Winnable Strategy

For B2B software, most clients take a studied, well considered decision which is often the conclusion of many moments of truth with the SaaS vendor or with its content somewhere.

The win is normally a congruence of a multitude of factors coming together - not limited to Product development alone, but across Marketing, Business development and Presales too.

One such client win has been narrated below, and the moral of the story could be worth the read.

From your perspective: The client had been shortlisted Rightly

From the client's decision makers' perspective:

You satisfied many critical and good to have parameters

Key Takeaways:

In any Win-Loss analysis: The Wins

• Consistent market success is a combination of number of factors

• Most of these factors are by Design and not just Luck

• Also, each interaction with your company or its content is a moment of truth which counts

In any Win-Loss analysis: The Losses

• The side did put in enormous effort though they were Reactive, very little Proactive

• There is no second prize for runners up position; the winner takes it all

Moral of the story

Winners in most cases are those who:

Possess a Deeper understanding of the Market

Possess a Deeper understanding of Accounts

Put together a program to Harness this knowledge in a structured manner

Recommended approach - Creating a framework for 'Winnability'

We recommend creating structured layers of strength:

1. Product functionality benchmarking - this is an internal exercise; the founders, the core team and consultants are typically the best individuals for ensuring the product makes a good product-market-fit.

2. Market Intelligence - you would require market information to make the most optimum decisions with respect to market segments and strategy. Since everything downstream - the content, positioning, deployment of field effort flows from there - its critical that Market Intelligence information is part of your plan.

3. Competitive Intelligence - this can help your marketing team fine-tune their strategy and tactics, and help your salespeople plan better. There is also often a lot that one can gather and learn from the way competing companies are structured and their approach to the market.

4. Inputs to Strategy - All of these put together are instrumental in formation of a synchronous strategy - buisness strategy, marketing and sales strategy.