If you’re the leader of a professional services firm and you’re cracking the whip to get your business development person to make more cold calls, 2014 is the year you should stop cracking.
A better alternative
Management genius Peter Drucker preached, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” In other words, the goal of marketing is to make a product, service, or company so relevant and compelling that it literally sells itself.
If you think this is hyperbole, consider captivating products like the iPhone. Can you imagine ever seeing an iPhone salesman? Instead, zealous customers are lined up in front of Apple stores for hours.
If your firm would spend more time and energy developing and marketing a relevant, differentiated “product,” you could spend a lot less time and energy trying to sell it.
Bain & Company asked company executives if they agreed with the statement “Our company is highly differentiated.” 80% said yes. But only 8% of customers agreed. This is “confirmation bias” in action, and it causes company executives to overlook the very foundation of a prosperous, profitable firm: a clear positioning strategy.
Firms with a compelling positioning strategy don’t just have prospective customers; they have followers and advocates. While this dynamic is readily apparent in the mass market (Starbucks, Apple, Porsche), it’s just as true in the world of professional services. When you’ve done the work necessary to build a company that has followers, you have a brand in demand. You have prospective customers who actively seek you out, rather than having to track them down with a direct sales effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment