This week I attended the TPMA (Toronto Product Management Association) monthly meeting: Are Your Sales Teams Truly Enabled to Sell Your Product? The speaker this month was Nicki Weiss, founder of sales effectiveness consulting company Saleswise. At the end of the meeting, Nicki left us with a challenge. Explaining that the most effective business relationships are actually triads, she challenged us to look at ways to include an additional person when we set up one-to-one business meetings.
Authorize subscriber Social networks in your online site or app
An important though optional feature for your website or mobile app is providing your users a method to authenticate using social networks and/or to authorize you to have access to their information or social features. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and others offer methods, often using an open protocol such as OAuth , for developers to implement user authorized access to their platform. There are a number of advantages for providing this, as well as a few things to consider.
Business organization by customer focused layers
The traditional business model of separated teams, or silos, for marketing, sales, development and support simply is no longer working for B2B companies. This business model is prone to a waste in resources, duplication of efforts and poor internal communication. On the other hand, a product focused business model can lead to not recognizing opportunities for additional sales opportunities to an existing customer base. So what is the alternative? To borrow and adapt a quote from the 90’s – it’s about the customer stupid. Though these independent functions are still necessary, the best organization is to align business operations and teams with a focus on a customer segment.
Lost among devices? Focus on your App’s features
The one thing that having a foundation of experience in SDLC and Waterfall design methodologies has taught me is to have a strong appreciation of the requirements and design phase of the project. Agile methodologies focus on the same requirement/feature first mentality – bringing added value in prioritization of the requirements and chunking releases of these into smaller cycles.
When to Buy, Build or Partner
Buy, Build or Partner is a business decision point where a company determines the best action to take to fill a gap in their market solution. Within this model, a company will develop a solution and core competencies around identified market problems. The build decision is based on the parts of the solution that aligns with their strengths, the buy decision on utilities and add-ons, and partner decision for anything else.
Why every company with a Website should also have an App
Having a company website is considered a necessity in a company’s marketing arsenal. Having that website be responsive to display appropriately on various devices is also crucial. I believe it is becoming increasingly important for companies to additionally provide their customers with a mobile App. I am saying additionally as this is a tool that can augment their existing digital presence.
