Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Industrial marketing is the marketing of goods and services from one business
to another. Industrial goods are those which are used in Industry for producing a
Different end product from one or more rawmaterials. The word "industrial"
means machinery run by power to produce goods and services. But "industrial
marketing" is not confined to these types of business activities. Broadly,
marketing could be split into consumer marketing (B2C "Business to Consumer")
and industrial marketing (B2B "Business to Business").
Competitive tendering
Industrial marketing often involves competitive tendering (see tender, tendering).
This is a process where a purchasing organisation undertakes to procure goods
and services from suitable suppliers. Due to the high value of some purchases
(for example buying a new computer system, manufacturing machinery, or
outsourcing a maintenance contract) and the complexity of such purchases, the
purchasing organisation will seek to obtain a number of bids from competing
suppliers and choose the best offering. An entire profession (strategic
procurement) that includes tertiary training and qualifications has been built
around the process of making important purchases. The key requirement in any
competitive tender is to ensure that...
• The business case for the purchase has been completed and approved.
• The purchasing organisation's objectives for the purchase are clearly
defined.
• The procurement process is agreed upon and it conforms with fiscal
guidelines and organisational policies.
• The selection criteria have been established.
• A budget has been estimated and the financial resources are available.
• A buying team (or committee) has been assembled.
• A specification has been written.
• A preliminary scan of the market place has determined that enough
potential suppliers are available to make the process viable (this can
sometimes be achieved using an expression of interest process).
• It has been clearly established that a competitive tendering process is the
best method for meeting the objectives of this purchasing project. If (for
example) it was known that there was only one organisation capable of
supplying; best to get on with talking to them and negotiating a contract.
Bidding process
Suppliers who are seeking to win a competitive tender go through a bidding
process. At its most primitive, this would consist of evaluating the specification
(issued by the purchasing organization), designing a suitable proposal, and
working out a price. This is a "primitive" approach because...
• There is an old saying in industrial marketing; "if the first time you have
heard about a tender is when you are invited to submit, then you have
already lost it."
• While flippant, the previous point illustrates a basic requirement for being
successful in competitive tendering; it is important to develop a strong
relationship with a prospective customer organization well before they
have started the formal part of their procurement process.
Non-tender purchasing
Not all industrial sales involve competitive tendering. Tender processes are time
consuming and expensive, particularly when executed with the aim of ensuring
probity. Government agencies are particularly likely to utilise elaborate
competitive tendering processes due to the expectation that they should be seen
at all times to be responsibly and accountably spending public monies. Private
companies are able to avoid the complexity of a fully transparent tender process
but are still able to run the procurement process with some rigour.
• Stage 1: Sell the appointment: Never sell over the telephone. The aim of
the first contact with a propsective purchaser is to sell the appointment.
The reason is simple; industrial sales are complex, any attempt to sell
over the phone will trivialise your product or service and run the risk of not
fully understanding the customer's need.
• Stage 2: Understand their needs: The best method of selling is to
minimise the information about your goods or services until you have fully
understood your customer's requirements.
• Stage 3: Develop and propose a solution. The solution is (of course)
developed from your (or the firm that you represent's) product or service
offerings.
The important point about solution selling is that it is essential not to sell the
solution before you understand the customer's requirements; otherwise you are
highly likely to unwittingly sell them on how ill-suited your solution is to meeting
their requirements. To illustrate; imagine a couple seeking the services of an
architect start their first meeting with the inevitable "we want to build a house." If
the architect leapt in at that point and proceeded to show them his favourite
design influence "the Mediterranean look" only to discover that they hate
"Mediterranean" and wanted something "a bit more Frank Lloyd Wright" he will
have gone most of the way toward alienating the sale. You can see that if he had
"kept his powder dry" for a bit longer and first discovered what they were looking
for, he could have better understood which way to skew his pitch. He was equally
capable of designing in a Frank Lloyd Wright style.
The marketing function is able to support this solution sell through tactics like
account-based marketing – understanding the requirements of a specific target
organization and building a marketing program around these. As research
shows, sales success is heavily weighted towards suppliers who can understand
their audience before selling to them (in UK research, 77 per cent of senior
decision-makers believe that the marketing approaches made by new suppliers
are poorly targeted and make it easy to justify staying with their current supplier)
[1]
.