вторник, 30 июня 2015 г.

ТОП-50 фармкомпаний мира по итогам 2014 года

Успешные продажи орфанных лекарственных препаратов, рекордные результаты в сфере слияний и поглощений, сделки по налоговой оптимизации, а также успешные стратегии по выходу на глобальные рынки – факторы, которые повлияли на состав ТОП-50 глобальных фармацевтических компаний в 2014 году.
Список ТОП-10 крупнейших фармкомпаний в мире пополнилась одним новичком – компанией Gilead Sciences, которая забралась на 9 строчку по итогам совокупных продаж в 2014 году, поднявшись с 18-го места в 2013 году. Своим взлетом компания обязана продажам франшизы на свой инновационный продукт, предназначенный для применения при лечении вируса гепатита С.
Общие продажи Gilead Sciences в 2014 году достигли отметки $24,5 млрд. Успех компании подтверждает эффективность выбранной ею стратегии фокусирования на узкоспециализированные и практически свободные ниши на рынке.
Компания Actavis стала второй по динамике роста, поднявшись с 24 места в 2013 году на 19-е – в 2014 благодаря оппортунистическому подходу при развитии бизнеса, а именно – крупнейшей в ее истории сделке по приобретению Allergan за $66 млрд в 2014 году. После завершения процедуры слияния бизнесов (и согласно официальному пресс-релизу компании от 15 июля 2015 года) Actavis приняла решение о смене бренда на Allergan.
На данный момент компании большой фармы окончательно укрепили свое присутствие практически на всех развивающихся рынках (т.н. «pharmerging markets»). Несмотря на то, что рост потребления на таких рынках, как Бразилия и Китай заметно снизил темп, компания AbbVie сумела не только удержаться на десятой позиции, но значительно усилила свое глобальное присутствие.
Ниже представлен список ТОП-50 фармацевтических компаний мира, а также их ключевые продукты.
Источник: PharmExec.com, PWC

воскресенье, 28 июня 2015 г.

Navigating the Dozens of Different Strategy Options

JUN15_24_175841032

  • Martin Reeves 
  • Knut Haanaes 
  • Janmejaya Sinha

  • In this adaptation from the new book, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (HBR Press, 2015), BCG strategy experts make sense of the all the different, and competing, approaches to strategy: Which strategy is right for your business? When and how should you implement it? The practical tool offered here helps executives answer such questions as: What replaces planning when the annual cycle is obsolete? Where can we — and when should we — shape the game to our advantage? How do we simultaneously implement different strategies across different business units?
    Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you aim to be big or fast? Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win — or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether? In a business environment that is changing faster and becoming more uncertain and complex almost by the day, it’s never been more important to choose the right approach to strategy.
    And it has never been more difficult. The number of strategy tools and frameworks that leaders can choose from has grown massively since the birth of business strategy in the early 1960s (see the chart below — and keep scrolling, you’ll get to the end eventually). And far from obvious are the answers to how these approaches relate to one another or when they should and shouldn’t be deployed.
    W150515_REEVES_NUMBEROFSTRATEGY

    It’s not that we lack powerful ways to approach strategy; it’s that we lack a robust way to select the right ones for the right circumstances. The five forces framework for strategy may be valid in one arena, blue ocean or open innovation in another, but each approach to strategy tends to be presented or perceived as a panacea. Managers and other business leaders face a dilemma: with increasingly diverse environments to manage and rising stakes to get it right, how do they identify the most effective approach to business strategy and marshal the right thinking and behaviors to conceive and execute it, supported by the appropriate frameworks and tools?
    To address the combined challenge of increased dynamism and diversity of business environments as well as the proliferation of approaches, we propose a unifying choice framework: the strategy palette. This framework was created to help leaders match their approach to strategy to the circumstances at hand and execute it effectively, to combine different approaches to cope with multiple or changing environments, and, as leaders, to animate the resulting collage of approaches.
    The strategy palette consists of five archetypal approaches to strategy — basic colors, if you will — which can be applied to different parts of your business: from geographies to industries to functions to stages in a firm’s life cycle, tailored to the particular environment that each part of the business faces.
    Five Strategy Environments
    Strategy is, in essence, problem solving, and the best approach depends upon the specific problem at hand. Your environment dictates your approach to strategy. You need to assess the environment and then match and apply the appropriate approach. But how do you characterize the business environment, and how do you choose which approach to strategy is best suited to the job of defining a winning course of action?
    Business environments differ along three easily discernible dimensions: Predictability (can you forecast it?), malleability (can you, either alone or in collaboration with others, shape it?), and harshness (can you survive it?). Combining these dimensions into a matrix reveals five distinct environments, each of which requires a distinct approach to strategy and execution.
    W150616_REEVES_5APPROACHES


