In a recent blog Adam Gray talked about Martech, for those about to invest in martech, or if you have been a Martech user for a little while, in this blog we talk about the changes that have taken place in the market with the shift to social media.
"Earlier today I was chatting to Andy Hough CEO of the APS and we were talking about how in the modern world too often people are looking for a quick fix, a silver bullet if you like. There’s always the dream that a new piece of tech will provide a mechanism that delivers a stream of red-hot-leads to save time and effort.
Formula-1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and every team is looking for this "edge" to give them that elusive win. They, like the marketing world, are all hungry, to be first, to be the best.
The problem is that a competitive advantage is rarely a competitive advantage for long. A new rubber compound that gives 1% more grip and shaves a second off your lap time is great. But everyone gets the same compound, so everyone is a second quicker. So nobody has an advantage.
It’s the same with Martech. It’s great that you have some new tool that will help you generate more leads but so does everyone else and, at the end of the day, the number of customers in the marketplace hasn’t increased so companies like yours spend more and more on tech in the hope that it will provide more, but in reality it probably provides less. Costs go up, so margins go down and fewer salespeople achieve their quota as more and more pressure is applied to them to bridge this shortfall.
LinkedIn has in some ways done the same thing to prospecting and sales. It’s now really quick and easy to find the buyer within any company (a task that might have taken hours previously) and it’s really easy to reach out to them and tell them what you do (whereas before they wouldn’t take your call even if you were able to find them)…but everyone has the same opportunity.
So where has the competitive advantage gone because an advantage is only an advantage if you have it but nobody else does?
The competitive advantage is you.
Like with Formula-1, the championship is invariably won by the best driver - Fangio, Stewart, Lauda, Prost, Senna, Schumacher and now Hamilton. The winning formula has seldom been the cars, the tyres or the nose-cone…it’s been the driver.
In the world of sales and marketing, particularly online/digital/social selling, the USP is you. Who you are is the differentiator, you are the competitive advantage.
You need to develop your skills in this space to be a better prospector and a better salesperson as that is, in 2021, the only competitive advantage that you can rely on."
Let's not forget it was Grady Booch who famously said "A fool with a tool is still a fool." and one of my favorite quotes.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Looking for your competitive advantage, looking to turn your sales team into Prost, Senna, Schumacher and Hamilton, it's not a car you need, it's training of your drivers.
Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing for other companies. No hard sell, just take you through what other companies are doing to transform.
Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality. Our website is here.
Why? Because it’s through software that a company shapes its customer experience. And to have a differentiated customer experience, you can’t buy it entirely off-the-shelf. You must bring your own elements of originality to the market to compete. Even if your core product or service isn’t digital, it’s through software that you can outsmart your competitors in your back-office processes and out-delight them in your front-office touchpoints with customers.
https://chiefmartec.com/2021/01/cmo-wants-understand-really-harness-martech-read-book/
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