27 Oct Answer this killer question and get more customers
Reading Time: 2 minutesAlongside experience, positioning is one of the customer elements storing value in a brand. Because no matter what you care about, how that turns into the products you sell, or how well-known your company is. You need to know what it is.
During a recent Knowledge Project podcast, guest April Dunfordsaid, “I think a lot of companies start looking at their product in isolation almost, like there are no competitors. … The question we’re trying to answer is, why pick us? But the real question we have to answer is, why pick us over the other guys? I think most companies don’t really wrestle with that. They don’t sit down, put themselves in the shoes of a buyer, recognize how hard it is to make a purchase decision, and think …, How do we position versus everybody else?”
Why pick us over the other guys? Now that’s a killer question. How would you answer it?
Go to a web site—especially B2B organisations, and you’ll likely see a word-soup statement on the home page told from the point-of-view of the company. The most common first word is “we” followed by some version of ‘provide / deliver / innovative / targeted / world leading / products / services / solutions”.
I’m joking, but not by much.
Why pick us over the other guys, requires you have some idea of who the other guys are and what they’re doing. Not so you can copy them. So you can avoid them. There’s plenty of ways to find what makes you pickable. Your purple cow. That thing that makes you distinctive.
Who’s buying from you now is a good place to start. What do they particularly value about your product and have in common? Everyone is not your customer.
Working at a CRM company competing against the then Gorilla Siebel, Dunford once discovered the customer almost by chance. “We hired a sales rep that had a relationship with somebody very senior at the investment bank. … what that customer taught us is, that (our magic) feature was actually very, very valuable to investment banks and the way that they wanted to manage relationships inside the bank. … We knew at the time [that] Siebel couldn’t copy us on that feature. We narrowed down the positioning, and instead of saying we were enterprise CRM, we were CRM for investment banks.”
Forget the world. Where are you best in your world—aka, location, sector, niche, kind of product. An aphorism I heard many years ago sums it up. “You might be the best thing since sliced bread. But it doesn’t do me a damn bit of good if I don’t know about you.” And I’ll add, why I should pick you over the other loaves.
Dunford says, “Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering something, some value that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.”
Positioning isn’t a marketing headline, although you’ll use it as a foundation for one. It isn’t a product description, although it will inform that. It’s not where you’re headed and why, that’s for missions and purpose. It’s a promise for now, not forever. And resets as you grow and products change with your customers needs.
Although I don’t agree with April on what a brand is. If you’re trying to sell a product (service or cause)—so that’s everyone reading this, the whole podcast is worth a listen.
Thanks for reading