Today, we reference the concept of value discipline positioning for your business growth and marketing strategy. Are you currently positioning your business to be the lowest price provider for your solutions and services? If so, buying leads through quick hitting pay-per-lead services are a great way to drive leads into your funnel that you can quickly bid on, and you’ll win a percentage of them because of your strategic emphasis on being a low price leader.
But what if you’re not positioning your business to be the low cost / low price leader for your solution?
What if your brand and business strategy choose to focus on the real value your organization brings to clients?
If you see your organization as being geared away from being the low price leader, you’ll need to adopt a different strategy to be effective with your sales approach. This is particularly true when marketing for VARS and channel organizations who resell a technology product and then bundle in their own services & support to deliver a total solution.
Buying low priced leads from services is intentionally inserting your organization into sales cycles that are already heavily contested. In fact, these organizations are well known for reselling these same leads over and over again, to each client they bring on. They simply flag the account in a master database, have a caller initiate a call on your behalf, and schedule a fresh appointment for you to jump into their active sales cycle. At that stage in the game, it can be very difficult to properly convey your strategic value and approach in a meaningful way. Projects are largely fully outlined, and prospects are looking to see who can fulfill their objectives at the lowest competitive price.
Instead, we offer a stronger approach to driving effective leads into your sales pipeline. By identifying strategic opportunities for your business before companies have reached the product selection stage, you gain the ability to help shape the entire project and sales process. This helps ensure that the goals and objectives line up with the specific values that your organization brings.
Will there still be competition on price? Absolutely, and price pressure is constant across every industry. By running smarter technology lead generation programs you can drive the initial sponsorship of a project that helps align the entire sales process in your favor.
Do think hard about the concept of “column fodder”. Is this where you want your organization to be competing for work? Will you be successful if your top sales resources are spending most of their time working RFPs for deals that already have entrenched competitors? Generally speaking, these questions only have a positive answer if your business is a low price leader. Most of us do not fall into that category, but we have an understanding and a belief in the real ROI of the solutions we offer. That is certainly true for Frantz Group, and we believe it to be true for most people reading this as well.
Curious about where your organization falls on the value discipline positioning chart? Check out our Marketing Growth Initiative. Your positioning helps drive the core of our planning for your marketing and revenue success.