Harm Reduction Centers Beachhead Strategy
If we consider Harm Reduction Centers as the Beachhead Market, then our eventual objective is to get them to purchase our product. Step one in that process is learning how, when, and why they make purchases. Below is a guideline to moving from interviews, to understanding their purchase decisions, to building the necessary materials and proper times to engage.
Parts of the Process
Step 1: Interview
Get an understanding of our target
Step 2: Offer Questionnaire
Validate target interests quantitatively
Step 3: Decision Cycle
Understand how our target makes decisions
Step 4: Offer Ladder
Create materials to aid in every step of the decision process
Interview Template for Harm Reduction Centers
The interview has four parts, the introduction, identifying the target decision maker and the influencers in the decision chain, understanding the value we offer and how that fits into the pain points and priorities of the company, and how we get our offering into their hands by understanding where they get information.
Introduction
This is the time to establish credibility, and empathy. Here is an example introduction. 1
I’m working on an NIH project (credibility) to track and stop overdoses. We’re talking to treatment centers all over the country to understand them better. Is there anyone I can talk to for 10 minutes to learn more about your program?
Target
Who is involved in decision process, and getting an understanding of the org chart. We’ve started understanding the market, now it’s time to understand the inside of each organization as well.
- When it comes to decisions to purchase, who is involved in the decision process?
- Who has the final say in purchase decisions? Is there anyone else who influences the decision? Do the final users make or influence the decision?
- How does the decision process work? How long does it usually take for a purchase decision to be made?
- What do you see your role being within that decision process?
- When you or your team are researching solutions, how do you find information to make a decision? Where do you hang out?
- How are they funded?
- Where does funding come from?
- Target Segmentation: Volume, Frequency, Probability, Recurring We’re essentially trying to understand who, financially are our best customers:
| Low Frequency | High Frequency | |
|---|---|---|
| High Volume | ||
| Low Volume |
Value
What they value in our offering?
What are the priorities of the organization?
What keeps you up at night (3-5)?
What is the best thing we could do to address one or more of the things that keeps you up at night?
what are 3 qualities of a business that enables addressing issues, for example, if they write grants to get naloxone, will they need help writing grants for our product? Do we need to provide copy that they can insert into those grant proposals? When they write grants, are they just for naloxone or is there a suite a services they are trying to fund?
how important is each quality?
what would you tell us to stop doing? start doing? How can we change the product to better fit their circumstances?
who would you say are our competitors for your business?
How do we differ from those competitors, in your view?
Offer
If we were eventually to try to sell, how do we find companies like this one? When would be the best time to contact them in the year based on funding cycles, etc.
Where do they hang out?
What messaging resonates with them?
When would be the best time to get the product into their hands? What are the funding cycles and what resources to do they use to secure funding?
What is the Burning Platform2?
Wrap Up
This is the time to repeat what you heard, ask clarifying questions to make sure you understand what was said, and to leave with some takeaways and a happy feeling at the end.
Clarifying Questions
Is there anyone else I should talk to so that I can better understand the space?
Thank you so much for your time, we’re going to be working on this for the next year, and we’d love to get more feedback as we move towards production, would you like to be kept up to date about our progress?
Offer Questionnaire for Harm Reduction Centers
After we’ve gathered sufficient information about our target market, we need to understand how to reach more of them and when to reach more of them. This is a good time to send a survey out to 100s or even 1000s of centers.
Description
On a scale from 0-10 how important?
When is it important (Early, Middle, Late in process)?
