1. IRG: Strategies for Gaining Market Share in a Difficult Economy While we're not expecting you to put each of these twelve strategies to work, we're hoping that a few might stimulate your thinking as you make your plans for 2010, a year which may be brighter than 2009 but still with its complications: 1. Change your value proposition to suit the times - Customers need to see very strong value props. 2. Adjust your packaging and/or price point - You might still be using a pricing strategy that made sense in early 2008 but doesn't suit today's environment. 3. Go for market share - Market share is cheap right now. Do what's necessary to gain adoption and win over new customers/use cases, even if it means chasing smaller deals that can grow later on. 4. Hire your competitors' top sales performers - They could be frustrated. 5. Focus on the pipeline - Work each deal to its fullest and find ways to win back those that have dropped out. 6. Google Adwords are cheaper now - So use them. 7. Shift more resources to sales - Do the math to see if more feet on the street will pay off. 8. Get new sales team members up to speed in half the time - Makes sense to figure out what slows this down. 9. Get support and engineering teams in front of more customers - It's amazing how effective this can be at winning over new use cases. 10. Sell more to your installed base- Heck, they like you already. 11. Go Vertical - Gives you the ability to develop stronger value propositions and to partner with other vendors to offer more complete solutions for your customers. 12. Track Discounting - It's an early indicator as to whether demand is strengthening or softening. IRG Infrastructure 2.1 Newsletter - December 18, 2009