Value Positioning – Needed Now More Than Ever

Many of the organizations Business Efficacy works with try to win in the marketplace through sales and service differentiation. Their products and services have minimal competitive advantage. The threat to profitability and growth is too great to allow price to be a primary competitive strategy, so sales and service excellence is a must.

It is perplexing to us that so many organizations invest little time to make sure each individual communicates and demonstrates true differentiated value. Little time is devoted to investigating what the competition positions as their differentiated value. Here is a typical example of the problem. Today customers hear from salespeople that their organization focuses on building and maintaining customer relationships. This no longer is perceived as a differentiated value. It is unlikely that any customer grants an appointment with anyone who just positions relationship as a competitive value. A value would be positioning how this is actually accomplished.

We call this differentiation skill, value positioning. Every sales and service person must be great at positioning what is different about their organization. They must position this differentiation repeatedly and under all customer situations. Through constant and consistent positioning, differentiation is leveraged into competitive advantage. This helps drive unit sales and profit margin growth in competitive markets.

How is value positioning accomplished?

1. Management must be passionate about determining and communicating real differentiation. “Me too” positioning is not acceptable.
2. Organizational leaders must determine the value that is to be positioned. It must be easy to communicate and capture the essence of what customers would perceive as different and valuable.
3. Management must make sure everyone knows the organization’s differentiated value.
4. Management must coach everyone in the organization to know how his or her job drives differentiation.
5. All customer contact people should know how and when to position value. This needs to be practiced until it is communicated effectively and constantly. It is drilled and practiced in meetings and in individual coaching sessions so that it becomes a reflex communication.
6. Sales and service management must make sure that the differentiated value is being positioned appropriately to customers. It needs to be positioned in the beginning of customer interactions. It needs to be emphasized as part of every recommendation. It must be positioned as a value that helps address customer objections and concerns. It has to be used to help close business. And most importantly, everyone must demonstrate it.
7. Sales and service management must constantly monitor customer and competitive acceptance of positioned value. If it is copied by the competition or is not perceived to be important by customers, it needs to be adjusted immediately. Management must measure:

• If more customers are accepting first time sales appointments.
• If sales appointments lead to an improved ratio of appointments to proposals/closed sales.
• If customers articulate the value that the organization positions and delivers.
• If customer referrals are increasing.

The above are not easy to implement, but are fundamental to success in competitive markets. Driving perceived and experienced differentiation is where more organizational and individual time needs to be invested. Value positioning is a must for winning in competitive markets.