Matt Mayfield

Un-Earned Premium Status?

Bookshelf showing premium status concept

It seems that almost every company I meet believes that they have a premium product or service and I rarely meet companies willing to concede they are anything but premium. What if a self-described Premium company was actually not premium, how could they know?

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Matt Mayfield

Tech Stack for Sales

Sales Tech Stack Screenshot

I regularly get requests about what tools I use for selling B2B with new products yet create a system that can scale.

These tools are set up around a small sales team, B2B, and non-regional customer base. For larger scale customers & sales teams, all roads lead to the Salesforce ecosystem, but for those starting this ecosystem is too expensive and too complex. Even if your company has an existing Salesforce.com-class tech stack, there is an argument for using this cheaper and more agile tools in the beginning as you are trying to figure things out. All of these tools are either free or below $50/month to use.

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Matt Mayfield

The Premium Pricing Trap

What would happen if you had an irrationally high selling price?

I love mind experiments. Some years ago I started to wonder if our price had become irrationally high. Christensen's disruption theory explains how companies can chase the premium segment of the market and be blind to an at-first inferior competitor until they become irrelevant. How would we know? Was it possible that our premium pricing and positioning had gone too far? If we had an entirely wrong price (too high) and yet still had customers and new sales, what would the business look like?

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Matt Mayfield

Product / Business Phases

Products and Business areas live and die with defined phases of a life cycle. Each phase has its own optimizations and traps.

Long ago, I worked with an engineering manager (Gregor) with a fantastic intuitive sense for business. One of his product area manager was presenting the budget for the next year and was planning reduced margin and modest growth. Gregor forced the product manager to choose one of three modes and behave accordingly. (and I have used this ever sense)

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