Growth or Bust! by Mark Faust

Author:Mark Faust
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Awareness of positioning points helps in the clarification of strategy and improving the effectiveness of marketing and sales efforts.

Behind every positioning point we recommend you build these bullets:

Benefits

Dollarized value

Proofs

You can begin your first versions of the grid with guesses as to the benefits, dollarized value, and proofs behind each positioning point; you will be filling these points in eventually with the results of research and your depth interviews. The benefits bullets help to keep your sales and marketing efforts focus on the results that customers buy. Customers want a job accomplished with your solution, and yet we can get too caught up in the facts about the hammer, as opposed to how well it helps to hang pictures or lay a roof.

Ultimately what can be the most persuasive messaging and positioning effort is capturing and proving the incremental value—or, more specifically, the profit—that you can bring to your customer’s bottom line. When your team can effectively get customer buy-in to the incremental profits they will realize through your points of competitive uniqueness or advantage, you can effectively demand higher pricing, and you will have the advantage.

The most effective proofs are testimonials. Testimonials have the most impact when they are short, benefits-focused, and include the customer’s perception of the dollars they gained because of buying from you. We help clients get these testimonials through the depth interview process. Testimonials have even more impact when photos of the customer—and, ideally, even phone numbers—are included. Being that the use of testimonials has become so prevalent and some are not legitimate, putting the phone number or other contact info gives the ultimate credibility to the testimonial.

Creating your Positioning Points Grid will build your team’s competitive awareness. When these positioning points are discussed, your team will not only be more focused, but also more effective at communicating your difference in the marketplace during their marketing, qualification, and closing efforts. The document should be reviewed and updated quarterly in conjunction with your depth interview process and other steps in the strategy process. Eventually your top management will use the Positioning Points Grid as you make strategic decisions about your targeted market standing and share, as well as other key objectives we discussed in Chapter 3.

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