Working with Enterprises across the globe, I have come across varied Go-to-Market strategies when launching marketplaces for ICT products and solutions; all across the spectrum from nascent stage businesses to well-established Enterprises. During conversations with ambitious and visionary technology heads, hearing comments such as ‘We want to launch a digital marketplace with as many products and services as possible’ still raises my eyebrows, as much I like the ambition. Of course prima facie, it might seem like a rationale logic to provide services and product across the whole width; I respect the wishes of visionary technologists and help them execute their strategy and see it how it plays in the long run. However, across the years, I have repeatedly seen such strategies play-out not so favorably for a good number of technology companies. Which brings me to the actual question that I would like to address; should the GTM strategy be focused on portfolio quality or quantity?
Service providers often rush to pile-up products on their marketplaces and a few years down the line, they would work towards discontinuing the product lines since it is challenging to support and maintain products with low or close to nil sales. Which makes me question, why are the specific products not selling? It is disappointing to see providers heavily investing time and efforts to try to launch products which do not get added to the cart. Mind you, I do believe in taking risks, ofcourse sometimes a few products resonate with the target segment and sometimes they do not. However, is there something that we can do to prevent low traction and drive uptake? A couple of reasons I have come across are:
- Lack of research of the target market: Surprising to see, quite often providers try to launch products just because it belongs in a specific category of ‘as a service’ or because it is a well known product. The approach of ‘let us put it on the marketplace, somebody will buy it’ is a big risk especially if you are investing heavily to onboard the specific product.
- Being too ambitious: The Multi product holding score per customer for services and products is typically a single digit number. In the hopes of increasing the multi product holding, providers keep adding additional products however it does not necessarily result in cross-sell opportunities.
- Lack of sales enablement: A lot of B2B selling is still done in assisted selling model where the sales representatives and account managers are on calls with the customer trying to sell and take orders. If the sales team is not enabled enough aka they do not understand the true value proposition and benefits of the products, they would not push specific products outrightly. I have personally seen sales representatives hesitating to push products, they don’t know much about.
Having said that, I have also seen hugely successful providers who take a more well-planned approach of ramping up the portfolio of products offered, rather than going with a big bang approach. It is all about research and execution and being deliberate.
What are your thoughts on this matter?