Standards-based marketing – an antidote “Sell Differently” Part 3
Part 3 – Sell Differently
I’m continuing this series of blogs here by looking at the techniques that software vendors can use to create the “illusion” of differentiation in markets where technical standards have led to little material product difference.
Perhaps the most obvious differentiator between organisations that have “broadly” similar technology, and an area that particularly hurts smaller or less well established software vendors, is the vendor’s approach to selling.
Which audience strata do you aim at and what do you say to them?
At its most crude this can be the difference between Vendor A talking to a technical audience about the features of Product A whilst Vendor B is talking to line of business managers within the… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, pain, positioning, product marketing, reason to buy | 
audience, benefit, competition, competitive, Competitive Marketing, Danny Goodall, differentiation, marketing strategy, REPAMA | 
Leave a commentStandards-based marketing – the homogeneous effect of software standards – Part 2
A History Lesson
Continuing on from this blog entry, I’ve decided to create another mini series of blogs, this time looking at the difficulty of differentiation in markets where software standards have created homogeneity amongst the offerings of the protagonists.
So first a little bit of a history lesson…
I surfed the wave of middleware resurgence in the early stages of the new millennium and had great success marketing various technologies. Initially, working with some of the best people in the industry, I introduced SonicMQ to the world while at Sonic Software (now Progress Software). This was a market proposition that was heavily based on standards. Well at least we… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, product marketing, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, dave chappell, differentiation, JMS, progress software, REPAMA, soa, sonic software, standards-based, Strategic Marketing | 2 CommentsStandards-based marketing and identical twins – the nemesis of differentiation
At the risk of sounding like I’m repeating myself, once again I’ve just got off the phone from a friend and ex-colleague. This is a different friend and a different conversation to my last blog entry, and this time he was looking to do me a favour rather than picking my brains for free. Which was nice.
Anyway, after a while we got on to the subject of how sales of his organisation’s SOA, ESB and BPM offerings were going. A mixed bag was his response. “Where it’s good it’s very good and where it’s tough it’s very tough” was his view.
My mate is in sales looking after a geographic and industry-focused region for a… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product marketing | alternative, BPM, competition, competitive, Competitive Marketing, competitors, Danny Goodall, differentiation, esb, Lustratus, REPAMA, soa, standards, standards-based marketing | Leave a comment“Aim wider”, “focus everywhere” and other oxymorons
I’ve just had a conversation with a friend, an ex-colleague who was picking my brains (for free I might add!) about what he could do to make his sales year look better.
I asked him how his product was positioned and where his focus was on the market. He told me, and in doing so mentioned 3 industries, 3 market categories and 4 sub market segments, 4 or 5 target audiences and a similar number of problems they address in each of the 3 industries. I told him that this isn’t a focus. It’s a hedging of bets. It’s a baiting of many hooks in the vain hope of landing at least… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, pain, positioning, product marketing, prospects, reason to buy, usp | alternative, audience, benefit, competitive, Danny Goodall, focus, lead generation, Lustratus, marketing strategy, product marketing, prospecting, REPAMA, Target audience | Leave a commentOpen Source and the Impotence(sic) of Being Earnest
Q. What do the questions…
“How do porcupines make love?”
and
“How do you ‘sell’ open source software?”
…have in common?
A. The answer to both is “Carefully!”
Software sales is a funny business. Push too hard and you’re open to accusations of potentially ripping people off through aggressive tactics, don’t push hard enough and you end up having had many nice discussions (tea and biscuit meetings as they are known) with many nice people but your children go hungry. It’s a balance. And nowhere is this more in evidence than in the open source world.
I was chatting to an ex-colleague last week about the issues they have taking their open source software products to market.… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, product marketing, prospects, Vendor-Related Posts | Apache, Danny Goodall, JBOSS, lead generation, marketing, marketing strategy, MuleSource, open source, Red Hat, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing | Leave a commentAudience Strata
In infrastructure software sales and marketing, Lustratus categorises the primary end user target audience as one or more of the following three categories:
- IT Technical – Represents the overtly technical disciplines within the IT organisation that have no management, strategic or commercial responsibilities
- IT Business – Represents the higher management levels of the IT organisation that have strategic and/or financial responsibilities
- Business – Represents the line of business functions outside of the IT organisation
Whilst there are many subtle distinctions between these these layers a general description of the types of positions and the role of they play in enterprise software sales for infrastructure software is shown in the diagram below:
Danny Goodall
Related posts that you might also… Continue reading
Positioning and the Positioning Statement
Positioning and the Positioning Statement
This page contains a summary of a series of blog entries I made during January and February 2009. It describes the format of the positioning statement that we use in the REPAMA competitive intelligence methodology. I refer to the concept of positioning and the positioning statement frequently so I wanted to pull them all together in once place. So here you are.
