The Quadrant Solution

by Graham Denton

Here's a useful reference point in designing solutions for a diverse customer base. Drawn from The Quadrant Solution, by Howard Stevens and Jeff Cox, it relies on the familiar distinction between "tech" and "touch" to divide your marketing opportunities into four basic categories. Stevens and Cox begin by defining "tech" and "touch" in terms that are focused rigorously on customer perception.

A high tech sales scenario isn't one in which the product is "inherently" sophisticated (there's really no such thing, they imply), but one in which the customer perceives it to be so. If the customer is inexperienced with a given product, then the situation is defined as high-tech. If the customer is experienced, it's low tech. So a tricycle would be high-tech to a child who's never ridden one, while satellite communications could be low-tech to an IT professional.

That's one axis of distinction. A second axis divides customers into those who perceive your product as complex and those who see it as relatively simple. To explain the product to the first group, you must stay in constant touch with them; that's a situation that the authors define as high-touch. In a low-touch situation, you don't need that contact. The customer has mastered the complexity, and doesn't need hand-holding.

Now, if you bring these two axes together, you are able to divide the world of marketing into four quadrants, each of them with its own "characteristic" type of customer, and each of them suggesting a different required solution.

High-Tech/Low-Touch Marketing. In this quadrant, customers are "technologically challenged" and often impatient. They're willing to accept a high degree of uncertainty, and they need the salesperson to provide an emotional push, to convince them that the product they're considering is really needed. Like most people just getting involved in an exciting new experience &150; whether it's Internet business or riding a tricycle &150; most high-tech/low-touch customers aren't that interested in the product itself; what they want is the theater and the newness of the potential experience. The bottom-line way to sell here: "The benefits are worth it."

High-Tech/High-Touch Marketing. In this quadrant, customers are also technologically unsophisticated, but they know it and they want to correct that shortcoming. They have little or no internal expertise to get your product running properly, so they seek &150; and probably will demand &150; exceptional support. They want the most advanced system they can afford plus consulting "bundled in." What people in this quadrant want to hear: "We'll give you results."

Low-Tech/High-Touch Marketing. When customers reach this point in the learning curve, they've already developed some internal expertise, so the product that was once so daunting now seems less so. But they still need your help and support, in an ongoing way, to fulfill their goal of building a stable relationship. You need to keep them apprised of new technical developments, but even more than that you've got to show that you care about their business. Dedicated account management is the name of the game, because low tech/high touch people are intensely service oriented. What you tell customers in this quadrant: "We're the best provider."

Low-Tech/Low-Touch Marketing. This is the easiest of customer quadrants to sell into, but it's also the easiest to lose because of heavy competition. It's commodity selling. Customers see the product as easy to understand and not requiring much after-sale support, and because of that they're usually looking for a bargain price. As long as the product is "standard" or it meets "basic specs," they will be interested in considering it, few questions asked. Your bottom line pitch to these people: "We're the best buy."

This is only one way to segment your customer base, and like all such "quadrant" methods it's more suggestive than definitive. But you can probably recognize your own customers in one or more of these quadrants, and understanding why they're positioned there can help you in considering appropriate solutions.

The Quadrant Solution, by the way, is a rarity in the sales literature. The publisher, AMACOM, packaged it as "a business novel that solves the mystery of sales success," and while it will never challenge John Grisham on the bestseller lists, it takes a refreshingly audacious approach to the field of business writing. It reads like a Forbes case study as written by Raymond Chandler.