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Scarlett Letter #56: When your firm has something ‘new’ and different…

We are well into Q4 2009. Now is the time that most of you are (or should be!) developing your strategic plans for 2010. No doubt you are taking a hard look at your business to determine what you can do to be better, brighter, faster, more profitable.

Let’s face it. It’s exciting when your firm hits upon something new and different. Maybe it’s a new service offering, or a new project approach, or a new technology that will offer great benefit to your clients.

Whatever the case, it’s sometimes hard to discipline ourselves with the understanding that ‘one size does not fit all’. Just because your firm offers something to one market (we’ll use research facilities, as an example) does not mean that the same offerings and solutions will be even remotely relevant to another market (say, multi-family residential)—no matter what lengths you try to stretch the relevancy. (And believe me, we marketing types are pretty good at stretching!)

And yet, as business development professionals and firm leaders, we are jazzed when our company makes a strategic move to offer something new (and presumably better) to our clients. We want to be able to talk about it to pique the interest of others, and truly stick within their minds.  And we know that we have to self-monitor to assure the proper message matches the proper audience.

I’ve written an article around this topic for December’s issue of AE Rainmaker published by PSMJ: Give ‘em something to talk about: Identifying value propositions so they will listen, and buy!

Excerpted from that article, these are the steps one should take when in this situation:

Direct pursuits of the new selling point:
1. Identify the ultimate, ‘perfectly suited’ client for the new service, approach, discipline, etc. Discuss if the selling point is more germane to a particular client type (industry) or a building type. This will help narrow and fine tune the field of prospects.
2. Identify the ‘almost suited’ clients using the same approach.

Indirect applications of the new selling point:
1. Examine your firm’s current market focuses beyond those identified above. For each, what are their decision-making criteria when selecting a service provider?  Verify your assumptions of their criteria with trusted clients in those markets.
2. Based on those criteria, are there elements of your new selling point that could be modified, borrowed, or otherwise have a positive impact on other clients and prospects?
3. If so, might your firm be willing to do some lower cost ‘trial runs’ with favorite clients to see if they see benefit. If so, you’ll surely get testimonials to support any future claims that the new selling point is valuable, even if that particular client opts to buy a different service/approach/etc. from your firm.

As you come up with your brilliance for 2010 (which, let’s hope goes beyond mere ’survival’ for all of us), take care to match those ‘new’ offerings with the ‘right’ audience for successful buying results.

           

Tags: Anne Scarlett A/E Marketing, design and construction marketing, linkedin, messages, professional services marketing, professional services sales, Scarlett Consulting AEC business development

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