One Strategy Does Not Fit All
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Some government contractors mistakenly assume that their winning go-to-market strategy in one sector will perform equally well in another. For example, a prospect recently shared his company would soon launch a new set of solutions for defense agencies – an audience they had never really served. Based on their success in federal civilian and commercial sector markets, management felt they knew which strengths to leverage when they targeted the defense market.
That’s certainly understandable. After all, a cardinal rule of selling is to know and lead with your strengths. However, it’s important to not overlook another adage – know and provide what your customer wants.
Our experience providing research to a wide variety of government contractors has clearly taught us that, depending on the product, service, or solution being offered, there can be significant differences between defense, civilian, state and local, and commercial markets in terms of:
- How the agencies define their mission, and by extension, the priorities driving the need for the solution
- The way they define their needs
- How they go through the vendor or solution selection process – who is involved, vendor characteristics that are most important, length of the decision-making cycle
Market Connections recently worked with a design solution company, who came to us for a better understanding of how to market their highly successful commercial sector products to the “public sector,” a category in which they into which they lumped federal, state, and local markets. During our exploratory research with decision makers who buy and use design software, we found that the evaluation and selection process was quite different between federal and state-and-local markets.
For example, federal buyers were much more concerned with being able to customize the solution and integrate the existing design data they currently had. Conversely, state and local personnel were significantly more concerned with the cost of the application and the level of support they would receive when deploying it. Both segments had highly favorable perceptions of the company and its design solution. However, the company quickly recognized it would need to segment sales and marketing messages by market sector.
And, the differences don’t just impact messaging. In recent study for another client, we found that one segment of technology decision-makers in the defense market placed significantly greater value on conferences, trade shows and topic-specific events than their civilian counterparts. Conversely, civilian respondents placed greater emphasis on information from contractors, trade press, and industry associations.
Clearly, long-term success isn’t just about selling your strengths. It’s also about understanding how to prioritize and leverage your strengths to meet each market’s needs. And, that understanding comes from market research.
