complex, too different culture, too different products, too big, too different business, … your window of opportunity continues.

Is your competitor becoming an acquisition target?

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Is their feedback relevant ?

Before releasing a new product into production / operation or during the life cycle of a product or solution it is common to ask your users / customers feedback in order to improve the service or product.
Product management of companies ask for suggestions, defects, errors, improvements, features and ideas in order to have a feel of the issues, adoption and the acceptance of a product or solution in order to be prepared for the ever changing market demand.

The question is whether the feedback is relevant and representative for you population of customers.
Those people that provide feedback are probably those who are the most negative, the most difficult, the most positive or the best outspoken of your customers.
The people at the extremities of your user population will give you feedback.
The average user, who might currently be happy with your solution, finds the balance between functions / features and the complexity to use just adequate or ideal
Those who don’t give any feedback just stay quiet and some might even quietly change vendor without letting you know.

Biased feedback requires interpretation and relevancy

There will be always customers challenging you with their negative feedback in order to get lower pricing, recognizable by their threatening to change vendor.
Others will write a feedback because they have a very specific need, not applicable for the rest of your user community.
Any feedback can be very biased for various reasons as they all have another agenda than you.
You should find out or know the real motivators of the people giving feedback.
If you pay or reward people for their feedback, then your information can be completely fake.

Feedback from your customers is to be handled carefully, needing interpretation and relevancy before taking the decision to launch into a redesign of your product or solution as your average user is not the one making the most noise or speaking the loudest.
Any redesign based upon the loudest speakers only could define a product no longer suited for your main market of average users.

Observe the behavior instead

In order to obtain feedback the behavior of your users with the application or appliance should be investigated and observed.
The goal is to find out what users actually do with the product or solution and what they don’t do or identify the feature they don’t use.

Just asking for feedback and suggestions will project a very biased image of your product or solution.
Feedback can be and is in most cases biased.
In the behavior the real and true feedback is embedded.
Hence you should observe your customers and not listen to your customers in order to avoid biased feedback that can or will lead to biased conclusions bringing the wrong products or solutions to the market.

What are the motivators for you to give feedback ?

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“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Quote of Will Durant.

It is always hard to win from the market leader.
People in companies will buy the products or solutions of the market leader just because of:
- The brand name
- The references
- The fact of not risking to get fired by choosing the leader
- The wide spread availability

The great civilization of the market leader

Your market leading competitor is the great civilization with all its’ directors, managers, employees, products, solutions, marketing, branding, distributors, resellers and world wide support.
You cannot conquer or win from the leader or overtake the leader as long as their operations and internal working are fine as these are operating smoothly.

They have the best salesmen, the best presentations, the best sales engineers, the best marketing, …

The market leader seems invincible.

The decline of the market leader

However as with any larger company, the internal affairs, the internal politics, the ego-trippers and the financial engineering become more and more important than the actual operations.
As a market leader it is likely the company acquires smaller competitors or companies in other markets in order to expand ad grow business.

The effects and problems of a larger company are:
- Managers start to aim for more power or prestige.
- Employees start to aim for higher positions.
- Internal differences in status and functions give friction.
- Identification with the company is lost.
- The wrong people get promoted over the people that really should get rewarded.
- People are promoted for all the wrong reasons.
- Managers get promoted above their capabilities: Peter Principle.
- Politics become more important than the individual performances.
- Tax evasion schemes and financial investments can bring in more money than the operations.

The leading competitor starts losing focus on its’ main operations, marketing, sales and product innovations.
The leading company is destroying itself from within.

Look for signs of decline

In case you are competing with a big market leader then start looking for signs of self-destruction from within.
Then it is time to attack and win their customers focusing on the newly emerged weak spots.
This time you have the advantage of being small: it will take the great civilization very long before they will react upon their new weaknesses and your attacks.
In the meantime you will have gained customers and market share.

Do not attack them earlier as you will be wasting your time.

A great corporation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

How is your market leader evolving ? Have you spotted the first cracks ?

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During the purchase process when people need to decide on buying, they not only focus and evaluate on functions, features and benefits, but their main concern is about limiting the risks related to this decision.

Risk indicators in B2B purchase process

How does a potential client decide if it’s risky to do business with a vendor or supplier?
- Established company or a sole trader?
- Company registration number?
- Where are the offices located?
- Is the company address on the website?
- Telephone number available?
- Can the company really be called?
- The time it takes to reply an email?
- Possible to set-up a face-to-face meeting?
- Are the names of the C-level available? On the Internet (LinkedIn?)

Buying risk avoidance

- References and referrals
- Their personal experience with the vendors from previous project or purchase
- The approved vendor list of the company: the creator of the list takes the risk
- The brand importance of the vendor: the more a household name the less risk expected
- Their personal risk: How big is my own risk? What can I loose?

Maybe the last one is even more important as people don’t want to expose their career (or even life) to any risk.
If they take a daring decision that turns out into negative result or bad experience then they can be at risk themselves: end of career, end of job.
Therefore strong brands and companies with good referrals will score better in B2B.
Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM or Microsoft. Google on the other hand has still problems entering the BtoB market: Google is great for a free service like search and maps, but when it comes to real business or business processes then decision makers tend to avoid Google.

Recession vs prosperity

During recession or limited growth economy companies having well-known brand names and long referral lists will receive the highest amount of inbound leads. They will be the most successful as people will address to these companies in order to avoid risks.