    Each environment corresponds to a distinct archetypal approach to strategy, or color in the strategy palette, as follows: predictable classical environments lend themselves to strategies of position, which are based on advantage achieved through scale or differentiation or capabilities and are achieved through comprehensive analysis and planning. Adaptive environments require continuous experimentation because planning does not work under conditions of rapid change and unpredictability. In a visionary setting, firms win by being the first to create a new market or to disrupt an existing one. In a shaping environment, firms can collaboratively shape an industry to their advantage by orchestrating the activities of other stakeholders. Finally, under the harsh conditions of a renewal environment, a firm needs to first conserve and free up resources to ensure its viability and then go on to choose one of the other four approaches to rejuvenate growth and ensure long-term prosperity. The resulting overriding imperatives, at the simplest level, vary starkly for each approach:
    • Classical: Be big.
    • Adaptive: Be fast.
    • Visionary: Be first.
    • Shaping: Be the orchestrator.
    • Renewal: Be viable.
    Using the right approach pays off. In our research, firms that successfully match their strategy to their environment realized significantly better returns— 4-8% of total shareholder return — over firms that didn’t. Yet around half of all companies we looked at mismatch their approach to strategy to their environment in some way.
    Let’s delve a little deeper to see how to win using each of the basic colors of strategy and why each works best under specific circumstances.
    Classical
    Leaders taking a classical approach to strategy believe that the world is predictable, that the basis of competition is stable, and that advantage, once obtained, is sustainable. Given that they cannot change their environment, such firms seek to position themselves optimally within it. Such positioning can be based on superior size, differentiation, or capabilities.
    Positional advantage is sustainable in a classical environment: the environment is predictable and develops gradually without major disruptions.
    To achieve winning positions, classical leaders employ the following thought flow: they analyze the basis of competitive advantage and the fit between their firm’s capabilities and the market and forecast how these will develop over time. Then, they construct a plan to build and sustain advantaged positions, and, finally, they execute it rigorously and efficiently.
    Mars, the global manufacturer of confectionery and pet food, successfully executes a classical approach to strategy. Mars focuses on categories and brands where it can lead and obtain a scale advantage, and it creates value by growing those categories. This approach has helped Mars build itself into a profitable $35 billion company and multi-category leader over the course of a century.
    Classical strategy is probably the approach with which you are the most familiar. In fact, for many managers, it may be the approach that defines strategy. Classical strategy is what is taught in business schools and practiced in some form in the majority of strategy functions in major enterprises.
    Adaptive
    Firms employ an adaptive approach when the business environment is neither predictable nor malleable. When prediction is hard and advantage is short-lived, the only shield against continuous disruption is a readiness and an ability to repeatedly change oneself. In an adaptive environment, winning comes from adapting to change by continuously experimenting and identifying new options more quickly and economically than others. The classical strategist’s mantra of sustainable competitive advantage becomes one of serial temporary advantage.

