And YOU are…?
Pling…Pling…Pling… Right now, notifications from the community in my LinkedIn app are coming in by the minute. One message follows the next. “Attend our webinar”, “What you need to know now about the right positioning”, “How to win new customers”, “Find out today about ways to go digital”
IT’s run on customers has begun
The giant is waking up: thousands of companies have realized in recent months that innovative technologies are not just playgrounds for nerds, but more importantly help make businesses more agile, flexible and minimize risk. We have all learned that IT is one of the most effective ways to be less vulnerable. Especially when traditional process steps are turned upside down from one day to the next. Ideally, everyone would like to leave legacy enterprise IT behind sooner rather than later. The demand avalanche starts rolling and the providers put themselves in (… Pling …) position.
The big showdown begins.
Demand on one side, suppliers on the other. They have a lot in common, because in addition to all the individuality, the technical requirements of the customers are quite comparable. The same applies to the partners’ competence in terms of content: they don’t differ dramatically either. If you are of a completely different opinion at this point, please go to your website right now and point your finger at the place where this becomes clear to your customers.
The question is this: If everyone presses the same grapes, how do you still manage to make the uniqueness of your red wine clear to the customer? Yes, there are customers who buy only by the label, but there are even more who care about the content. How about you, what is YOUR offer? A solid Cabernet Sauvignon for someone looking for a sociable red wine or is it the Grand Cru for the more discerning customer?
No, you are not supposed to put the tasting notes of your expertise on the website now. Or is it? Is it perhaps what sets you apart from the rest? Not what you do, but the way you do it?
Customers have more than enough of two things: challenges and no time.
Autumn is coming, so let’s stick to a good glass of red wine. What distinguishes one wine from another – vinophile readers know this even better than the author – is not just the grape, the growing region, the location, the vine, the type of harvest, the shape of the tanks, the finish in French or American oak barrels. There are hundreds of other factors. And yes, we believe this is definitely the case with IT companies as well.
We also have the most diverse mandates with the most diverse clients. Many of them have one thing in common, they are IT experts. And yet they are all enormously different. In their mission, their strategic orientation and positioning, their knowledge of certain industries, the way they approach projects and, of course, the way they deal with their customers.
Strangely enough, you rarely find any of this in their external presentation. Yet there is one thing that customers, faced with limited time and an unmanageably large offering, want more than anything else: They want to know what makes us special, so they can understand whether we can help them better than others.
Who are you really?
Let me share a trick from our briefings. When we try to distill the uniqueness of companies, we ask questions. Among many others, this one: “At what moment in the presentation does your customer look up because you just surprised them with something positive?”
The idea behind it is simple. Usually, your customer invites many providers to look at different offers. There’s a lot of uniformity at the start. But that moment when you surprise your customer with something they haven’t heard before – THAT’S what makes YOU special.
Oh dear, emotions.
For some, it’s a gut feeling. For others, it’s the result of an intensive process during which marketing and sales have taken a close look at the customer’s challenges and requirements, his goals, expectations and fears, in order to present him with the best of all possible options. And for the answer, they then draw on the values – including emotional ones – that make the company unique.
Yes, emotions. Whether exalted, sober, youthful or experienced – THAT is part of the CORE of their brand. Emotions belong to a differentiated positioning with regard to the competition and this positioning is the reference glasses, through which you will look at your website, your campaign, your sales presentations in the future.
Put on your reference glasses and look at your website, LinkedIn, Xing, the career pages of your competitors and compare yourself with others. Notice the … pling … pling … pling … difference?
Okay, Cloudbridge, so in the end, is it all about pretty words? Fascinating question. Maybe even for the next post? Follow us and you’ll find out….
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