It is great to be back on the Technology Marketing Center Leader’s blog for the start of 2009. I will be with you for the next 4 weeks during which time I would like to discuss the sales channel as a component of whole product strategy and how disruptive technology can create a need for you to rethink your sales model. At least that is what I found to be the case in my situation.
Specifically, I will touch on the following lessons learned:
- Discovering how disruptive technology changes the point of decision, buying criteria, and purchasing process (whole product solution).
- Realizing the impact the new customers will have on the channel and distribution model.
- Adjustments my group found to be necessary in the selling model to capture the benefits of disruptive technology and deliver a whole product.
In my case, the disruption I was harnessing was an emerging application of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the supply chain as an alternative solution to bar coding. (If you want to more about related strategy issues in the case of a new RFID product, see my TMC case study.) However, it does not really matter what the disruptive technology is. By definition, disruption means that the old rules including channel will more than likely not apply to the success of the whole product strategy. Through my experiences with the disruption of RFID, I will attempt to share with you over the next few weeks how our sales and distribution model was affected and what impact it had on our strategy going forward. We will investigate the symptoms that lead to our discovery of a need for change and how we went about responding to the challenge. I hope you will be able to glean some insight from what I have to share from our venture into RFID over the next few weeks.
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