Dear Dave:

Our company sells this nifty project management tool to small medical device manufacturers and we’ve got good market share. Then just last month we closed our biggest deal ever selling the PM tool to a telecommunications service provider, where the decision maker there knew our VP of Sales through a previous personal relationship. Now everyone is gung-ho and demanding a full scale marketing and sales blitz into the telecom industry; of course it has to be funded by budget we would otherwise invest in our established medical device customer segment. I’m concerned we’d be sacrificing marketing into a strong and reliable customer segment and taking a risk on a sector we’re not sure is lucrative for our company. Any advice for us?

Signed,

Business Before Pleasure

Dear Business Before Pleasure:

It’s not uncommon for a company experiencing success in one market to suddenly land a customer in another market segment. It happens for a variety of reasons: timing, luck, relationships, opportunity. But no matter what brought you the deal, your product must have been a good fit for the telecom company, unless that decision maker has such a personal relationship with your VP of Sales that he/she is willing to make a bad business decision over it.

Whether your product solves a business challenge for other companies in the telecom sector remains to be seen. Here’s what I would do: start speaking to people in the new sector. First, interview the telecom service provider customer and find out what attracted them to your product: features, benefits, value props, price, support, etc. Then, look for similar decision makers at other companies and call them and ask a few questions about their needs and whether your product is a good fit.

 If you get back positive signs from your initial research, plan a targeted marketing campaign. If medical devices is a mature market for you, then a shift in marketing budget might be in order anyway: markets where you have strong brand visibility and repeated success tend to have momentum of their own; it’s time to re-allocate a percentage of marketing budget to new initiatives.

Here’s three ideas for campaigns that won’t break your budget but should give you a good idea if there is opportunity for your company in the new sector or just opportunity for your VP of Sales to re-kindle a personal relationship with an old friend:

• You might join industry association for a year and reach out to members, attend events, and submit speaking/article proposals.
• Set up keyword pay-per-click ads or sponsor an industry e-newsletter targeted to the telecom sector. Drive prospects to your Web site with a good offer, such as a white paper or Webinar.
• If you have  telemarketing/telesales resources, purchase or rent a list and pound the phones.

In any of these cases, you’ll need to build a sales kit of collateral specifically for this sector. You’ll likely be able to re-purpose existing content for this new audience.

If you start getting some traction in the sector, you can shift more marketing budget to it. If not, someone has been mixing business with pleasure.

 For David Klein Marketing, I’m Dave