Nov 20, 2015 By Tibor Shanto

Making the Black Friday Experience a Success for Your Business

in Cloud, Sales, Retail

For many retailers, Black Friday is a make-or-break point in their fiscal year — there are no second chances. Planning and execution are more crucial than ever — execute the wrong strategy and you’re dead, utilize the right strategy, but mishandle the execution, and you’re still dead. While B2B may not have a given day in the year with the singular significance of Black Friday, there are some parallels, insights, and actions that B2B sellers share with their B2C kin.

A key element of Black Friday is pricing strategy: Some retailers are geared to making up in volume what they sacrifice in revenue. Others will accept lower volume or units sold, but generate greater price and margin, driving better bottom line results.

Core to the above is how vendors choose to distinguish and/or differentiate themselves in the market in an effort to attract customers and revenue. In addition to the pricing strategy, there are other decisions that will dictate which of the two camps they will end in, and by extension, results they will realize on Black Friday and the year in general.

The larger of the two groups looks to win based on a combination of minimal, if any, product or service differentiation, combined with the lower (some pretend competitive) pricing. The second and smaller segment, high product/service differentiation, and higher value for both buyers and sellers. In essence, the decisions and execution comes down to how these vendors view value, how they perceive their customer view value.

We are all familiar with the expression “perception is reality,” and whether B2B or B2C, buyers are driven by their perceptions. Some look at purchasing as an event, others as an experience. How sellers align with these perceptions will drive their annual and Black Friday success.

Customers whose view of value can be summed up by “wow, I can’t believe I can get this at this price,” will likely gravitate to those vendors willing to play the pricing game. It’s not viewed as much of an experience, and it yields little, if any, customer loyalty — everything is geared to one event, one shot, Black Friday: Throw everything at the buyer and see what sticks.

Others who seek a different and more complete experience, where the purchase itself is but one element of the whole, will focus less on price and a single event like Black Friday or Boxing Day, and more on the ongoing experience with the vendor, before and after the purchase.

Look at auto manufacturers. Some will emphasize MPG, length of warranty, and feature set, these are heavily augmented by time or season-related sales or rebates. Then there are those manufacturers who strictly focus on the driving experience and the perception people will have of you as an owner of that model. They tend to highlight the thrill of driving, how “the hair on your neck will stand as you accelerate.” Rarely is their call to action price driven; it’s all based on perception and experience and what you’ll miss if you don’t own that experience.

In the end, it is not about right or wrong — both types of vendors fail and succeed. It is about planning and decisions taken long before Black Friday and squarely on the execution.