SPEXOR - Robin

You’re Robin, a marketing-focused executive working to drive innovation in a large corporation.

 

For the past year, you have been partnering with Sidney in co-supervising a project called SPEXOR. Sidney is a product-focused executive, and you two should make a good team in elevating ideas to their greatest potential through critical strategic and creative decisions.

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SPEXOR is a B2B software to be marketed to businesses in various sectors. This is not part of your company’s main business. But the company recently decided to expand to these new side-ventures mainly to reduce risks and increase profits in the medium term.

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When SPEXOR started, hopes were high, and forecasts were promising. There were several good reasons for this optimism: The technology of the product is advanced and better than other alternatives in the market. The product team Sidney is managing is competent and well-prepared. And your marketing team’s research had confirmed that the market has been waiting for improvements in the product for some time.

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After months of development and small experiments, the first major test with the product took place 4 months ago. There were some glitches and problems, but these are expected and can be dealt with. As a result, both of you were motivated to seek customers in the market.

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Yet, the last 4 months were discouraging, to say the least.

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Several companies showed initial interest but backed out after a few short meetings. You asked them the reasons, but didn’t get a reliable answer. They ultimately all preferred a more well-known brand.

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Then a medium-sized retailer showed the first real enthusiasm to buy the product. After lengthy negotiations, they were ready to switch to your solution instead of adopting the familiar but less impressive products by existing players.

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Unfortunately, however, the deal fell through at the last minute, as one of those existing major competitors did something unexpected. They cut their prices to such low levels that competing with them became impossible. They were essentially making a loss and promising future updates until they run you out of the market.

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You subsequently lost three other potential clients in the following months due to the same reason. You also checked and realized that you have already invested 1,7 times the amount both Sidney and you had intended to invest at the beginning.

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As things were not going according to the plan, you consulted another manager you trust at your company. This person knows about the software business where SPEXOR is operating, but hasn’t been involved in the project. Their advice is that you need to pivot as soon as possible. What happened so far suggests that customers are simply too price-sensitive… much more than your market research had indicated. And the competitor, who is aggressively cutting prices has deep pockets. Your manager friend fears that the competitor may take this price war too far, even if it loses them money in the short run.

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All of this brings us to today. Being a product-focused person, Sidney may not know about these facts and thus could have a different perspective. You called a meeting where you’ll need to make a difficult decision together.

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• Should you commit more resources (time, money, effort) to SPEXOR as it is?

• Or should you quit or pivot significantly from the current path to an alternative objective

 

Your current position agrees more with the second option, but you’ll need to be persuasive. Quitting may be damaging to Sidney’s and product team’s reputation, and pivoting would involve creatively changing the project’s scope or function almost completely over the next months. Yet you’ll need Sidney’s input and expertise on how to proceed and then communicate such a strategy.

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How would you discuss and approach such a “quit vs. commit” decision, and in general how to make the decision whether to revise a specific objective?