Danny Goodall
Links to Original Posts
The Positioning Statement
FOR… positioning element
WHO…positioning element
OUR…positioning element
IS A…positioning element
THAT PROVIDES…positioning element
UNLIKE…positioning element
OUR PRODUCT…positioning element
Part 1 – Positioning
Happy 2009! I’ve been in debate with a number of correspondents about the layout and format of the positioning statement… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product category, product marketing, product name, reason to buy, Uncategorized, usp | alternative, audience, benefit, competition, competitive, competitor, customer pain, Danny Goodall, ideal customer, Lustratus, main benefit, messaging, offer category, positioning, positioning statement, primary alternative, primary reason to buy, product category, product marketing, product name, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, target customer, unique sales proposition, usp | 1 CommentAn ESB is an ESB is an ESB – n’est pas?
As the saying goes, if it looks like a fish, smells like a fish and tastes like a fish then the chances are that it is a fish. Likewise by any measure the products in the recent REPAMA study into the ESB market segment certainly appear to be ESBs but why then is none of the vendors content with describing their products simply as an “ESB”.
As the REPAMA Marketing Element Distribution (MED) chart below shows, the ESB vendors in the study (Microsoft ESB Guidance 1.0, Oracle Service Bus, Progress Sonic ESB, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus) used the following adjectives, qualifiers, modifiers and euphemisms to describe the offer category of their “ESB”.
- A loosely-coupled messaging environment
- A comprehensive Enterprise… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product category, product marketing, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Enterprise Service Bus, esb, Lustratus, marketing strategy, microsoft, Microsoft ESB Guidance, oracle, Oracle Service Bus, product category, progress software, Progress Sonic ESB, REPAMA, tibco, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus | Leave a commentEnterprise Service Bus (ESB) REPAMA findings published
Just a quick note to say that the REPAMA Segment Analysis Study into the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has been published on the Lustratus.com site. The ESB is a segment that Lustratus knows well as we’ve carried out strategic marketing work for most of the key protagonists at some point. That said, there were a number of surprises – chief amongst these was some of the competitive differentiation strategies that we saw as well as the markedly different approach taken by Microsoft.
The study reverse-engineered the go-to-market strategies of the following vendors and products:
- Microsoft ESB Guidance 1.0
- Oracle Service Bus
- Progress Sonic ESB
- TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
In reaction to client feedback, we’ve published two sets… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, esb, ESB Guidance, marketing strategy, microsoft, oracle, Oracle Service Bus, Progress, Progress Sonic ESB, REPAMA, Sonic ESB, tibco, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus | Leave a commentTIBCO eats itself
Cannibalization. You don’t get to see that very often unless something strange has happened. No, I’m not talking about the act of eating the flesh of the same species. Instead I’m referring to where a vendor eats into its own sales by promoting one of its products ahead of another in the same market. It is highly unusual for a vendor to be willing to sacrifice sales of one product line to increase another. In my experience these things usually happen through some form of mistake or oversight in planning. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case with TIBCO’s recent announcement of the TIBCO Messaging Appliance.
As we suggested in our… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, high performance middleware, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, Vendor-Related Posts | 29West, alternative, Cannibalism, competition, competitive, ibm, low latency messaging, Lustratus, Messaging Appliance, middleware, REPAMA, solace systems, tibco | Leave a comment
- On Informatica, Evangelism, Audience Strata and BIG-DATA
- The marketing strategies of open source versus closed source ESBs
- Part 2 – First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- WSO2 – Fits in between Talend and FuseSource…
- WSO2, or rather one of its competitors, has thrown its hat into the ring
- Wordcount.org – it counts words…
Recent Comments
May 12, 2011 (12:01) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? Hmm. I really do like the name Sarah but what about my ego? If I were to call the index 'GoodRead...
May 12, 2011 (11:36) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? I suggest calling it the GoodRead Index. Maybe it's over-reaching a bit, but you'll just have to ...
October 14, 2010 (4:19) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. I hope you could tell that I was being more than a little flippant here Jacques. Perhaps I should...
October 13, 2010 (1:56) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. Allow me to disagrre. At a customer, we have used Datapower for years to process XML (BTW, it is ...
June 7, 2010 (4:38) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Pete,Thanks for your comments, and those of your colleague. I think Danny has answered the 'mar...
June 4, 2010 (4:03) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hi,I'd very much like to develop a point made in the report where it is asserted that software ...
May 6, 2010 (12:35) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Thanks for your comment Blake. This is a marketing-focused blog that looks at different vendors' ...
May 5, 2010 (1:23) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hello There - It seems that this is a very provocative report, especially with respect to the sta...
April 14, 2010 (2:57) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Nice Technology Related Blog. Will visit again.
October 16, 2009 (5:56) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Very interesting point of discussion. I would be very interested to hear your results.