    To be successful at strategy through experimentation, adaptive firms master three essential thinking steps: they continuously vary their approach, generating a range of strategic options to test. They carefully select the most successful ones to scale up and exploit. And as the environment changes, the firms rapidly iterate on this evolutionary loop to ensure that they continuously renew their advantage. An adaptive approach is less cerebral than a classical one—advantage arises through the company’s continuously trying new things and not through its analyzing, predicting, and optimizing.
    Tata Consultancy Services, the India-based information technology (IT) services and solutions company, operates in an environment it can neither predict nor change. It continuously adapts to repeated shifts in technology—from client servers to cloud computing—and the resulting changes that these shifts cause in their customers’ businesses and in the basis of competition. By taking an adaptive approach that focuses on monitoring the environment, strategic experimentation, and organizational flexibility, Tata Consultancy Services has grown from $155 million in revenue in 1996 to $1 billion in 2003 and more than $13 billion in 2013 to become the second-largest pure IT services company in the world.
    Visionary
    Leaders taking a visionary approach believe that they can reliably create or re-create an environment largely by themselves. Visionary firms win by being the first to introduce a revolutionary new product or business model. Though the environment may look uncertain to others, visionary leaders see a clear opportunity for the creation of a new market segment or the disruption of an existing one, and they act to realize this possibility.
    This approach works when the visionary firm can single-handedly build a new, attractive market reality. A firm can be the first to apply a new technology or to identify and address a major source of customer dissatisfaction or a latent need. The firm can innovate to address a tired industry business model or can recognize a megatrend before others see and act on it.
    Firms deploying a visionary approach also follow a distinct thought flow. First, visionary leaders envisage a valuable possibility that can be realized. Then they work single-mindedly to be the first to build it. Finally, they persist in executing and scaling the vision until its full potential has been realized. In contrast to the analysis and planning of classical strategy and the iterative experimentation of adaptive strategy, the visionary approach is about imagination and realization and is essentially creative.
    Quintiles, which pioneered the clinical research organization (CRO) industry for outsourced pharmaceutical drug development services, is a prime example of a company employing a visionary approach to strategy. Though the industry model may have looked stable to others, its founder and chairman, Dennis Gillings, saw a clear opportunity to improve drug development by creating an entirely new business model and, in 1982, moved first to capitalize on the inevitabilities he saw. By ensuring that Quintiles moved fast and boldly, it maintained its lead and leapt well ahead of potential competition. It is today the largest player in the CRO industry which it created and has been associated with the development or commercialization of the top fifty best-selling drugs currently on the market.
    Shaping
    When the environment is unpredictable but malleable, a firm has the extraordinary opportunity to lead the shaping or reshaping of a whole industry at an early point of its development, before the rules have been written or rewritten.
    Such an opportunity requires you to collaborate with others because you cannot shape the industry alone—and you need others to share the risk, contribute complementary capabilities, and build the new market quickly before competitors mobilize. A shaping firm therefore operates under a high degree of unpredictability, given the nascent stage of industry evolution it faces and the participation of multiple stakeholders that it must influence but cannot fully control.
    In the shaping approach, firms engage other stakeholders to create a shared vision of the future at the right point in time. They build a platform through which they can orchestrate collaboration and then evolve that platform and its associated stakeholder ecosystem by scaling it and maintaining its flexibility and diversity. Shaping strategies are very different from classical, adaptive, or visionary strategies—they concern ecosystems rather than individual enterprises and rely as much on collaboration as on competition.
    Novo Nordisk employed a shaping strategy to win in the Chinese diabetes care market since the 1990s. Novo couldn’t predict the exact path of market development, since the diabetes challenge was just beginning to emerge in China, but by collaborating with patients, regulators, and doctors, the company could influence the rules of the game. Now, Novo is the uncontested market leader in diabetes care in China, with over 60 percent insulin market share.
    Renewal
    The renewal approach to strategy aims to restore the vitality and competitiveness of a firm when it is operating in a harsh environment. Such difficult circumstances can be caused by a protracted mismatch between the firm’s approach to strategy and its environment or by an acute external or internal shock.
    When the external circumstances are so challenging that your current way of doing business cannot be sustained, decisively changing course is the only way to not only survive, but also to secure another chance to thrive. A company must first recognize and react to the deteriorating environment as early as possible. Then, it needs to act decisively to restore its viability—economizing by refocusing the business, cutting costs, and preserving capital, while also freeing up resources to fund the next part of the renewal journey. Finally, the firm must pivot to one of the four other approaches to strategy to ensure that it can grow and thrive again. The renewal approach differs markedly from the other four approaches to strategy: it is usually initially defensive, it involves two distinct phases, and it is a prelude to adopting one of the other approaches to strategy. Renewal has become increasingly common because of the number of companies getting out of step with their environments.
    American Express’s response to the financial crisis exemplifies the renewal approach. As the credit crisis hit in 2008, Amex faced the triple punch of rising default rates, slipping consumer demand, and decreasing access to capital. To survive, the company cut approximately 10 percent of its workforce, shed noncore activities, and cut ancillary investment. By 2009, Amex had saved almost $2 billion in costs and pivoted toward growth and innovation by engaging new partners, investing in its loyalty program, entering the deposit raising business, and embracing digital technology. As of 2014, its stock was up 800 percent from recession lows.
    Applying the Strategy Palette
    The strategy palette can be applied on three levels: to match and correctly execute the right approach to strategy for a specific part of the business, to effectively manage multiple approaches to strategy in different parts of the business or over time, and to help leaders to animate the resulting collage of approaches.
    The strategy palette provides leaders with a new language for describing and choosing the right approach to strategy in a particular part of their business. It also provides a logical thread to connect strategizing and execution for each approach. In most companies, strategizing and execution have become artificially separated, both organizationally and temporally. Each approach entails not only a very different way of conceiving strategy but also a distinct approach to implementation, creating very different requirements for information management, innovation, organization, leadership, and culture. The strategy palette can therefore guide not only the strategic intentions but also the operational setup of a company. The table below summarizes the key elements of the strategy palette and includes specific examples of companies using the five approaches.
    W150616_REEVES_COMPARINGWHEN