Third Party
- [__],[E M L]: Personal References
- [__],[E M L]: Trusted Testimonials
- [__],[E M L]: Webinars Featuring Experts
- [__],[E M L]: Third Party White Papers
- [__],[E M L]: Social Media
- [__],[E M L]: Other
Company
- [__],[E M L]: Website
- [__],[E M L]: Webinars w/ Company Executives
- [__],[E M L]: Company White Papers
- [__],[E M L]: Buying Guide
- [__],[E M L]: List of Features and Benefits
- [__],[E M L]: Case Studies
- [__],[E M L]: Sales Rep
- [__],[E M L]: Catalogs
- [__],[E M L]: Brochures
- [__],[E M L]: Company Led Demos
- [__],[E M L]: Other
Self-Serves
- [__],[E M L]: Competitive Comparisons
- [__],[E M L]: Samples or Trials
- [__],[E M L]: Calculators/ROI
- [__],[E M L]: Self-Service Demonstrations
- [__],[E M L]: Other
Harm Reduction Decision Cycle
All organizations might not be ready to make a purchase. We need to understand if we need to educate a center on the industry, the competition, or our product.
1. Awareness of Problem
Hmmm … I’ve got a problem. At some point, buyers decide they need to seek a solution for a business problem they have. At that point, their need becomes an active need, and depending on the urgency, the buyer is motivated to start exploring whether a reasonable solution can be found. Reasonable, in this case, can mean many things, including affordable, effective, timely, and manageable from a risk tolerance point-of-view.”
2. Solution Education
“What’s available to help me solve my problem?” At the solution education stage, buyers are trying to frame their problem to see if a reasonable solution exists. They need to understand the lay of the land and will talk with colleagues, possibly read analyst and industry reports, and generally try to educate themselves on what is possible, often developing a list of requirements along the way. Clearly, the most opportune time to insert yourself into the Decision Cycle is stage two, if you’re able to do so in an unbiased, helpful fashion.”
3. Vendor Education
“Which solutions are credible and relevant?” At the vendor education stage, buyers are actively exploring which vendors offer a solution that seems to address their list of requirements. Still heavily web-based, their research is intended to cast a wide net to make sure that they’re not missing what might be the best solution for their business. This stage might be considered creating the vendor “long list.”
4. Vendor Consideration
“Which are the best solutions for my needs?” At the vendor consideration stage, buyers are interested in creating a vendor “short list”—vendors who seem most capable of addressing the buyer’s requirements in the most reasonable manner. At this stage, buyers will often review peer reports, seek easily found references and testimonials, download analyst reports, and visit company websites in order to compare vendors and product specifications. Some buyers will reach out to the companies at this stage to begin a conversation. When this happens, it’s your sales team who should be having that conversation.”
5. Vendor Selection
“I choose …” At stage five, most buyers are ready to speak with their candidate vendors. At this point, your sales team needs to be fully engaged because the buyer is moving toward a purchase decision. That said, in larger companies the purchase decision may still take months to complete as vendors are put through a selection process often involving a “decision team” of several individuals within the buyer company.”
Harm Reduction Offer Ladder
Once we understand how the decision process progresses, and what our customers need and when, we can start to develop materials for each touchpoint in the purchasing journey.
| Touch | Offer | Lead Grade | Decision Cycle Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Custom Analysis | A | Decision Support |
| 7 | Aids: ROI, Forecasts | A | Decision Support |
| 6 | Samples | B | Vendor Consideration |
| 5 | Video Testimonial | B | Vendor Consideration |
| 4 | Webinar | C | Vendor Ed |
| 3 | Case Studies | C | Vendor Ed |
| 2 | Generic Buying Guide | D | Solution Ed |
| 1 | Industry Studies | D | Solution Ed |
Footnotes
Testing this with a few hurried people, I’ve shortened this as much as possible, and have removed any notion of empathy.↩︎
Burning Platform. Even if our product is better, there will be some effort to make a switch. What’s the criteria needed to make that switch? A Burning Platform is a concept from B2B sales where the potential customer is standing on a platform that is literally on fire… what does it take to make them jump? In our situation, it might be something like “our funding requires us to have a recovery rate of 25 percent. Currently we’re losing 40 percent to ODs and if this continues, we’re going to have to shut down”.↩︎