On the other hand during prosperous times when:
- Companies need to innovate in order to keep ahead of their competitors
- Time is (more) money
- Better efficiency is most important

The importance of the risk factor decreases as opportunity knocks instead. People are eager to take risks in order to:
- Progress
- Move ahead in their career
Then lesser known companies will see an increase of inbound leads as the challenge is to innovative or have cost reducing solutions in order to compete the competition.

How do you perceive the risk avoidance of your buyers?

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At the end of the year many editors, gurus, consulting groups and agencies create content about trends and predictions for the next year. The real reason is probably to generate interest and get attention for their business.
Still, isn’t it strange that only at the Year End people take a look into the future?

We all know that change is the only constant in life and in business. Change doesn’t wait to appear little before New Year. Change happens just any moment throughout the whole year.
If a major event should happen in January then the predictions of December could be completely wrong – outdated in just one month.

Instead of spotting trends and making predictions at Year End, it should be a year around activity not just for decision makers and company management, but also for marketing and sales. Maybe especially marketing and sales, as both are exposed to changes in the market influencing their business almost immediately.

Therefore:
Embrace the future every day. Spot trends throughout the year for your own benefit.

Enjoy these presentations on trends and predictions for 2010.
Use whatever trend suits you most or best:

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Originating as a project company

Many software companies have started out as project companies specialized in a specific field of information technology or a business vertical. Even Oracle.
In order to keep their operational costs low they try to re-use their software code for different projects just developing the necessary specific additional code for each project.

Eventually the software becomes more fully fledged, mature and having almost all possible functions and features for a certain target market.
The step from a project company to a product company seems evident and simple, but that isn’t.

Less is more

The first hurdle is to decide what functions and features from the large set of available subroutines and applications to include. What does the market really want and what has been developed on demand for a certain customer. The more functions and features that are included into the product(s), the more maintenance and support costs.

The sales cycle differences

A project company is in the typical cycle of:
- Finding a deal
- Winning the deal
- Developing the necessary additional code
- Partial invoicing throughout the project – and getting paid during the project
- Delivering the project
- Keeping a revenue stream for additional services for each customer

Whereas a product company has a sales cycle of:
- Marketing
- Selling
- Invoicing
- Maintenance invoices

The changes in organization

The morphing from a project company to a product company requires many changes:
- Marketing needs to promote products instead of services, which is a change of mind
- The website needs to market and explain the products instead of a vague capability description
- Marketing and sales team needs to generate much more leads
- Sales cycles will be shorter
- Sales will need to adapt to the fact customer changes are no longer possible
- Sales will need to close more deals as prices are lower
- Development needs to maintain the product over many years
- Product architects need to design for growing the product and keep it maintainable
- Product management is new and needs to develop the product plan
- Product marketing is required too for specific promotion of the product
- Accounting needs to change their revenue recognition too: less complicated
- Maintenance revenue is lower and fixed
- No or little revenue from system engineers on site

Dealing with the change?

The questions are:
- Can top-management cope with these changes?
- Can middle-management live with the different attitude?
- Can the company bear the weight of the additional functions that are created?
- Can marketing management steer product marketing?
- Can marketing generate enough leads?
- Can salesmen close enough deals?
- Can salesmen adapt to the different sales attitude or should a different type of salesmen be hired?

This and many more problems emerge while morphing from a project to a product company.

How well did your project company deal with the change into a product company?

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When product management or company management is convinced they need a “Me too” product or solution, the company is doomed for failure.

In most cases most businesses or companies have one product or solution that generates the most revenue and the most profit.
In order to:
- Expand into other parts of the market or business
- Shield off competitors entering the customers
- Protect a part of the market
Decision makers will decide to resell or develop a “Me too” product or solution.

The “Me too” problems

The problem is multiple:
- Motivation can be or will be low due to lack of inspiration
- Engineering development time will be invested
- Purchase time will be spend on searching vendors
- Support needs to know the product requiring training
- Service needs to serve more products requiring training
- Product management needs to create supporting content
- Marketing spending is needed to promote it
- Sales needs to be trained to sell the product
- Partnerships will have a time to get partners supporting it
- Business development will seek new business opportunities that are likely not interested.
- Administration will have additional overhead costs due to the new product or solution

The management reaction increasing the spending

After one or two years being in business with the “Me too”, company management or the Board of Directors will match or compare the results with the profits realized with the main product or solution. The conclusion will be negative.
Management will urge to sell more of the “Me too” in order to recoup their investments, which will lead to:
- Public Relations will send out press releases that generate no real interest.
- Marketing will set up pointless campaigns to promote the “Me too”
- Lead generation will demand lots of efforts without much response
- Sales people will put much effort in it without much success.
- Partnerships will waste time to convince partners to support the “Me too”
- Business development will engage into conversations with companies for non-existent or non-feasible opportunities.

As capacity is a limited source in any company this is double waste of time and money as all people involved could have been working for the successful product or solution instead.
Focus is what counts in sales, marketing, partnerships and business development. There is no time to waste and competition is fierce even for a market leader.

In only a few cases the “Me too” will serve its’ purpose: keep competitors out of the customers. Even in those cases the ”Me too” will probably not be really profitable itself.

Thus once the company has made the decision to have a “Me too” the result to expect is a death spiral.

Innovate instead

Instead of creating, developing, marketing, lead generating and selling a “Me too” product, a company should try to develop an innovative product that the market really wants and is a leap forward using new technologies or a new approach.
In that case your company has a story to tell to the market.

How many “Me too” have you been through in your career ?
Has any been successful ?

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