now we're going to break down the
components of the decision-making
process so they start by talking about
windows of opportunity the windows of
opportunity is that time period in which
that your championed your end-user your
economic borrow are much more receptive
to your product then they will be at
other times so if you think about a
window of opportunity a very simple one
is if i'm selling christmas ornaments
I'm not going to sell those in July i'm
going to sell those in november and
december before Christmas when people
are thinking about it
this is incredibly important to
understand well it seems like almost a
cliché of course
christmas is a time to sell Christmas
lines how about some other examples in
the consumer space
yeah and so this is the analysis of
consumer behavior that people have seen
otherwise and you see this for instance
you know at the beginning of a new year
you know health clubs explode because
people do new years resolutions and
people go to health club so if your
health club
you are so ready for that you know
beginning of the year but again that's
almost clichéd but let me give you
another very important one for a
business understanding consumer behavior
and that was a store called target and
they realize that they wanted to expand
their business they were very strong and
in housewares but they wanted to expand
into groceries and electronics but they
were having a really hard time doing
that because their customer just came to
them for housewares and when they put
groceries in there they realize that
their customers wouldn't get groceries
from them even though it's the same
groceries even a lesser price they still
went out got in their car and they drove
to a grocery store and got it when they
want to get electronics even though it
was exactly the same electronics here
they went to bestbuy to get it and what
they found out and they analyze this is
that their windows of opportunity that
you can get people to change their
buying patterns if it does include your
first job because also have money and
you can change it you have less time you
buy a new house but the most powerful
one of all was having a baby having a
baby pregnancy pregnancy in that time
afterwards people dramatically change
their buying patterns and you know that
firsthand
Greg lottery thinking
everything that's exactly right and when
we had kids all the sudden anything we
could do to buy more time we would think
about so now all of a sudden the idea of
going to target and getting groceries
and electronics and not having to go to
three different stores is dramatically
more exciting to us and so they had an
extremely successful campaign to take
advantage of that understanding that
window of opportunity this is a very
helpful examples but they're from the
consumer space a lot of file our
students are going to be building b2b
ventures yes can we think about windows
of opportunities through that lens
yes and there's been a lot of research
on consumers in these you know these
windows of opportunity but they very
much existing businesses and it's very
important for people to understand that
at the end of the fiscal year you know
people often spend a lot of money
because they have money in the budget if
they don't spend it they lose it and
their budget is taken down last year i
experienced a lot of success in my
career understanding that window of
opportunity
there's also if I it in an IT department
if a new manager comes in new management
comes in.they relook at all their
existing vendors if you're not the
entrenched vendor you want a Russian
there if you are the existing vendor you
want to make sure you protect your your
base when i worked at IBM if we saw one
company was being taken over by another
company then we would march in there we
saw window of opportunity to march in to
say look that the that your current
vendor is being taken over by another
vendor doesn't that were you um and we
would pounce into that window of
opportunity to start to sell our
products are comparable products and
they were much more open to that
another example this is when a change in
management so when we were selling to
their IT department if you had a new
head of the IT department come in they
would we look at all their existing
purchases and you had a chance to get it
once that person was in there for a
while it was much more difficult
another example i had was I were company
called visage and we were selling
identity solutions to people if there
was some sort of security breach or or
or cut terrorist act
tivity unfortunately people were very
interested in our product so you can see
these types of things in businesses very
much so the end of the year is a
well-known end of the quarter is
well-known time where people have budget
they want to spend that budget because
they lose that the next year so its
concept of window of opportunity's is
very very relevant and something that
everyone of you the entrepreneurs should
take advantage of it looks important
because suddenly can shrink your
timeline
yeah that's exactly correct i mean when
we start mapping our DMP if if we do it
outside the window of opportunity that
the decision-making process basically
can almost be infinite and it won't be
successful
whereas if we had a window of
opportunity it might be exactly what we
want or even shorter and this is really
really important