Interlink Partners» Management Consulting / Strategy / Marketing / Mergers and Acquisitions

Positioning drives competitive marketing and sales

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:18:35 +0000

Every business is in competition. Even if the competition is apathy or the preservation of the status quo. Your positioning is the simplest statement of how you can add value to your customer, so it is the simplest statement of how you stand in comparison with your competition.

It’s tempting to believe that your business is undifferentiated, commoditized, and that the only way to make progress is through pricing, or more aggressive sales. In fact every business can find differentiation and a unique positioning, and it’s one of the least expensive ways to strengthen your company.

Here’s an instructive story about differentiation in the most difficult of circumstances:

You might think that construction sand is the ultimate commodity. You can get it from anywhere, the standards are very basic. It comes off the back of a truck. Well, it turns out that construction sand is a critical deliverable in the life of a building project. In large cities with unionized workers, the cost of an idle construction team is crippling. So if the sand is late, it can cost you a fortune.

One construction sand company in New York figured this out, and added a performance guarantee to their product. They charge significantly more than their competitors, but they guarantee that if the sand is late, they will pay the costs of the idle workers. Suddenly they have added risk management into the mix. Risk management is a very important thing for a construction boss, with thousands of things to worry about and coordinate.

This is just one example: the key is to find some aspect of your business or process that you can develop into a differentiator, in a way that will create unique value. That becomes the basis of your positioning.

For a more extended description of the range of ways in which differentiation can be created, read this article.

Organizational Efficiency

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:27:46 +0000

Your company may be hugely successful and well positioned within some of your target segments, but how do you know if you are effective in all the potential segments that would benefit from your products and services?

Establishing metrics and processes across segments to ensure the most profitable operation is a key capability for organizations as they evolve. As companies mature, they often stick with what they know, even when the market has changed. Robust processes to identify opportunities and measure success across new as well as pre-existing segments is a powerful profit driver.

Metrics and processes are important because business is about people. Your top people may be expert at driving current business, but they may be resistant to change and to the potential risk of new approaches. Leading change is a primary executive responsibility, and done well it makes the different between a vibrant or a stagnant company.

The key elements in this process are:

Definition of current status and processes
Internal and channel interviews to identify opportunities for improvement
Definition of altered processes and metrics
Identification of key personnel
Handoff with a practical operational plan.

For more information, please get in touch.

Corporate restructuring

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:18:01 +0000

Sometimes restructuring is the best solution for an organization in times of change. Most executives assert that by the time they are ready to restructure, they wish they had started sooner.

Restructuring is a painful process for everybody involved, and for this reason many managers are reluctant to do it.

Interlink Partners has the experience and expertise to help you initiate and execute a repositioning of your organization successfully. As external advisors, we can stay above the politics and provide a fresh perspective. As always, pragmatism and rapid results are our watchword as we strive together with you to create an effective and successful organization that can sustain itself for the long term.

Our approach includes:

Capability analysis and audit
Goal setting based on capabilities
Identification and retention of key personnel
Cost management and reduction in force decision-making
Internal communication strategy
External positioning and communication.

Please contact us for a confidential discussion of your needs.

Global business enablement

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:45:59 +0000

It’s been said that the world is now flat—in other words you can do business everywhere, on a level playing field. Sadly this is a simplistic and over-optimistic view. The reality is that taking your business into new markets is challenging at many levels. Some of the key issues include:

Finding the right partners
Understanding the local culture
Working with the local legal and infrastructural environment
Developing awareness
Establishing the right segmentation and market analysis
Closing the first deals
Building a sustainable presence

Each of these tasks is challenging enough: to do all of them requires special experience. Our senior partners have direct experience across Europe and Asia, and we have specific capabilities that can reduce your risk and accelerate your entry to those markets.

For more information on how we can help you grow your business internationally, contact us.

Semiconductor business optimization

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:43:17 +0000

The nature of the electronics food chain means that long-term differentiation is difficult. Some companies have it easier: specialized analog, a worldwide franchise in processor design, specialized memory architectures for example. But the bulk of semiconductor companies, while they may start with a strongly differentiated product, quickly find themselves operating in a standards-based, commodity-ridden business environment.

Standards are good: they help get technology adopted. But if your products are simply implementations of the standard, they are subject to commoditization, which leads to pricing pressure and low customer loyalty.

