Niche Marketing in Executive Search

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Niche Marketing in Executive Search
The Box
Your Thinking is Here.
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Who Needs New Customers?
Fact Proprietary products reduce client
attrition and improve client attraction.
Harvard Business School estimates that the
average business loses 10-30 of its customer
base every year. The average Fortune 500 company
expires in 40 years!
Four year company growth rate 7
Assume you have 100 customers. The normal
customer attrition, defection, and inactivity
rate is 10 per year in many industries. If you
wish to grow your customer base by 7 per year,
how many NEW accounts must you acquire?
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New Product Development
Make what you sell, or Sell what you make?
Your Clients

or
your Product?
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Become a Sultan of S.W.O.T.
See handouts
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How to SWOT your Clients
1. Look beyond the obvious.
2. Think holistically about your clienteles
business.

• Dont be afraid to tread into new functional
  areas.

4. Realize that all problems are
opportunities.
5. Your offer should not be perfect to
roll-out to your Visionary clients.
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Inside the Mind of Your Clientele
Pragmatists Stick with the herd!
Conservatives
Hold on!
Visionaries
Get ahead of the herd!
Skeptics
No way!

Early
All clients have different appetites for bold new
service offerings.
Early Majority
Late Majority
Laggards
Adopters
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Early Adopters The Visionaries

• Primary Motivation
• Gain dramatic competitive advantage via
  revolutionary breakthrough
• Key Characteristics
• Great imaginations for strategic applications
• Attracted by high-risk, high-reward propositions
• Will commit to supply the missing elements
• Perceive order-of-magnitude gains not so
  price-sensitive
• Challenges
• Want rapid time-to-market
• Demand high degree of customization and support

Key Role Fund the development of the early market
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Early Majority Pragmatists

• Primary Motivation
• Gain sustainable productivity improvements via
  evolutionary change
• Key Characteristics
• Understand real-world issues and tradeoffs
• Focus on proven applications
• Prefer market leaders
• Challenges
• Insist on good references from trusted colleagues
• Want to see the solution in action first.

Key Role Gatekeeper to the mainstream market
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Its Obvious Whom to Target
vs.
Visionaries
Pragmatists

• Adventurous
• Early buy-in attitude
• Think big
• Independent of the herd
• Spend opportunistically
• Think Pragmatistsare pedestrian

• Prudent
• Wait-and-see
• Manage expectations
• Part of the herd
• Spend to budget
• Staying power

Client references are the key to growth.
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Deploy the Beachhead Strategy
Pragmatists Stick with the herd!
Conservatives
Hold on!
Align with Credible Visionaries
Skeptics
No way!

Develop your product with Credible Visionaries,
and introduce it to the Pragmatists who respect
them.
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Technical Buyer
RULE 1 When the needs are well defined the
Economic Buyers influence is strong. Price and
multiple vendors are the key issues.
Economic Buyer
Key Influencer
User
Business Sponsors are unconcerned with price.
They have no concept of what your services cost.
All they care about is a solution to their
problem. You cant develop a new product with
just the Economic Buyer.
Align yourself with multiple interests within
your clients firm.
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Define the Business Sponsors Ideal
Again Proprietary products reduce client
attrition and improve client attraction.
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Basic Questions for Technical Buyers Key
Influencers

• What do you want? (stated in the positive)
• What will having that do for you?
• How will you know when you have it?
• How will I know when you have it?
• Where, when, and with whom do you want it?
• What stops you from having it already?
• How will your desired outcome affect other areas
  of your business?
• What resources do you already have that will
  contribute to getting your outcome?
• What additional resources do you need in order to
  get your outcome?
• How are you going to get there?

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How to Partner with Visionaries

• Show an ROI. Put your offering in the context of
  how the client will save with your solution over
  time. Use spreadsheets to quantify your value
  proposition. Use the clients numbers so your
  analysis is correct in their eyes.

• Pilot the service with a key thought-leader in
  exchange for a letter of endorsement on their
  letterhead.

• Learn, iterate, and prove concept.

Train your people. Your people must have the
ability to think holistically about the Clients
business.
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Visionary Hot Buttons
1. Password protected areas of your site.
2. Alternative billing plans that reflect their
involvement in product development.

• Ancillary services that get to the root of their
  problems or help them mitigate risks.

4. Special web tools resources and other
high-touch benefits like Roundtables.
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Niche Marketing Musts

• Name your method for solving the problem (like
  Euclidian Geometry)

• Develop a Tag Line that quickly sums up your USP
  (like Dominos Delivers)

• Use Referral Incentive Pricing X or
  (X 500) 3 written referrals

• Write articles to establish yourself as a thought
  leader. See PubList for magazines that can help
  you get coverage.

• Learn as much as you can about your area of
  specialization in multiple industries. Bookmark
  obsessively! Give away free resources to
  establish yourself as a problem solver.

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Projected Cash Flows
Good News The NPVs are positive
Breakeven
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