    The palette can also help leaders to “de-average” their business (decompose it into its component parts, each requiring a characteristic approach to strategy) and effectively combine multiple approaches to strategy across different business units, geographies, and stages of a firm’s life cycle. Large corporations are now stretched across a more diverse and faster-changing range of business contexts. Almost all large firms comprise multiple businesses and geographies, each with a distinct strategic character, and thus require the simultaneous execution of different approaches to strategy. The right approach for a fast-evolving technology unit is unlikely to be the same as for a more mature one. And the approach in a rapidly developing economy is likely to be very different for the same business operating in a more mature one.
    Inevitably, any business or business model goes through a life cycle, each stage of which requires a different approach. Businesses are usually created in the visionary or shaping quadrants of the strategy palette and tend to migrate counterclockwise through adaptive and classical quadrants before being disrupted by further innovations and entering a new cycle, although the exact path can vary. Apple, for example, created its iPhone using a visionary approach, then used a shaping strategy to develop a collaborative ecosystem with app developers, telecom firms, and content providers. And as competitors jostle for position with increasingly convergent offerings, it is likely that their strategies will become increasingly adaptive or classical. Leaders themselves play a vital role in the application of the strategy palette by setting and adjusting the context for strategy. They read the environment to determine which approach to strategy to apply where and to put the right people in place to execute it.
    Moreover, business leaders play a critical role of selling the integrated strategy narrative externally and internally. They continuously animate the strategy collage — the combination of multiple approaches to strategy — keeping it dynamic and up-to-date by asking the right questions, by challenging assumptions to prevent a dominant logic from clouding the perspective, and by putting their weight behind critical change initiatives.

    To explore and apply these ideas to your own situation, we have developed a companion iPad app. To download the iPad app, visit Apple’s App Store and search for “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy.” You can also find it by visiting our website: www.bcgperspectives.com/yourstrategyneedsastrategy.

