Patrick is the CEO at Venafi.
getty
During times of uncertainty—from economic turmoil to workforce hiring challenges to budget cuts—CEOs are under the spotlight. Having worked in private equity (PE) and as a CEO for many years, I’ve had the fortune of working with numerous CEOs and boards, where I’ve seen opportunities that companies can capitalize on for long-term growth and viability.
Outside of my day job as a CEO, I also own a local restaurant in Denver, Colorado, so I have seen firsthand how these two workplaces share similarities when it comes to engaging customers and selling products. This combination of experience has given me broad exposure to what works—and what doesn’t—across markets and organizations of all sizes.
It’s critical to understand the environment your organization is operating in, the market segmentation you’re working to attract and the way that you package communication and engage with said audience. Let’s break this down further.
Understand if you’re in a push or pull environment.
Business leaders must understand if they’re operating in a "push" or a "pull" environment. If you sense you're in a pull environment, invest heavily. If in a push environment, invest cautiously.
For example, it became clear more than a decade ago that, for workplaces, there was a demand for tools like DocuSign to electronically sign documents. DocuSign was adopted quickly across workplaces and expedited the way companies completed documents. This is what I consider a pull situation: When the demand already exists, organizations should invest heavily to capitalize on a growth opportunity.
On the flip side, if you’re in a push situation, you need to invest cautiously. This could be about adopting new tools that don’t have an immediate employee “pull” or adoption. When it comes to push, you need to identify trends and lean on data to make a business change seamless. Is your team using—and loving—the new tools you deployed? If not, reconsider and pivot for future investments.
Segmentation matters.
There’s never going to be one product for the masses. With software sales, for instance, small businesses and enterprises don’t need the same things. The same can be said for the types of customers I work to attract in the restaurant business—market segmentation rings true here, too.
From a business perspective, market segmentation drives business decisions and the ways we communicate with different audiences. This idea has evolved, for example, as it relates to e-commerce. People went from buying locally to now having everything at their fingertips on Amazon globally. E-commerce companies have had to adapt to these desires and needs of their customers over time.
This is also true for IT leaders who have to change the products they’re delivering when new regulatory guidelines come into place. Take the GDPR, for example. It changed the way that products were built and delivered around the world to meet new privacy regulations. The key here is that business leaders must understand who their buyers are and what solutions they need to drive their businesses forward.
Invest in pricing and packaging.
To maintain your customer base's long-term interest, you have to understand how to monetize your buyers’ behavior. You also need to be able to do it at a rate and pace that works for them.
At the restaurant, this applies to marketing happy hour at a specific time for people to enjoy after work and often before dinner. This means affordable cocktails and small bites. And keeping it fresh and ever-changing to ensure the customer keeps coming back for more.
For enterprise sales, some companies like to buy small and scale, some want to land and expand and some want to make central decisions. The reality is that the Global 2000 wants to buy in many different ways. To succeed, you have to match pricing and packaging to your customers’ needs. If you do this well, you will win. If you don’t, you will leave money on the table. I’ve seen this happen over the years: In my experience, the single biggest differentiator in a $1 billion company—beyond market cap—is pricing and packaging.
Conclusion
Going forward, business leaders can focus on these important steps to capitalize on growth moments. First, spot these moments. Next, understand your environment. Then, act on them. When businesses can hone in on the exact market segmentation they’re trying to reach, and cater materials and offerings to their needs, the more likely they’ll be to succeed.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
