The road map after mastery of solutions marketing

1. What's after Solutions Marketing? If a company has mastered the concepts, methods and capabilities of
solutions marketing, what should they do to take their company to the next level?
Brief background
Global corporate are bracing for the deluge of data that they will have to deal with, over the next few
months, years and decades.
There is incessant chatter over the internet, over the airwaves, in print and in corridors of corporate
power that BIG DATA is here! A global eco-system of interconnected devices, that are becoming
“smarter” and talkative (SIRI!) by the day, with the innate ability to communicate with each other, are
creating a vast network where data is being created at every consumer node.
The value of this data is determined by the ability of the marketer to discern what specific components
of that database are useful for him.
The specific components of the database that are used to make informed decisions by the marketer to
deliver a customized marketing program to a specific consumer , and thus influence his buying decision,
will cease to be a part of science fiction- because predictive analytics will be a reality in the coming days.
It is these data components that will be most useful to the successful solutions marketer of the not so
distant future- question is, will he be able to sieve this useful data from the heap that is before him?
Obviously this task is not meant for the limited computing capacity of the human mind.
Enter the age of intelligent predictive analytics engines
Successful service and product companies have mastered the art of data collection and collation- some
have taken tentative steps towards developing and deploying solutions marketing initiatives, while
others have been successful in implementing solutions marketing programs in their organizations and

2. their business eco-systems. One thing has remained constant in all of this - the final consumer, who
consumes your product or service, and he continues to reign supreme.
After successful implementation of a solutions marketing program, in a product, or a service driven
enterprise, the next frontier would be creating a continued succession of consumer “AHA” moments.
This would be the long term sustainable, comparative and competitive advantage to the successful
solutions marketer.
These “AHA” moments would be built on the capability of the marketer to surprise his target consumer
with offers that will be tailor made for him, and produced to his desired specifications, at a price point
which he had been contemplating. The marketer will be able to build this capability to predict his target
consumers “hidden” need (one that he had been thinking of. NOT Talking of), by running predictive
analytics on a series of data, gathered about his target consumer behavior, from multiple source points
(networked devices). The intelligence component of the predictive analytics engine would be based on
algorithms that will be able to generate possible alternatives on a set of customized offers for the target
consumer, based on “cues” provided by the data generated by the target consumer- these cues could be
descriptive and non-descriptive, and logically connected by the predictive analytics engine to alert the
marketer to an impending impulse for potential purchase by the target consumer.
The ability of the intelligent predictive analytics engine is best described as akin to the “gut feel instinct”
that a seasoned marketer has about a demand for his product- this “gut feel instinct” is built around
years of practical application of management theory in the field, and a series of failures and many
successes.
The synaptic networking of the human mind, mirroring the thinking capacity of the successful solutions
marketer and translating his instinctive “gut feel” for a good pitch, would be replaced and enhanced by
the parallel processing capability of the predictive analytics engine.

3. Why the need for of intelligent predictive analytics engines
Technology diffusion is proving to be very disruptive for product and service providers, who long
believed that their turf was well protected. Consumers are communicating with each other in real time
about products, services and solutions on offer and are able to share information on the features and
value of their respective offers, thus creating peer evaluated benchmarks.
Therefore no solution on offer will be safe from cheap copycats and intellectual property marauders
who will be able to pick on an original idea and quickly turn that into a commodity.
Relationships with consumers/clients will be fickle and prone to constant attack from these copycats.
The smart solution marketer will be one who can keep one step ahead of his competitor and creating a
sustainable comparative and competitive strategic advantage- and this edge will be his by investing in a
proprietary analytics tool that will enable him to custom design offers for his target consumers, before
the consumer comes to him seeking that offer.
The ability to deliver a customized offer to your client, effectively preempting him, will be that crucial
difference between success and failure for the solutions marketer of the future.