Tag Archives: customer focus

The Flawed Perspective of “Go-to-market”: It’s Really “Come-to-market”

If you’re a vendor, it’s not all about you.

Medieval cities, as well as modern yuppified cities, often featured a market. Once a week vendors would congregate in the marketplace to sell their wares, and townspeople and others would go to the market and peruse what was on offer.

One Thursday morning, one prosperous vendor of apples announced to his workers, “Today we are going to GO TO MARKET!”

The trumpeter blew his trumpet, the workers assembled in a line, and the vendor mounted his horse and headed toward the city to GO TO MARKET.

His workers were already pre-briefed with internal sales enablement materials, and the vendor had printed flyers for the townspeople who could read. For the others, there were the trumpets.

Ad forum ire (go-to-market). All images Google Gemini.

Now THAT is how you go to market.

Except that by the time the vendor arrived at the market, seven other vendors were already selling apples at the market and doing a brisk business. The vendor and his wares were ignored, and the trumpets were reluctantly put away.

Too late.

Too late.

Because while everyone planning the go-to-market initiative thought it was all about them, the prospects had other ideas.

Come-to-market

I have read hundreds of product marketing job descriptions, and they all describe the product marketer’s go-to-market duties as spearheading a go-to-market plan, and coordinating with internal departments to ensure the go-to-market runs smoothly.

Never mind the fact that the market itself may have other ideas.

And that the prospects, not the vendors, control whether sales happen.

Because in reality it’s not a GO-to-market exercise.

It’s an exercise in which the vendors COME-to-market to sell their wares to the prospects.

Come-to-market.

It’s about the prospects, not the vendors. (Customer focus.)

The Current State of ANSI INCITS 378 / MINEX III Compliant Fingerprint Template Generators and Matchers

Vendors that develop fingerprint templates and matchers usually develop their own proprietary algorithms, but there is one instance in which the vendors work together.

ANSI INCITS 378-2009 (S2019) specifies a universal fingerprint format, and vendors can develop 378-compatible template generators and matchers.

How are these measured? By NIST’s MINEX III testing.

To find the current results dfor MINEX III compliant template generators and matchers, visit https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/btg/minex-iii-compliant-submissions.

When sorted in NIST default order for a false negative match rate at a given false match rate (“Pooled 2 Fingers FNMR @ FMR≤10-2“), the top vendors include IDEMIA, Innovatrics, and Neurotechnology.

But remember that this only matters when using ANSI INCITS 378 templates. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a vendor’s proprietary template.

So who uses ANSI INCITS 378 templates?

  • Cards and systems based upon Personal Identity Verification (PIV) templates, as specified by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) and FIPS 201.
  • Certain cards using Match-on-Card technology.

But most systems you encounter will NOT use ANSI INCITS 378, so the standard may not matter to you at all.

Do your customers care?

But even if you are deploying systems that use ANSI INCITS 378, your customers don’t care.

They just care about complying with federal regulations for PIV cards.

If you need help stating customer-focused benefits rather than vendor-focused features, turn to Bredemarket’s content-proposal-analysis services for identity, biometric, and technology firms.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

One Specific Ask For Iris Firms

If you’re a marketing leader at an iris biometric firm, this video is for you.

“Locked in the Lens.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

Do you want content, proposal, and analysis product marketing consulting with no learning curve?

Iris firm marketing leaders, visit https://bredemarket.com/mark/.

Daugman.

Two Specific Asks, July 2026

Like I said, specific.

If you’re a marketing leader at a fingerprint biometric firm, don’t waste your time watching this video.

If you’re a marketing leader at a face biometric firm, don’t waste your time watching this video.

But if you’re a marketing leader at an iris or a DNA biometric firm, this video is for you.

Two Specific Asks, July 2026. Music is “Quarterly Close,” Google Lyria, Public Domain.

Iris and DNA firm marketing leaders, visit https://bredemarket.com/mark/.

The Opposite of Customer Focus: Ron Johnson’s J. C. Penney

I’ve talked endlessly about product marketing with a customer focus. For a reason. If your product marketing makes your prospects indifferent, or even worse alienates them, you don’t make money.

