Enterprise B2B - It's all about the Value Proposition.....feature/function just gets you into the game.

I have been helping a former colleague (Mark) create the marketing plan and product roadmap for a new product concept that he is working on. Without revealing the details of the idea, it is a very innovative B2B SaaS solution for Cloud Computing management.  Along the way, one question has consistently driven him crazy. Here is a paraphrasing of how the conversations typically go:

Graham:      So what is the business value of the solution?
Mark:         It will help customers make the management of their Cloud Computing initiatives a lot easier.
Graham:      How?
Mark:         By giving the administrators more information and tools.
Graham:      How will the "information and tools" cut costs or increase revenues?
Mark:         I don't know but there is a lot of really good functionality.

OR

Graham:     Why would somebody buy this solution?
Mark:        Because it will make life easier when managing multiple Cloud Computing initiatives.
Graham:    Compared to other alternatives, will it save time? save money? reduce risk? increase uptime?
Mark:       Yes
Graham:    What's the typical ROI?
Mark:       Hmmm

These two conversations are pretty typical of the gap between a feature/function product concept (often in engineering*) and a go-to-market strategy with value based positioning (in marketing & sales). In Enterprise B2B feature / function positioning just doesn't cut it anymore. Buyers are more savvy than even a decade ago and are driven by bottom line considerations. Buyers are asking: "How is this going to help my business and how am I going to get approval to spend the money?" You need to have an answer and your product management / marketing team needs to make sure that it is a good one.

The Bottom Line: when selling a B2B product, you absolutely need a baseline set of features to "get into the game", but the business value proposition is what closes the deal (and supports higher price tags).

*Note: I have found this conversation typically happening when Product Management is aligned with engineering and "feature / function" focused versus business focused.

Twitter? Show Me The B2B ROI

A colleague of mine recently asked if we were doing anything with Twitter, and she was shocked when I said "No". I proceeded to explain that while I am always looking for new ways to get exposure for IQ, I can't justify the expense (yes I know it's free - but as with any other communications initiative, it does have a content creation and internal "maintenance" cost) without an ROI. All my other tactical marketing programs have an ROI expectation, Twitter would be no different.

There is so much hype about Twitter right now, that the need to quantify actual business value is getting overlooked. If there is no value (measured by return on investment), why do it? If you Bing "Twitter ROI" you get about 535,000 hits with Dell's $3m total revenues as being the ROI poster child.....not too impressive given Dell's multi-billion dollar annual revenues and that they have been Tweeting for 2 years.

For B2B marketing, especially of enterprise applications, there is an even bigger hurdle to Tweeting.....sales dynamics. Who is going to follow you unless they are either in a search and selection mode, or they are a competitor? If a potential customer is looking for your type of product, they will engage you directly. Where is the value to them to get Tweets from you every 20 minutes? The information they need to make their decisions is coming from a sales rep directly at a very different pace. Other information will be gathered online via search, from analysts or from references.

So, I have discussed Tweeting with both my Marketing and PR agencies and neither can provide a compelling reason to take the jump. It will be interesting to see how the medium evolves.