The challenge is that hardware design wins only last one generation, and you have to be the best in some meaningful sense to win each time. A purely hardware-based strategy for differentiation means you have to be clearly the best, generation after generation. You have to be the best in functionality, power consumption, level of integration, and price.

That’s a tall order for any company. It’s also hard to maintain, generation after generation.

Interlink Partners bring a deep understanding of the dynamics of semiconductors and the electronics ecosystem, from startup to Fortune 500, and from analog to digital SoC. From this experience we have distilled a set of processes for optimizing semiconductor companies in terms of a wide range of factors:

Fundamental product differentiation
Roadmapping
Ecosystem plays
Adjunct capabilities to extend the value proposition
User community leverage
System development enablement
Engagement in standards development
Market positioning and message strategy

Each of these areas represent significant and powerful ways to increase the stickiness and market power of your semiconductor products.

Our methodology is customized to your needs, combining executive interviews, practical workshops, hands-on strategy development, and executive support for implementation.

For more information and a confidential diagnostic interview, please contact us.

Differentiation for semiconductor companies

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:31:49 +0000

Increasingly, the big winners in electronics are the systems companies that can claim consumer-level differentiation. Apple, for example, has been able to preserve margins and to maintain a powerful corporate brand and consumer loyalty even in the current difficult economic times. At the same time, many of their semiconductor suppliers have struggled to differentiate and to retain a position of value in the ecosystem.

This is a result to some extent of the challenging competitive environment, but it also arises from the high level of standardization in (especially consumer) electronics. DDR memory; ARM cores, USB, 802.11. All these standards mean that a systems company has greater choice, and an easier time switching out one semiconductor vendor for another.

Yet there are ways to strengthen your differentiation as a semiconductor company. Solution-level strategies, the use of proprietary IP, and service-level agreements are just a few of the techniques that can be employed.

If you would like to learn more about how your company can increase its differentiation in a tough market, contact us at info@srbcnetworks.com.

Driving business

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:12:29 +0000

With tight head-count constraints, sometimes hiring a consultant is the right thing to do. What should you expect from every consultant you work with?

Experienced, professional, executive-level consultants
A collaborative style that puts your needs and concerns at the top of the list
A track record of pragmatic, positive results
Deep skills in the domains that matter to your business: operations, marketing, strategy, engineering,
A committed work process that leverages experience, not a bevy of junior consultants.

Every one of our consultants has held e-staff level, executive roles in major companies. We bring a track record of results and repeat business across a wide range of industries and companies, globally.

When you engage with us, expect the best. Our constant focus is on the creation of solutions that work: practicality and a path to effective implementation are a given.

Customer relationship innovation

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:08:15 +0000

There are many ways to innovate, but one of the most reliable is in the customer relationship. It’s reliable because you can quickly measure the impact of changes in the way you manage the relationship with your customers. You don’t even have to have a brilliant idea—your customers will often provide it for you (if you ask!).

Nordstrom’s is a great example of a retailer that has achieved differentiation through a unique approach to their customer relationship. Not only do they establish a customer-centric approach to doing business, but they specifically empower their salespeople to go out of their way to give customers a unique level of support and service. There are not many stores where you can return something you didn’t buy there, or where you can ask them to get something they don’t stock. At Nordstrom’s you can do either of these things, and they will try to help. Their personal shopper services are amazing, and lead to a very high level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

This works because even though one instance of this level of support may be expensive, the cost of acquiring customers is higher, and the value of a loyal customer is higher still.

In this article I want to focus on one idea that will help you to differentiate in the customer relationship: it’s called the referenceability metric.

The idea is simple. Ask every customer this one question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product / service to your peers?”

Then you score as follows: 1–6 is taken as a no. 7–8 is taken as a maybe, or neutral response, and 9–10 is considered a yes. Ignore the neutral answers, and subtract the no count from the yes count. If your resulting score is positive, you’re in good shape.

This works because a customer who will recommend your offering is a real boost to sales. In fact, it’s been proven that companies with high referenceability grow significantly faster than those with lower referenceability.

Once you have a score, I recommend you ask the people who give you a low score what the key problems or causes of dissatisfaction are. By collecting this information you are in a position to fix the problems and improve satisfaction for the future. This one metric, coupled with a robust and honest approach to continuous improvement will result in innovation in the customer relationship, a higher referenceability score, and a faster growing business.

Tim Barnes