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Abhik Lal Mukherjee

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Abhik Lal Mukherjee

Senior Product Manager

Nokia Siemens Networks

Abhik Lal Mukherjee is a member of:

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Differentiate Strategies in place with your Competitors

We are in the B2B Hi-Tech space and provide cutting edge innovative solutions for telecom operators. Our strategy is to focus on key areas within this space and differentiate our products in terms of strong and clear value based positioning. Our product strategy and marketing is aligned to provide and convey the key values that we generate for our customers.

strategies gone unnoticed or become a Huge-hit

Innovative use of social media for marketing even in the B2B space can provide rich dividends. Concise video demos of products and solutions if made available on youtube.com can help greatly in communicating the value and key aspects about the products and solutions.

Another innovative strategy is to make some demos available on a public cloud so that they could be used by customer personnel who are responsible for making the purchase decision. Since seeing is believing, this can really send a strong message. Further, being on a public cloud makes access easy and can be accessed by smart phones of the users during a discussion at the highest level.

Positioning products in the market

We have defined the key focus areas for our products within the domain and have clear messages about product differentiation. Moreover, we have quantitative value based argumentation for all our products and convey a clear message about what is the benefit/value that our products can bring for specific customer cases. We provide an end to end story with a focus on how our products can be aligned with the existing processes of our customers and what value they generate for them.

Creating a brand identity

Our brand has well defined values with which our marketing strategies are aligned. Brand identity and respect for a brand grows over time once you have a history of successful delivery to multiple customers. Hence to be a trusted brand in the B2B space, references from key customers and case studies highlighting our capability plays a key role. In order to be recognized as a leading innovator, participation in events by industry analysts and showcasing innovative solutions in the right forum are of great importance.

Creating a brand identity

Helping sales force to reach customers

From a product perspective, we support with centralized product collaterals with content marketing controlled by us. Moreover we organize periodic sales enablement sessions to align marketing and sales seamlessly. Further we have a team of consultants who drive the values based sales argumentation and the solution definition so that sales does not become a transactional process but a consultative approach is taken for sales and the relationship with the customer is nurtured over time.

About the company & the marketing strategies used

We are in the B2B Hi-Tech space and provide cutting edge innovative solutions for telecom operators. Our marketing involves multiple streams for holistic coverage. On one hand we participate in various industry events at international and national levels to showcase our offerings to our customers. On the other hand we host several events for specific regions and countries where we invite our customers to have a more focused discussion. Being in the B2B space, we also have a strong capability around content marketing and have defined processes for outbound marketing communications (for collaterals and also press releases). We also engage with key industry analyst firms to showcase and benchmark our offerings. Additionally, we use social media like youtube.com to share video content for marketing. We also conduct demos as part of business development and sometime provide access to key customers to the demo environments available on a public cloud to showcase our products and gather feedback about the same.

Trends seen in marketing

B2B marketing is becoming more adventurous with new ideas around web-based marketing and social media marketing being used in this space. Moreover, the impact of B2B marketing is being tracked in a more objective way to ensure higher ROI.

Biggest puzzling point

Alignment of sales with marketing through a more cohesive way of working is always a challenge. While increased value capture is possible only through a strategic consultative way of working, this involves a change in the organizational culture and more discipline.

Factors influencing a purchase decision

While there could be various factors influencing a purchase decision, it is important to showcase the value that can be added by a product for the customer’s business. The business case should help the buyer to justify the investment through an acceptable tangible ROI that the product can deliver. The seller should be able to quantify the ROI for the customer to make the purchase decision easy.

Please Note: The views and opinions expressed in this space are
those of the author and do not reflect the official position of any
organization with which the author may be associated.