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PDFFor “new” technologies, especially where it is a strategic problem with complex moving parts, lots of people involved, going to cause disruption to the existing business processes to get to fix. May even involve fixing other things. Now add that not everyone agrees as to what the issues are, information is hard to find, very technical, very complex organizational impact, different levels of knowledge on the decision team AND you can wonder why the buying cycle is slow or stalls in no-decision. AND that is when they have connected with you. Imagine what it is like when you are just starting out and you are trying to research what to do to fix a problem in your business.
Not finding a lot of information, a lot of near misses, conflicting stuff. Since most of your peers don’t have this issue or haven’t fixed it before, there is not a lot of well-worn research shortcuts out there; no blogs, forums, experts, etc. You kinda have to fend for yourself.
Wouldn’t it be cool if a vendor spent time helping you recognize what problem you really have and helped you figure out if you were a good fit for them or not. Rather than tell you the technical nuts and bolt + how life is wonderful after you buy them. How does that match to their problem?
But, this isn’t easy if you don’t have enough buyers to do the matching OR you don’t have tools and a process to extract that from all of target peer forums, let alone figure out which peer forums might have those problem conversations, let alone extract the relevant conversations in a sea of non-target discussions. We do it in about a month where it would normally take a company 6-12 months to do it manually and probably not to the degree of accuracy to actually identify actual buyers who have their problem. Big difference between theoretical “problem” and finding actual buyers engaged in research to solve a particular problem or set of problems.
Hence, this is why our target buyers need our help with their problem. Why they can’t do it themselves easily or quickly.
Matthew is a Social Marketing Executive and is co-founder of Social Gastronomy, LLC and the Social Executive Council. Prior to founding Social Gastronomy, Matthew has over 18 years’ experience as an executive in marketing, product management, and sales. Matthew has an extensive background in the SaaS Software, Social Media, Mobile, IT Services, and Telecom industries. He has prior entrepreneurial experience as a founder and executive in several early-stage venture-backed technology companies, as well as, holds several US patents for a mobile marketing technology. Matthew is a prominent blogger and regular industry speaker on social marketing and strategy topics. Matthew’s blog can be found at www.socialgastronomy.com/blog. For more information on Matthew, you can check out his LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/rosenhaft or contact him directly at mrosenhaft@socialgastronomy.com.