    An HBR Refresher on Breakeven Quantity

    JUN15_22_BEQ

    Marketers often have to make the call on whether a certain marketing investment is worth the cost. Can you justify the price tag of the ad you want to buy or the marketing campaign you’re hoping to launch next quarter? One of the most straightforward ways to answer this question is to perform a breakeven analysis, which will tell you how many incremental units you need to sell to make the money back that you put in.
    While the concept may be straightforward, the calculation and the assumptions underlying it are far from simple. I talked with Jill Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and co-author of HBR’s Go To Market Tools, to better understand how to use this important calculation.
    What is breakeven quantity (BEQ)?
    “Breakeven quantity is the number of incremental units that the firm needs to sell to cover the cost of a marketing program or other type of investment,” says Avery. If the company doesn’t sell the equivalent of the BEQ as a result of the investment, then it’s losing money and it won’t recoup its costs. If the company sells more than the BEQ then it not only has made its money back but is making additional profit as well.
    “It’s one of the more popular ways that managers calculate marketing ROI,” says Avery, pointing out that other common ones include calculating the investment payback period, calculating an internal rate of return, and using net present valueanalysis. “I like breakeven analysis because it is easy to understand and it’s often the simplest way to think about return on investment.” The other forms of ROI often require a more complex understanding of financial concepts such as the firm’s cost of capital or the time value of money.
    How do you calculate it?
    To figure out BEQ, start by setting up an equation where Total Revenue = Total Costs, which will mathematically represent the point at which profit is equal to zero, i.e., where you will break even:
    formula1-1200v6
    Then you have to find a unit quantity — your BEQ — that makes both sides of the equation equal. The BEQ will be present on both sides of this equation because the number of units sold affects both the revenue the firm earns as well as the costs it must incur to earn it. Revenue is the unit quantity sold multiplied by the selling price per unit. To figure total costs you first multiply the unit quantity sold by the variable costs per unit, then you add the fixed costs. So it looks like this:
    formula2-1020

    You then reorder the equation to solve for BEQ. Like this:
    formula3-1200v3
    Note that Price per unit – Variable costs per unit is equal to the Contribution margin per unit.
    So to calculate BEQ you need to know the fixed costs for your program and the contribution margin per unit.
    Take this example of a company that sells flip flops from Avery’s teaching note, “Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Breakeven Analysis.
    The company sells each pair of flip flops for $24.00. The variable costs to make each pair of flip flops are $14.00. (Note: variable costs are per unit costs that vary depending on a company’s production volume. They rise when you increase production and fall when you decrease it.) The fixed costs to advertise the flip flops are $2,000. So, how many flip flops does the company need to sell to breakeven on its advertising expense?
    First, look at fixed costs. No matter how many flip flops are sold the cost of advertising remains the same: $2,000. Note that most companies’ fixed costs are much more complex and often include rent, advertising, insurance and office supplies but since we’re trying to evaluate the BEQ for the $2,000 advertising campaign, we focus just on this number.
    Then you take the price of the flip flops and the variable costs and put them into the equation like this:
    BEQ = $2,000 / ($24-$14)
    or
    BEQ = 200 units
    So if the managers at this flip flop company believe they will be able to sell more than 200 extra pairs of flip flops because of the advertising campaign, they will recoup their costs and it will be a worthwhile investment. But, if they don’t believe that the advertising campaign will drive enough incremental demand for flip flops, then they shouldn’t run it. It will not breakeven.
    How do companies use BEQ?
    The above is a simplified example but most companies use BEQ in a similar way. “It’s a pretty universal tool. It can be used to evaluate any investment from a marketing campaign to a decision about whether to build a new factory,” says Avery. However, she says, it’s particularly useful for marketing because it relates the cost of a marketing program to the program’s ability to affect consumer demand for a product. “It most closely relates one of our main goals in marketing, to generate demand, to the costs that we incur to achieve it.”

