Part 10 (2/2)

The ninth ti out on sohbors if they've tried it

The eleventh ti for al those ads

The twelfth tiood product

The thirteenth time, they start to feel the product has value

The fourteenth ti a product exactly like this for a long time

The fifteenth time, they start to yearn for it because they can't afford to buy it

The sixteenth time, they accept the fact that they wil buy it sometime in the future

The seventeenth tihteenth ti them to buy this terrific product

The nineteenth time, they count their money very careful y

The twentieth ti

-Thoe over the course of a century, s stay the sanize you, can articulate what you do, and remember you at the elusive tiht if they do not have a co reason to want to ith you and your firm

Brand preference is created inactivities and actual service experiences with your co brand preference Thus you should engage branding andpreference for your services with your prospective and current clients

Developing a brand identity without the RAMPof the process often leads to graphic design and os, web sites, brochures, presentations, and oal ina client's preference for your firame at the carnival

The carnival is your eharam

The words on the pole are (fronizeArticulateMeht force and hit the right spot, the prizes you win are more new clients and increased brand loyalty And, unlike at the carnival, these prizes can be worth a great deal a cycle Before anyone is likely to buy, they've got to knoho you are The more aware they are of your name, the more that awareness breeds faenerates brand preference”

-Ed Russ, Chief Marketing, Grant Thornton

13

On Being Unique and Other Bad Marketing Advice The proble concept is a persistent tendency toward rigidity It gets dogmatized, interpreted into constantly narrower and inflexible prescriptionsThere is not, and cannot be, any rigid and lasting interpretation of what theconcept iven tirade on raduate school The professor said, ”The business you're proposing to launch

it's not different Other people do it While the plan seeht out and wel researched, due to the siely done before and there doesn't see truly unique about it, I wouldn't advise launching the business” (So long, stel ar GPA) Being different and unique seearded by those who think about, write about, and teach business Professors Terrel and Middlebrooks of the Northwestern University's Kel ogg School of Manageo Graduate School of Business, respectively, say it wel : Service companies need to dare to be different To find a leadershi+p position in the y is to be different from competitorsThey break free from ”be better,” internal y oriented initiatives to ”be different,” external y oriented strategies

Being different is grounded in providing custoet from any other competitor32 They then cite McKinsey as their first exa different is so wel accepted, it's considered simplistic to eveneveryone already knows? Many conversations on being different thus center more on how to be different and how radical y to be different (Terrel and Middlebrooks go as far as to say you should position yourself so far opposite co to describe it) That we need to be different at alis accepted without further thought

Wel, put so unique and different has done disservice toPropositions Auls is that every business-nay, every person- a USP can be defined as doing or saying so about yourself or company that is unlike what anyone else does or offers In other words, uniqueone of a kind

Between us, we deliver over 50 speeches per year During speeches, we frequently ask the members of the audience to take a few minutes to deliver their elevator pitches: They use a minute or so to describe themselves to the CEO of the company they would like to win as a client

When they're done, we ask people to raise their hands if their partner delivered a fabulous elevator pitch Many hands go up When we ask as so great about thes like: They were clear about what they do, exactly how they bring value to their clients, and which industries they serve Often we hear of stories told that truly bring their companies to life

We then ask who has heard of the concept of a USP and who has been told at least once in their business lives that they need to have one

Alo up We then ask whose elevator pitch partner said soo up, but then here and there a bold person jumps into the fray In the end, as the brave volunteer tries to describe the uniqueness of the accountant or lawyer or consultant, they end up backing off their stance that their partner was unique-good elevator presentation, co value, but rarely unique

The ”Unique and Different” Label Too often in elevator pitches, and in eneral, professional services firms il advisedly label thele search for ”unique consulting firet results that only had these words in a sequence) yields close to 4,000 sites-think about that-4,000 unique consulting fireneraly terrible Teainst it Suffice it to say that a lot of firms describe themselves as unique and different, but support those claims more with expressions of value than of difference Cal yourself unique and fail to support the claim, and you lose credibility Firms that label themselves ”unique” don't usual y come across as unique It just see or sales textbook that they have to have a unique sel ing proposition Voilathere it is!

”There aren't a lot of silver bullets out there, but if you can find soht at least soht there”

-Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing, BearingPoint Many admit later how ae that they thought their USP sounded amateurish before they launched their unique-speak publicly Firood common sense radar but check conated uniqueness

WHAT CLIENTS REALLY WANT

Much as theydifferent isn'tclients Often, the ”we're different”scenario: Your tooth hurts and your dentist is out of town You need an oral surgeon and you need one fast; so you ask two trusted close friends, Trip and Beverly, if they know anyone

REFERRAL 1: CLOSE FRIEND TRIP SUGGESTS DR PHLOX

Trip says that his Aunt Deanna needed oral surgery and went to Dr Phlox, who has been in the town next door for 20 years and has a very busy oral surgery practice Word on the street is that he's pretty solid When Trip's Aunt Deanna went in, the doctor took the ti to happen and answered al the questions she had

The surgery went fine (as far as they know), and Deanna hasn't had any problee; but Deanna says he's very booked up and established, so it's understandable

REFERRAL 2: CLOSE FRIEND BEVERLY SUGGESTS DR MCCOY

Supposedly Dr McCoy is wel -known throughout the nation as a cutting-edge oral surgeon, often going where no other oral surgeon has gone before He has a unique blend of people at his office, and a process for oral surgery and tooth technology that he has pioneered His results, according to his brochure and web site, are 22 percent better than al other oral surgeons, which is how he justifies his very high prices

Beverly's Uncle Pavel went to Dr McCoy, and al ith the surgery (as far as they know), though Uncle Pavel met Dr McCoy for only about 30 seconds, as he was so busy

At a gut level, even with Uncle Pavel's satisfaction, few people would choose referral 2 And many of the dynamics of how clients buy business-to-business professional services are similar to how people choose dentists:Should failure happen, the consequences are painful