Warning: do not task your sales team to prospect for clients that have the right ‘cultural fit’…
We were speaking with a client about the types of customers they want to attract to their B2B business, and rather than weighting factors like market segment and industry vertical, they focused instead on cultural fit. It’s a growing trend that companies are not just seeking new business, but new business partners—a coming-together of organizations that aspire to similar futures, approach their challenges with like mindsets and share analogous values. The discussions are vivacious and engaging. And why wouldn’t they be? It is, after all, not just a goal of marketing, but a tradition of human inquiry to grapple with the indefinable and to seek connections that transcend the merely physical.
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prospecting,
sales,
cultural fit,
organizational culture
For a start, they’re large for my height. I’m 5’6” tall and my feet are size ten. I can never predict what a shoe will look like on my foot until it’s been shod onto my clod-hopper. The daintiest slipper can transform me into Ronald McDonald. As a consequence, I don’t shop for shoes, I hunt. Like a special operative. I try on shoes quickly and furtively. It can be an emotionally trying experience.
But apparently thousands and thousands of consumers take a different approach to shoe shopping. Last year Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer, reached a $1 billion milestone in annual revenues. This is the same Zappos.com that Amazon announced recently that it would be purchasing for $900 million.
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branding
The name Alice reminds me of the housekeeper on "The Brady Bunch." I cannot hear that name without thinking of a female embodiment of a real-life Mr. Clean powerhouse. She was always there when needed—and even before the family knew they needed her. She cleaned up messes around the Brady house and in the family’s personal lives as well. She had a solution for just about everything.
I’m guessing the branders of the new e-commerce site, Alice, were also TV-watching kids from the 70s. With the tagline “Everybody needs an Alice,” the site promises to revolutionize the way people shop for household goods, and gives them an opportunity to get products straight from manufacturers. By eliminating the middleman and any retail margin, Alice is able to offer prices that are 20 to 30 percent lower than other online stores. In Alice’s own words from the site, “Our mission is to give people a better way to buy the goods that keep their homes running. We have big plans to disrupt the traditional retail market. Everything we do is focused on empowering our customer.”
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branding,
interactive,
ecommerce,
consumer relationships
In an economic downturn, it figures that consumers are going to cut back. But an interesting trend in contrast to previous downturns is that a large proportion of consumers were already cutting back in anticipation of their income declining. This finding was just one of many interesting insights Booz & Company discovered in their in-depth survey of 1,000 households conducted in September of 2008.
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brand-loyalty
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