The Unthinkable...

Here's a thought that hit me this morning.

You may need to consider the "unthinkable" and create alliances with your competitors to make it through the current economic downturn. 

Let this one soak for a minute.

I'm the last person to lecture anyone about competitive "cease-fires" or "working relationships".  Slant is in the competitive disruption business so the concept of playing nice does not sit well with me. Competitors are to be analyzed, benchmarked, targeted and defeated. Simple plan. No hidden agendas. Put them on notice, rattle their cage and take their clients.

Here is the reality, every industry will see some sort of contraction.  Some of it will be internal and will include; restructuring, lay-offs and budget cuts.  Some will be external, driven by contraction in their client's world.  Most businesses are not set up to cash flow extended periods of declining revenue.  Dare I say, no company is set up to run with a declining revenue model. (See: GM, Chrysler and Ford)

So here's the thought.  Think about creating alliances of convenience and survival.  The higher priority is to protect the integrity of your industry or vertical.  This means you have to band together to serve the needs of your clients so that they don't shift their paradigm and cut you out totally.  Today's temporary cost cutting initiative can easily become tomorrow's best practice.  The service industry is extremely susceptible to these seismic changes in buying and usage patterns.

Some of you have already fostered some sort of competitive alliance.  Congrats on being ahead of the curve. 

For the rest, think through this one.  Your survival may depend on it.

The Value of a Buyer Persona

Many of you have heard me say that step #1 is to work on your Positioning. Well there is a step #.5, "profiling" or creating Buyer Personas that help identify the ideal prospect for your product or services. 

Before we can figure out what problems we solve with our goods and services, we need to think through the key attributes of the person(s) who would be the buyer/user. The "Whom do we serve?" question gets answered here. The trick is that we need to consider demographic and psychographic information. I was not the one who came up with this philosophy, many good marketing thinkers and a ton of books reference "The Ideal Client" in some way. I like Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch. He's smart and makes it sound simple. Read that book.

Consider the following areas when you are building your Buyer Personas:

Demographic:

• Age
  
• Gender
  
• Marital status
  
• Profession
  
• Income
  
• Location
  

Psychographic:

• Category (Entrepreneur, Manager or Technician)
  
• Needs
  
• Frustrations
  
• Desires
  
• Communication methods
  
• Decision making process (How do they search for info? Where do they search for info? Do they consult others?)