    Among marketers, it’s most often used to do one of several things:
    Assess the feasibility of a marketing expense, such as an advertising campaign (as we did in the flip flops example above). This is most common use, says Avery. Typically the campaigns are more expensive then the $2,000 the flip flop company was considering. So a manager may consider, If I’m going to spend $10 million on a marketing campaign, how many additional units of my product do I need to sell to breakeven on the investment? The formula will tell the manager how many units will result in $10 million in profit.
    Managers will also use BEQ to assess the feasibility of a permanent price change, either an increase or a decrease. “Pricing changes are complicated because when you change price, you inherently effect demand. You have to think through what happens to demand before you can determine the effect of the price change on your business,” says Avery.
    So the question for marketing managers here is How many more units of a product must be sold to compensate for the lower price? You can use the same BEQ equation above to determine how much additional demand you need to generate. You start by setting an equation with the current contribution margin equals the contribution margin with the new price:
    formula4-1200
    For example, let’s say your current demand is 100 units at a price of $10.00, but you want to lower it by $2.00. If the product has a contribution margin of $5.00 (at the $10.00 price) and therefore $3.00 (at the $8.00) price, then the equation would look like this:
    $5.00*100 units = $3.00*(100 + BEQ)
    Then you solve for BEQ:
    3*BEQ = 500 units – 300 units
    BEQ = 200 units / 3
    BEQ = 66.7 units
    So you have to be confident that you will sell at least 67 additional units at the lower price (or 167 units in total) to justify the price decrease.
    The calculation works similarly if you’re considering raising your price but instead of looking at the number of additional units you need to sell, you’re considering how many units can be sacrificed if you’re getting the higher price. So again, you set it up so the contribution margins are equal:
    Contribution margin (at existing price) = Contribution margin (at new price)
    Then, let’s say you wanted to raise your price by $2.00 and therefore your contribution margin at the $12.00 price would be $7.00.
    $5.00*100 units = $7.00*(100 + BEQ)
    Solving for BEQ:
    7*BEQ = 500 units – 700 units
    BEQ = -200 units / 7
    BEQ = -28.6 units
    In this case, you need to be sure that you will lose 29 units or fewer if you raise your price (or sell 71 units in total).
    Marketing managers can also use BEQ to assess the feasibility of a short-term marketing expense, like a coupon promotion, or the feasibility of a new product introduction that will cannibalize existing product sales.
    What are some of the common mistakes managers make when using BEQ?
    First off, it’s important to keep in mind that the BEQ is a measure of the incrementalunits needed to be sold to justify the investment. So these are additional units that you have to sell because of the price decrease or the marketing campaign. “Some managers think, ‘Sure, we can do 200,000 units.’ But the real question is can you do what you did yesterday plus 200,000 units,” Avery explains. And for many managers, says Avery, determining what is incremental can be tough. Would you have sold the same amount without the coupon or the sales promotion? Or has the coupon forced people to “pantry load” — stock up on a product because it’s cheaper now? If razors are on sale at Costco some consumers will buy all the razors they need for the next year. “We want marketing investments to generate incremental demand and not cannibalize what we would sell anyway, switching tomorrow’s demand for today’s demand,” says Avery.
    This is where “the art of marketing comes in,” she says. You have to look at the data available to you — including internal and external benchmarks — to assess whether you believe that you can sell that many more units. Avery suggests asking: What have we done before and what has that yielded? And what have competitors done and what has that done for them?
    Another mistake that managers make is forgetting to consider the length of time it will take to hit the BEQ. “If the 200,000 additional units represents two months of sales, that may seem reasonable but if it will take two years to sell 200,000 units, that’s often a different story,” says Avery. This is where payback period comes in, and it can often be helpful to run a payback period analysis in conjunction with BEQ (for help on how to do a payback period analysis, check out the HBR TOOLS: Return on Investment).
    There is also room for error in the various assumptions that go into the BEQ calculation. Avery says that the cost of the marketing program, for example, can be difficult to pin down ahead of time. She gives the example of a couponing program, where you won’t know the total cost until the redemptions come in. In these cases, you want to do a sensitivity analysis and run the calculation using several different numbers. “If you want to be conservative, overestimate the cost,” says Avery. “That will give you a higher BEQ number and therefore a higher threshold to meet.”
    The biggest mistake people make, however, says Avery, is not even running a breakeven analysis. “Too often, marketing budgets are just spent because that’s the way we’ve always done business and there is little effort to justify the expense,” she says. Many managers don’t even run an ROI because the costs of programs and the incremental demand can be hard to determine ahead of time. “There’s often a lag time between when we spend and when we see results so programs can be hard to measure.” Even if the numbers are tough to get right in advance, Avery says, it’s simply good marketing management to understand how well you’re spending your dollars, even if you run the analysis in retrospect to help you make future decisions.
    “Breakeven analysis imparts discipline into marketing decision making,” she says. You need to understand what you are trying to achieve, what it will cost you, and then how likely it is to succeed.
    Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of the forthcomingHBR Guide to Managing Conflict at Work.

