A ridiculously hard question to answer

“What do we want to be (known for)?” – That’s the question you’ll need to answer when bringing a service to market.

As, for a successful go-to-market, you’ll need to position the team, the service, and maybe even your firm in the market.

It’s one of those question that is easy to ask, but ridiculously hard to answer.

Especially – so it seems – for subject matter experts in professional service firms.

Maybe it’s a difficult question, because deciding what you want to be known for – and thus what you want to be – can be intimidating and overwhelming. A lot depends on it.

It may also be a tough one, because subject matter experts – like lawyers and consultants – got away with ‘being everything to everyone’ for a long time.

That, however, is changing rapidly. As the market has become more competitive and clients have become less loyal*.

So, when you’re bringing a service to market, you’ll have to decide on the position you want in the market.

“What do we want to be (known for)?” is one of the three strategic questions you’ll need to answer.

There are several frameworks that guide you in answering this question. Here’s the first one:

“For [our ideal client]
we are the [market definition]
that delivers [promise, i.e. benefits for the client],
because we are [reasons to believe].”

In this framework market definition is the position you have (or want to have) in the market.

A similar framework comes from Matt Lerner, who specializes in startup growth:

“Think of your brand (positioning) as a pledge
to help a specific customer 
achieve a specific goal 
in a specific situation 
in a specific way.”

“Figure out the specifics and achieve product/market fit,” Lerner says. Startup terminology which – in my opinion – can also be used when bringing (new) services to market.

And finally there’s marketing professor Mark Ritson, who says:

“Positioning = How you want to be perceived (by our ideal clients).”

According to Ritson, your positioning should be distinct (i.e. recognizable) and relatively different from your competitors.

Hope this helps!

* From What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently, a Harvard featured study which shows that client loyalty dropped from 76% to 53% and is about to drop even further.

Thank you for reading MBD Boost #017, sent to marketers and business developers on August 27, 2024.