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Making the difficult decision
There is only one
reason design firms are hired, and therefore only one viable
basis for the positioning of a firm. It is not personality,
it is not process, it is not price. Yet, any sampling of design
firm principals and employees will yield personality (they
like or connect with us) and process (our proprietary methods)
as the top two responses.
Design firms are hired
for what they can do for their clients based on their expertise.
The entire list of valid positionings can be distilled to
one word: expertise; category expertise, discipline expertise
or a combination thereof.
Personality and other
variables like price are, at best, tiebreaking metrics used
to choose one firm over another when the only important criteria
(expertise) appears to be equal from firm to firm.
Your proprietary process
is valuable proof of your expertise, but it should the never
be the basis of the positioning itself.
Neither personality nor price should
ever be the basis for the positioning of your firm.
Two Indicators
of Positioning Problems
A poorly positioned
creative firm is a tough sell. Personality and process are
not reasons to buy, and broad expertise (another common claim)
is an oxymoron and a lousy sales proposition. The broadly-positioned
firm get its telephone introductions brushed aside by clients-to-be
who lump it into the vast, homogenous category of undifferentiated
design firms that call every week.
Any odds of breaking
through in that first interaction are based on the firm's
ability to succinctly deliver its expertise and its benefits
in a manner that separates it from other firms. Poor results
at the very front of the sales cycle are the first indicator
of a positioning problem.
The second indicator
of a positioning problem is profit margin. The ability to
command a price premium is the by-product of a differentiated
and valuable offering. This is a basic lesson in supply and
demand economics. The law of price elasticity states that
the availability of substitutes affects the elasticity of
price. More simply put, the fewer a firm's competitors, the
more it can charge and therefore the higher its margins. The
more alternatives to a firm, the less it can charge and therefore
the lower its margins.
Without discounting
any operational challenges, any firm that finds sustained
profitability to be elusive likely suffers from the very basic
problem that its clients do not see the firm's services as
sufficiently different from those of readily available alternative
firms.
From firm to firm,
from country to country, almost all business development challenges
that I encounter stem from the firm's positioning. The common
business challenges of getting attention and making money
are just two direct manifestations of failing to deal with
The Difficult Business Decision.
If you really want
to take steps to begin to solve your ongoing business development
challenges then make the difficult, decision around positioning
your firm and decide what business you really should be in.
Here's a hint: If
The Decision doesn't hurt then you're not doing it right.
Blair Enns is the
founder of Win Without Pitching and a business development
advisor to marketing communication firms. You can download
the free article, Ten Tests of Your Positioning from winwithoutpitching.com
Blair will be running a one
day workshop on 'Positioning for Profit' for more details
or to book your place please click
here
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