    суббота, 27 июня 2015 г.

    Marketing Goals Must Include a Powerful Demand Management Strategy

    Every business needs to establish clear marketing goals and a powerful demand management strategy will be fundamental to meeting or exceeding those goals.  A powerful demand management system includes mutually agreed upon terminology, well defined roles, clear responsibilities, specific lead qualification criteria, a scoring model, automated lead processing, routing, escalation and nurturing, and of course, testing, training and learning.
    Demand management strategy and execution will directly impact four key marketing goals: predictable and consistent revenue, increased sales effectiveness, efficient marketing spend and avoiding “priming the pump” for competitors to reap the benefits.

    Marketing Goals – Predictable and Consistent Revenue

    It’s obvious that all businesses must consistently generate revenue at levels sufficient to support the business model and that will require the development and execution of the marketing concepts that are most relevant to the specific situation.
    Some businesses embrace a variety of marketing mix strategies to generate a volume of leads each month.  The leads are entered into the salesforce automation system and then the next month is a rinse and repeat. While this approach may produce leads, it is very expensive, the results are often unpredictable and friction can develop between sales and marketing as lead quality varies.
    Best in-class companies take a more granular approach by creating and managing demand that has a high propensity to result in a customer. Specifically, the marketing process focuses on surfacing interest in the target market (specific job roles and titles) that meet mutually agreed upon criteria that has been specified by sales and marketing. Then, lead targets are reverse-engineered in order to know exactly what is required each month — in terms of the number of deals, qualified sales opportunities and marketing qualified leads.

    Demand Management Strategy – Increased Sales Effectiveness

    It does not matter whether the business sells directly through sales reps or through an e-commerce model – the goal is to convert as many leads to sales as possible.
    At each phase of the buying process, it’s critical to give the customer exactly what he or she needs, exactly when needed and in the desired format. This is essential for establishing and maintaining high conversion rates in the sales funnel. Social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are social media platforms that customers typically leverage on their smartphones, tablets and laptops as part of the purchase process. In addition, customers are all different in that they learn and respond by different content formats. This requires businesses to produce content in a variety of formats including text, web pages, blog posts, reviews, images and video.
    Businesses must also embrace customer research and intelligence in order to know what customers want and do not want. Again, whether a business sells through a direct sales force or online, it should be familiar with the customer buying process and ensure that the messaging and content are meaningful, relevant and defensible. Accessing demographic, transactional, psychographic and behavioral data is key, as is leveraging social media, analytics and automation. Businesses that do so are those that experience higher conversion rates and typically attain their marketing objectives.

    Demand Management Strategy – Efficient Marketing Spend

    Marketing is expensive, so it is imperative that each dollar invested in different marketing strategies provides the maximum return on investment.
    Businesses utilizing a holistic and integrated lead follow-up approach, in order to convert each lead to a qualified sales opportunity, enjoy a higher ROI. Specifically, businesses that tightly target a specific set of companies and individuals with a high propensity to purchase enjoy a competitive advantage. As a result, the number of companies and contacts is smaller than if these businesses did not target — so the marketing budget is actually higher on a per-lead or per-contact basis. This allows for more thorough marketing action plan but more importantly, it enables a detailed and comprehensive lead follow-up process.
    Many businesses opt for a 10 or 30 touch demand management follow-up process which leverages social media touches, emails and phone calls. This follow-up typically occurs over a 30, 60 or 90 day period. By staying top of mind and relevant in the minds of these prospective customers, the higher the probability these individuals will engage in a buying process when they become ready, willing and able.

