It was a rather short pizza-centric dinner for everyone. Buzzwordy had been thinking and composing his reply while munching on his combo pizza.
"Hey Buzzwordy, lets start so we can all hear your strategy and see if we agree with it or not," gestured Xavia.
Buzzwordy was convinced that his company only had 4 to 5 products that they could really sell and win customers with. In general, only about less than 40% of the design-in customers ended up going to mass production. The target customer identification and qualification process had to be streamlined and literally error free. Given the very short time frame that the company had to make up for the 20% revenue shortfall, this process must get started immediately.
"Xavia and my fellow marketing colleagues, in my opinion, we only have 4 to 5 products that could really help us close the revenue gap in this fiscal year. All these products belong to the industrial segment - they are competitive in prices, features, performances, and all the needed collaterals like data sheets, user manuals, application notes, ... etc are in place today. By the way, I forget to mention that we have won some industrial awards for some of these products. My strategy is to leverage the success stories of these few products to generate goodwill among our target customers. Small sample quantities will be provided at no cost to these customers. If they have needs for our other products, we could take full advantage of the situation and promote them aggressively as well. We must be diligent, knowledgeable, and result-oriented when pursuing our target customers. We must understand their business models, their markets and customers, their perception of our competitors, and their requirements. Since there is no time to waste, we must act immediately. We will need to appoint a champion for this cause and hold him or her completely responsible for the outcome, however, we must allocate adequate and right resources to enable this cause to be successful." presented Buzzwordy.
"Is this the only strategy?" queried Xavia.
"This is the core strategy but we have a few other things that we must do as well. For example, we have to focus on blowing out some of our old inventories. We should offer discounts to entice customers to take these products. I know that some of these products do have steady customers so lets approach them now. We are also bidding on several custom design projects and if our bids are competitive, we will get upfront design fees. This is another way for us to get short-term revenue. My point is that all the cylinders must be running at the same time in order for us to optimize our efforts." exclaimed Buzzwordy.
Xavia's face lit up with a big grin, the kind of grin that can swallow anyone up without notice. There were some more discussions among the team, however, everyone seemed to be geniunely supportive of Buzzwordy's strategy.
"In this case, lets roll this strategy out tomorrow morning!" acknowledged Xavia.
When Buzzwordy walked out into the parking lot, he realized that it was almost 1:00AM. It will be another exciting day in just a few hours.
Lets see what Day Nine will be like.
Buzzwordy
Useful references:
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Product Strategy for High Technology Companies
Hands-On Inventory Management (Resource Management)
