Better positioning helps you answer these two why questions powerfully. Photo / iStock
I had the opportunity a few days ago to interview Philip Morgan.
Philip is the creator of an excellent marketing resource called 'The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms'.
The Positioning Manual goes into great detail on how to develop a desirable market position for your professional services business.
But the question of why to do this is easily answered in just 4 words:
If you're used to thinking in terms of hourly, daily, or weekly rates instead of per-project fees, that's fine-the benefits of a narrow market position still apply to you.
Better clients, higher rates.
I asked Philip for some comments on why positioning was important for a professional services firm.
Here are some of the ideas Philip shared with me.
Alan Weiss talks about how you need to be able to answer three "why" questions before you're ready to submit a proposal:
• Why me?
• Why now?
• Why in this manner (why do it this way vs. some other way)?
Positioning helps you answer two of those why questions powerfully.
Why me?
Because I'm the leading expert in XYZ TOPIC. Because we focus 100 per cent on clients like you and problems like this, and we have 10 case studies of success stories in this area.
Because we have created outstanding results for n other companies in your market segment, we deeply understand the challenges that companies like yours face, and we have answers that work.
Why in this manner?
Because of our focus on companies like yours, we've been able to develop solutions that are uniquely suited to your challenges. Because we've developed unique expertise in this area based on our narrow focus on companies with problems/challenges like this.
Philip notes that trying to answer these "why" questions in a one-off fashion for each proposal can be agonizing and time-consuming.
Becoming extremely specific in understanding and describing who you serve, what you can do for them, and how you do so differently than other professional services firms is a prerequisite to gaining a leadership position.
To have powerfully persuasive answers sitting at the ready is an incredible advantage, both when negotiating a project, and before that when trying to get the attention of desirable clients.
Positioning also makes your marketing and business development efforts dramatically more effective because you know who to go after in any targeted marketing efforts, and your marketing speaks more directly to their needs.
And finally, positioning helps you move out of the commodity power frame that so many generalists are stuck in. You become more able to charge premium rates and be selective about which clients you work with.
Becoming extremely specific in understanding and describing who you serve, what you can do for them, and how you do so differently than other professional services firms is a prerequisite to gaining a leadership position.
According to Philip there are three positioning strategies that a professional services firm can use:
1. Narrow Focus
2. Category Leadership
3. Category Pioneer
Each strategy is uniquely suited to a different situation, including the current position your business occupies, your tolerance for risk, and your firm's goals and maturity.
Narrow Focus Positioning Strategy:
The first positioning strategy involves narrowing your audience or market focus only.
With this strategy, your primary goal is to become known within your audience or market focus as the "go-to" firm for whatever it is you do for that audience.
So if you build websites, you want to become known as the go-to website builder for a specific audience or market segment.
Implementing this strategy involves making only one change to your current position: adding a focus on a single audience or market segment.
Your service offering stays the same at first, although you may update it later when you understand your new market/audience well enough to customize your offerings to provide them more value.
Here are a few examples of how generalist firms might look before and after implementing this narrow focus strategy:
Before: We build websites
After: We build websites for cosmetic dentists
Before: We are SEO consultants
After: We are SEO consultants for content-heavy online publications that depend heavily on ad revenue
Before: I'm a copywriter
After: I'm a copywriter for life coaches who sell their services online
The Narrow Focus strategy gets word of mouth working in your favour to lower the cost of sales.
This strategy also positions you as a group insider.
For example, instead of "web development services", you offer "web development services for cosmetic dentists."
If you and all of your marketing assets are speaking the language of cosmetic dentists, using terminology specific to their business, showing case studies or portfolio items only from other cosmetic dentists, and describing how you solve problems specific to the cosmetic dentistry business, then you have done a lot to increase your prospects' trust in you by making yourself "one of them".
Philip has an excellent no cost programme called The Positioning Crash Course that goes into positioning in more detail.
You can get the course at no charge by going to this link.
"Great communicators have an appreciation for positioning. They understand the people they're trying to reach and what they can and can't hear. They send their message in through an open door rather than trying to push it through a wall." - John Kotter
How could you use positioning to get better clients and higher fees for your own business?
The data show Rotorua has the highest proportion of burglaries in New Zealand.