    Demand Management Strategy – Priming the Pump for the Competition

    Failure to deploy an effective demand management strategy will result in revenue for your competitors.  Research shows that prospects that fall out of a sales cycle with a company typically make a purchase within 18 months.  Some reasons for this include:
    • the budget may not be available in the current quarter(s)
    • contact was made with someone that is not critical in the purchase decision
    • contact with the sniper in the account–someone who does not want your organization chosen
    • reorganization or individuals changing positions
    When customers search – with “buy” signals – they typically will make a purchase. And more often than not, a customer will engage with a vendor without the vendor ever knowing it.  Organizations must learn to see these signs and can not ignore the social signals. Social media not only empowers customers access to information about companies and their products but it can help companies identify those individuals in a “buy mode” – i.e. prime candidates to enter into a purchase process.
    The absolute worst case scenario is when a business invests sales and marketing resources to increase awareness and educate a customer only to have them purchase from a competitor. To avoid this, a best practice is to model the sales process from lead through qualified sales opportunity, including the specific tasks, resources, accountability and reporting needed. Next, the people, the processes and the systems need to be implemented and documented manage the sales and marketing processes.  This will ensure the proactive management of sales velocity and conversion.

    Summing it All Up

    Demand management is the conversion of marketing qualified leads to qualified sales opportunities. Businesses that only focus on demand generation are failing to see more than 50% of the sales equation (Demand Generation + Demand Management = Customer).
    To be effective, the demand management function must be tightly integrated with demand generation (the creation of leads) and the sales function. It’s critical that demand management be part of the planning of lead generation programs. The best lead follow-up processes are thought out when a campaign is conceived. And, the lead follow-up process should be set in motion when the program is launched — not when leads begin to pour in.
    A powerful demand management strategy is an absolute must for a sustained pipeline of qualified sales opportunities that will provide the financial results needed for a thriving business.  Start with a proven process tocreate your Demand Management Strategy.

    среда, 24 июня 2015 г.

    30 (Really Quick) Time-Management Tips

    Time is of the essence. Use these tips to manage it.

    BY JOHN BRANDON
     


    I know you are pressed for time. I believe the best time management involves stress management. But then again, these tips can still help you be more productive with the hours you do have to work. They come from the company Toggl, maker of (of course) a time-tracking app for companies to use with their employees.
    1. Make it a habit to track how you spend your time. Try tracking everything you do for a week, and then learn from it.
    2. Compare your time estimates to the time you spent working on a task. Use results for better prediction and planning ahead.
    3. Tracking your bad habits will help you become aware of how much time they're taking away from you.
    4. Block out your day by the hour or even half-hour and assign tasks to each block for better systematization.
    5. Never schedule yourself 100 percent--leave some space for new ideas.
    6. Schedule time for interruptions. Plan to be interrupted to avoid unwanted distractions.
    7. Block out any distractions; restrain yourself from email and social media to stay focused.
    8. When you're tight with time and under pressure, just ignore email completely.
    9. Focus on one thing at a time. Humans aren't great multitaskers.
    10. Define priorities; assign focus.
    11. List the three things that must get done daily on your whiteboard and don't leave until you've accomplished them.
    12. Anything is possible, but not everything is needed. Prioritize and execute.
    13. Define your top five weekly priorities and the percentage of focus each should get.
    14. Track your time to see how you've managed.
    15. Always allow some downtime between tasks to take a moment for yourself. Restart after you're feeling productive again.
    16. Time spent taking a break is not slacking--it's recharging.
    17. Don't forget to take a break for at least 10 minutes every two hours. Even willpower needs recharging.
    18. Stretch for five minutes every hour. Your body likes its blood flowing.
    19. If a task takes you more than 20 minutes to get started with, switch tasks not to waste your time. If a task takes two minutes or less to complete, do it straight away.
    20. Start your workday with planning and scheduling. Don't start working until you've completed the plan.
    21. Every 10 minutes you spend on planning saves you an hour in execution.
    22. Long commute? Figure out which tasks you can do during (but don't text and drive).
    23. Turn your key tasks into habits.
    24. Keep your things tidy, because there's no bigger time killer than a lost pen.
    25. Want to get a meeting done quicker? Share the agenda in advance.
    26. Set a strict time limit for meetings--this saves time and boosts efficiency.
    27. Learn to say no--don't take on any tasks that might disrupt your schedule.
    28. Batch related tasks to increase your efficiency.
    29. Separate brainless and strategic tasks. The less you have to switch between different tasks, the more you can focus.
    30. Finally, keep in mind that work is the best way to get working; start with smaller tasks to get the ball rolling.