Monthly Archives: June 2013

Enriching Insights through Integration

Big data is an unparalleled source of rich insights. Integrating multiple sources of information enriches the insights and makes them stronger and more actionable. Twitter and Facebook, the face of social networks, provide great deal of information that can provide good insights. But insights get richer when you span your horizons and look at diverse sources of information like blogs, videos, communities, forums and so on. Different sources provide different perspectives. Each have their strengths when it comes to information. They compliment each other. When everything is brought together, playing field is leveled, and analysis is done across platforms, the insights you get are in-depth, self validating and actionable.

Online sources by themselves provide great insights. These insights can be made even stronger when mapped across other sources of information. For example if you span the horizons further and bring in Point of Sales data, you can get actionable insights on how sales process can be enhanced. If you go wider and look at customer support data, you can add another dimension to the market insights which can be used in product innovation and  development.

The basic idea is to provide companies with sharp and actionable insights that can help them improve their business processes and better serve their customers. With information overcrowding it becomes frustrating and overwhelming to deal with the data and get the jist out of it. Every data source provides a lens that adds value. It provides you the capability to unearth something that can make your customers love you more. It gives you early warning signals to avoid a crisis. It points out gaps in your consumer outreach efforts to better allocate your resources. What you need is to bring all the data together, analyze it and get actionable insights. That’s exactly what we strive to do at MavenMagnet!

Say no to free trials

When you are in the business of enterprise sales and you are selling something new, the most common proposition you get from your client is to do a free trial. From the client’s perspective, it may sound logical because they are trying you out. The bigger the client, more lucrative the free trial sounds. But there are a few key reasons why free trials just don’t work.

First, in enterprise business, free has no value. If you are giving something away for free, the chances are it is not going to be used. The client is going to pay much more attention at something they have paid for because they are much better off justifying to themselves the product for which they shelled out some money from their budgets.

Second, if you give away a water-down product to the client because you are doing it for free, you are anchoring your capabilities there from the perspective of the client. If you claim to move mountains but turn a stone in the free trial, it will be really hard for you to convince your client that you do have the capabilities to move mountains. This is a lose-lose scenario for both your client and you. Your client is not getting the real meat and is not satisfied by your product. You are taking a hit in doing whatever you are doing and not able to convince your client to trust you to go for the real product.

A much better approach is to do a “pilot” for a discounted price with your client. You might not make money in this round, or even end up losing some, but this will make them comfortable to try it out for a price where you are not giving it away and at the same time making your client comfortable as they are taking a smaller risk on a new thing. You might lose some business by not giving it away for free the first time around, but it will make sure whoever is getting it is going to put your product to use and increase the probability of engaging with you in the next phase.