Below is a summary of my thoughts to this Harvard Business Review article I came across written in March 2009.
I found it as relevant today as it was during the previous recession. I’ve included my perspective on why I think it’s important below, with a link to the full article at the bottom.
Well-worn platitudes like “Think Different” are cliche.
The boom in SaaS and technology gave rise to the power of storytelling. Companies like Drift and Zuora made sure we didn’t feel like we were being left behind. The old versus the new framework is powerful. But in a downturn, we can also “provoke” our customers.
Tell your customers what to worry about rather than trying to figure out what’s distressing them.
Sybase was a data management and mobility company. In 2008, business for financial services companies all but dried up.
They used their meeting time to tell customers that they were failing to look at risk in an integrated way. At that time, financial institutions had separate systems to assess the risk. Separate systems for credit cards, commercial lending, mortgages, fixed income, commodities and derivatives.
Hindsight’s 2020. What now seems obvious wasn’t the case back then. They told companies that they needed to bring risk positions together into a single view.
They helped paint the picture and scale of the threat during the financial crisis. That was the basis to sell their new Risk Analytics Platform. A new tool for integrating risk management. To clients who weren’t bothered by the lack of one in the past.
This was ‘provocation’ based selling at its finest.
You can see the full article here
https://hbr.org/2009/03/in-a-downturn-provoke-your-customers