Discovering business opportunities

Veronique Aboghé – Speaker “Negotiation skills” in IFAG Paris, Founder, Executive Coach – CoachingLeader

Veronique is a top professional coach. Her job is assisting the company employees to better perform their work. She works with them on their potential and suggests ways of developping their professional effectiveness. Another side of her coaching activity is the assistance of the career management. As now, it is more than essential to take the career in hands and to think of the employability. It is also important of lliving better the everyday professional life. She is also a consultant in management, assisting the companies in their management transition.
Another part of her job is dedicated to teaching: in commercial school to train the students in negotiation and marketing.

1. How do you see the future of the marketing? Is there some evolution/regression?

The consumer is very powerful: he is much better informed than ever. He is more demanding as he lives in a world where the infinity of choice arises.
He is at ease in all the channels of communication and he uses them all. He is extremely reactive, he takes part fully by delivering his opinion (blog, forum, wiki…) about the products offered to him.
 He is so much at ease in his channels. He can do without traditional marketing, as he uses other platforms of social networking as my space (the musical tubes are imposed by the artists not by the houses of disc not by the advertizing) or facebook. Thus the word of mouth has become very important and the consumer shares his experience with the rest of the community.
The only evolution I see more than ever, is that the consumer is in control and it’s out of a question to try to manipulate him.

2. How has the customer changed? Its loyalty? Its purchase behavior?

The customer is well-informed of all or at least he knows the ways to get informed. The customer has extremely up-to-date information. He has all the tools to compare. He goes from the search mode for information (Google helped much for that) to search for conversation (ask at LinkedIn, forum, blog) and shares knowledge (wiki).
He’s less responding to publicity for example and more attentive with the opinions of the other consumers.

3. Do we, the marketers forget, something in our everyday dialogue with the customer?

Yes the marketers have lost of their all-power. They are not any more those who know. They must rework over and over their contact with the customer without losing sight of the fact their fundamental. It is necessary more than ever to walk in the shoes of the consumers and to work his empathy. The brands will not be able to have the “hitting” force on the consumer. 85% of the Web content comes from private individuals. The only way that the marketers can follow this change and to start talking to the customer is to go on his blog, or its space myspace, facebook. Some marketers did it- in particular in virtual worlds like Second Life. And that continues. It is a kind of marketing one to one but à la mode Web 2.0. The consumers appreciate now and feel appreciated to form part of a social network. However something still belongs to the marketer the intelligence of the dream: the capacity to keep surprising, to make the consumers dream and to renovate the possible.
 

4. How the process of “the negotiation” has changed with the years?

The negotiation is more and more an intelligent agreement and less a ratio of force sterile. “I win because you also win on the long term”. Instead of sharing the cake lets make a bigger  one. That requires a way back to the human values of listening, attention and a great amount of creativity.

Comments(0)