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Going wide – or going deep?

5 May 2009 | No Comments | posted by admin | in Sales

What is your sales strategy?

Many companies when they begin to build their solution and put together their business case they focus a great deal of attention on things like analysts reports, industry estimates, etc. to try and quantify the opportunity that exists for their solution. However in many ways using this data and approaching things this way leads you into a strategy of going “wide” with your product or service. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however it is important to know the differences between the two different strategies, and to make a conscious decision about which one is truly right for you.

Going “wide” relates to having one product or service to sell, and the strategy is to sell it to as many people as you possibly can. For example there are over 1 Billion people in China….so you may build your business case on “if only 1% of China’s population” bought our solution, then it would mean we would be rich . The data required for this type of calculation can be pulled from many different areas, however the foundation is that you are looking to sell your product or service once, and depending upon your solution there may be some reoccurring revenue from things like yearly maintenance, etc.

Now, if your strategy is to go “deep”, then it is not about how many new customers but rather how much can you sell to one customer? For example you may offer a solution that can have an impact on various parts of your customers company or you have a suite of stand alone products that will allow you to up-sell your customers to meet several of their requirements. A simple example of this is the Microsoft office suite. In the beginning you could buy Microsoft Word all by itself. Most people needed a word processor. However, the accounting department, they needed some way to represent their data and they worked with numbers and calculations all day long so they needed Microsoft Excel. The Sales team and the Executive team often did presentations to clients and investors….so they needed PowerPoint as well. I may be really dating myself as today I do not even think you can buy the different Microsoft components separately. The point is that the strategy of Microsoft was to go “deep” with their solutions. By going deep it allowed them to sell to all parts of a company and often to sell more than just one component to the various parts of the their clients organizations.

Again there is no right or wrong strategy here…just different ones. It is important for you to know the differences in the two strategies and to determine what is best for you. With each strategy there are benefits and drawbacks that need to be considered. For example in today’s economy you have a greater chance of success selling more into accounts where you already have some traction and an install base (going deep). However, with a “wide” strategy typically your cost of sales is a bit lower as it is often more of a commodity type of sale, and you may not be as concerned about hiring a sales team to build long term relationships with clients. So, what is your sales strategy? Is it working for you? And finally….is there a way to go “wide” and “deep” with your product or service?