Reference no: EM132475100

Background of the problem

As they head toward graduation, a couple of b-school friends, Jan and Geoff, are building a consultancy to help businesses with their social media. They are confinement that there is a huge demand out there. Most companies know that social media are important, and yet most don't know where to start, nor do they have the expertise in-house. So the value proposition that B2Buzz will offer is to work with a company's marketing people for content and their IT people to design dedicated webspace for some of the media.

B2Buzz has generated nearly a dozen first-round presentations with good-(medium)-sized companies. The problem is that while the potential clients acknowledge the importance of social media and admit their internal confusion, B2Buzz isn't getting many second-round discussions or bids. Jan's and Geoff's interpersonal styles are not perfect but good enough that they don't think the responses are personal. So they're picking over their business plans, trying to pinpoint why the unique selling proposition isn't quite, well, selling.

Jan and Geoff have done follow-up calls with every set of first-round people they met who have not committed to contracting their service, as an additional sales opportunity and as a means of debriefing and gathering information. When companies say, "No, thank you," follow-up debriefs are usually vague, polite, and uncomfortable, and the company rep wants to get off the phone. But one inkling that Jan and Geoff have surmised is that the companies find their proposals interesting but eventually concludes that their own IT people could and should serve the social media function.

1. Alternatively, are the companies correct in their suppositions that they will figure out this "social media thing" (like companies did for creating websites 20 years ago), and therefore, B2Buzz is destined to fail? Why or why don't you think so?