Credibility

I am picking out a very interesting discussion from my Group for an open discussion on our blog.

" What do you answer when a Customer asks this?

How can you commit quality of your service/product when your company is only a month old?

How do you setup your company's credibility in front of a prospective customer, when your company is only a month old and that customer is the first for any given particular industry vertical? "

A few suggestions that came up during that discussion were...

• Let them know you are knowledgale, but you will also do your homework if you dont have the right answer
• Ask for small projects and grow the business with time.
• Strong professional collateral illustrating your products/services benefits and value added preposition.
• Strong sales people who know how to approach prospects, preferrablly with a strong network of contacts and knowledge to the industry specific area you are trying to pentrate, (that will involve serious recruiting efforts or headhunting for at least one or two persons depends on your sales target quota, adding to them at least 1 presales engineer)
• A good product/service that can be positioned in a focused market and has a roadmap that will continue to enhance its benefits inreturn for a reasonable after sales expense the customer will bear later on.
• Market positioning in terms of pricing. if you want to compete, and already have a strong competiton in that specific industry focus, I suggest starting off with small and medium size companies whom are in demand for the product/services you have but are price sensitive to bigger brand names. Thus you would consider targeting the SME with a reasonable price range, target, sell and implement, provide high quality of service and then start expanding to target larger enterprises after you have accumulated the required experience and customer list.

I somehow feel that these things come much later. The basic things one can do at the start are...

1. Inform your entire network of people about what you wish to achieve through this venture.
2. Inform all prospective clients on what principles you would stick by through all times.
3. Inform all prospective clients on how you propose to deliver the product/ service and what milestones to expect in what time frame
4. Ensure complete transparency in all transactions with the prospective client.

At the end of the day the values a business can be built on remain constant...honesty, integrity, trust, quality, people, customers...

What do you guys think...

Six questions for Dr. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi - L K Advani

I have six questions for the Prime Minister and the Congress president on internal security. The people of India deserve answers to these questions because accountability is the cornerstone of democratic governance.

• Although the Union Home Minister and Maharashtra’s Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister were sacrificed after 26/11, why has no commission of inquiry been set up to probe all aspects of the Mumbai terror attacks? The BJP demands a high-level judicial inquiry that will not only unearth what went wrong but also recommend ways of preventing recurrence of such attacks.

• If the Union Home Minister was removed for incompetence, at whose behest was he retained in that crucial post for four and a half years?

• In the aftermath of 26/11, senior members of the UPA Governments made statements to the effect that “all options are open” in dealing with Pakistan. Why has the Government not used even the mildest of diplomatic options in the past two months to make Islamabad feel the heat for sponsoring terrorism? And why are senior representatives of the Government speaking in multiple voices on Pakistan?

• The UPA Government enacted two anti-terror laws in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks. The BJP readily supported their passage in Parliament, even though the Congress had stoutly opposed the enactment of POTA in 2002. Will the Prime Minister show the honesty to admit to the nation that it was wrong on the part of his Government to have doggedly maintained for the first four and a half years that no special anti-terror laws were needed and that existing laws were adequate to deal with the menace? And will the Congress president have the honesty to accept that opposition to POTA in 2002 was wrong?

• Now that the term of the UPA Government is coming to an end, will the Prime Minister tell the nation why his Government chose not to implement the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the death sentence on Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the terrorist attack on Parliament? In this context, let me assure the people that a future NDA Government, if elected to power, will recommend Afzal Guru’s execution to the President within the first 100 days. Here is our warning to the merchants of death and their sponsors: “We shall follow a zero-tolerance and zero-compromise approach to dealing with terrorism.”

• Why did the UPA Government deliberately and contemptuously disregard the Supreme Court’s directive with regard to enacting an effective law to curb the influx of Bangladeshis into Assam and other states, which the apex court described as “external aggression”? A future NDA Government will lose no time to implement the apex court’s directive and thereby safeguard the unity and security of India on the eastern front.

Lets Blog Business Development/ Sales

Guys

Lets start blogging articles on Sales/ Biz Dev/ Market Research, etc. You'll can join my group Business Development on Linkedin too. Nice discussions. A snapshot of them...

How do you sell technology at the 'C' Level?

Are you good at Cold Calling? Share your Style and Successes!

What do you consider to be the top 4 or 5 basic steps of any sales process?

The group can be accessed on the following link...

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=25005&trk=anet_ug_grppro