J. C. Penney learned this the hard way when it brought in new leadership a decade ago.

“J.C. Penney brought in a bold new CEO. Ron Johnson had already created Apple Store, a chain of physical stores where people flocked to shop.”

I will state the obvious: the clientele at an Apple Store differs ever-so-slightly from J. C. Penney customers. But to be fair, Johnson had also worked at Target.

Yet Johnson’s first move was more suited to people whose idea of a bar included one preceded by the word “genius.”

“And Johnson had a plan for J.C. Penney: Tell customers they don’t have to spend time anymore clipping coupons or waiting for sales to happen. Instead, the store would offer fair prices on its merchandise every day.”

Logically it sounds brilliant. Customers can save time and money simultaneously.

The only problem is that the customers LIKED clipping coupons and timing purchases to sales.

And when revenue decreased, J. C. Penney…BLAMED THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS. In a way that got attention.

“’He sort of said sales were akin to drugs, and he was trying hard and to wean customers off drugs,’ says retail analyst Rafi Mohammed.”

Or, as one of those long Facebook posts over-exaggerated it, Ron Johnson called his own customers drug addicts.

J. C. Penney not only walked back the changes, but also fired Johnson sixteen months later.

It’s good to attract new customers…but don’t alienate existing ones.

Now Bredemarket normally plays in the B2G and B2B space rather than B2C, but the lesson applies here also. If you need someone to help you speak to your prospects, let’s talk.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers
Use Bredemarket content.

And by the way, there are often third acts in business. Johnson co-founded Enjoy, an on-demand mobile retail store. It did well for years until it jumped in on the SPAC craze and filed for bankruptcy. The remnants survive today as part of Asurion.

J. C. Penney also survives today, thanks to a post-COVID, post-bankruptcy rescue by mall operators Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management.

Its competitor Sears was not as fortunate.

Wooing Your Prospects

I tangentially referred to Rachael Wheatley’s article “Six steps to woo your clients” in a caption for my own post “Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology.”

We were both saying the same thing, but from different perspectives.

Here’s part of how Wheatley put it.

“Focus on care and concern – reach out, offer help, stay true to your company purpose and values.

“Meet your customers where they are – both where they ‘hang out’ now, and to meet their current concerns.”

But it’s important to remember why you’re doing this.

“Building a good marketing plan helps motivate your audience to take the next step. And, in the end, to say “yes” to what you’re offering.

“But of course, they need to want to come. Your intent needs to be authentic. It will be if you genuinely believe that you can offer them value (and they recognise that) and you want to be in the relationship for the long term, not just to make a quick sale this quarter.”

Earlier this week I signed a contract with a former client from the first stint of Bredemarket (2020-2022). I had to end that contract because my then-new employer Incode competed with my client.

But then Incode became my ex-employer, and eventually my former client came back.

And I was happy they came back.

Invisibility Can Be Bad

If your prospects don’t know who you are, create customer-focused content that explains how your company can solve prospect problems—and increase awareness of the company’s solutions.

Because product invisibility is (usually) bad.

For the longer, more bombastic version of this post, click here.

And to get my help in content creation, click here.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

Dry To The Bone

You’re not gonna hear this song about dry fingerprint ridges on Top 40 radio. But for a select few biometric product marketers, it highlights a critically important issue.

“Dry To The Bone #1.” Google Lyria.

Why?

Because dry fingerprint ridges, while not a common worry among the general populace, ARE a concern among law enforcement, homeland security, financial institution, and other professionals who depend on high-quality friction ridge capture to solve crimes and identify people.

And these people desperately need products that accurately capture fingerprints in challenging conditions.

And the product vendors need to communicate their product benefits to potential vendors. (Whoops, I mean prospects.)

That’s where Bredemarket comes to save the day.

Not with music.

“Tracing the Ridge.” Google Lyria.

(Thankfully.)

Through Bredemarket, I work with you to develop the customer-focused, benefits-oriented words that move your prospects toward your fingerprint capture solution.

If you want prospects to buy your identity product, schedule a free meeting with the biometric product marketing expert.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers
Stop losing prospects!

And…I couldn’t resist one more.

“Dry To The Bone #2.” Google Lyria.