Know-How Exchange : Strategy

I agree with you completely. Assuming ALL you customers use your product and/or service for the same reason is...well...very poor judgement, to say the least.

Segmenting into groups that may have different benefits is the best way to determine where to focus your marketing efforts and futre devolopments.

Regarding the telco market, I have a persnal observation that many other may share:

I utilize my cell phone to dial a phone number, talk, and listen...that's it. That's all I want. The "menu" button has only been pushed accidently.

In contrast, I have many colleages who insist on buying the biggest ( or should I say smallest..LOL) phone that has everything from a digital camera to a can opener built into it. Why do they buy these phones? Some do it to satisfy their "gadget" cravings, while others buy in order to look "cool and sophisticated"..."hip" in front of friends and clients.

Finding which one of each of these people play a role in the market with regards to your product can be invaluable!

Anyway, here are a few links as well that may help you devise a sound argument with your CEO:

https://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jan122004/eb2.asp

https://www.diveweb.com/telecom/features/026.01.htm

Good Luck!!

P.S. AndrewS is most likely to give you a good, lengthy response. I beleive telecom is his forte so get ready!!!

I work in the UK telecoms market, and the basic segmentation is:

Consumer
Small Business (<2 employees)
Medium Business (<100 employees)
Corporates (>100+ employees)

Although in reality we have the split on revenue of account rather than purely number of customers, but you get the idea.

The segmentation is done like this simply go we can organise the business around the segments.

Consumer - particular requirements that need to be managed by its own business rules, prices, marketing, products and processes etc

All the business customers share common resources (billing platforms, provisioning, installation, and customer services).
The main difference with our business customers is the sales and marketing environment:

- Small Business - telesales and mass marketing
- Medium Businesses - Telephone Account Managers and mass/personalised marketing (NOT 1-1)
- Corporate Businesses - Field Account Manager and 1-1 Marketing

[Corporate businesses also have dedicated Service Management and Pre-Sales Support].

NOTE: We find this works extremely well :-)