Market Positioning Programme
For businesses looking to gain a market advantage.
Become an intuitive purchase for your ideal customer.
The principle of Market Positioning is simple. To define the value your business creates, for the customer who values it most.
Why does it matter?
The work in your positioning directly informs every revenue generating function in your business, from pricing & product, to sales channel selection, to brand & comms.
It aligns all parts of your business to deliver you the most valuable sales.
When you purposefully position your business or product, you are controlling the context that your customers compare you in. This makes you easier to understand, and defines the parameters for price that they will accept.
Deliberate Market Positioning is non-negotiable for any business. If you don’t purposefully position what you’re selling, then your customers will do it for you. Customers will use what they know to make sense of what they don’t. This default position makes you a price taker, not a price setter, always playing catch up in the market and often struggling to grow.
The theory of positioning is simple, yet the execution is hard, as it takes practice and impartiality.
Most businesses take an occasional stab at positioning themselves, stash their loose Value Proposition statement in the drawer and crack on with BAU.
Our programme provides the structure, experience and impartiality needed to quickly find a new, more defensible place in-market for you.
You need market positioning when…
It’s too hard to explain.
People who know you get it, but you struggle to get new prospects to understand.
It’s too slow to sell
The sales cycle drags on, or rate of sale compared to competitors is too low.
It’s too similar to competitors
Competitor products or services crowd you out, stealing the market’s attention and your sales.
“What I love about working with Andy is that he brings a perspective that we have often never considered. He makes us push our thinking and challenges us with purpose around the outcomes we are trying to achieve.”
— Michelle Van Gaalen, Managing Director, Smith & Smith
Market Positioning gives you…
Clarity on who you are
Get clear on what your customers need and your purpose in the market. We will express a Value Proposition which is the ultimate articulation of what you do for the people who pay you to do it.
A strong customer focus
Upgrading your Market Position forces you to bring your customer into the room and ask yourself if you’re doing a good job giving them what they need.
A fresh competitive edge
Stop competitors eating your lunch, set a new path to grow market share, and recapture relevance in rapidly evolving markets.
A pathway to scale
Make a case for entering a new market and create a compelling business case for the partners who will take you there.
Your Market Positioning process
01
Workshop 1: Your business
Your Market Positioning process is a three-phase sprint that defines your positioning and sets up a framework to test and integrate it into your business.
In your first workshop we ask who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you deliver. Your whole team is invited to contribute to the process, giving you 360° insight into the needs of your core customers and partners.
02
Workshop 2: Your ideal customer
In this workshop we find out who you serve. You need multiple value propositions, one for every important group. From customers to retailers and staff, we’ll get clear on how you create value for all your partners.
We break down your customers and partners so you’re clear on who they are.
We use your institutional experience to build clear customer personas.
Then we articulate the product market fit for each group.
03
Express your value proposition
Your value proposition is about the way you do business, not just what you make. At the end of this process, you’ll have:
A suite of propositions to test with your markets.
Instructions for testing your new value propositions with your audience.
Value proposition testing questions.
A framework for using your new value proposition in your business.
A market position is a living model updated as market insights arise, so I give you a simple structure to test, review, and iterate your position and proposition over time.
Fees & timing
Market Positioning typically takes a couple of weeks and costs from $26,000 + GST.
FAQs
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Sales teams, marketers, your export team, and your senior executives. Anyone who represents your business to customers and partners.Often people realise they need a value proposition when they try to carry out an operational task but struggle because they’re unclear who their customers are, and what they do for them. I often get drawn in to work on a value proposition when a critical project exposes the deficiency of a business’s existing value proposition.
Examples of projects that require a clear market position:
• A rebrand.
• Launching a new offer.
• Targeting a new market segment.
• Moving into overseas markets.
• Tenders and pitches.
• Establishing partnerships with distributors and retailers.
• Entering JVs.
You need more than one value proposition in your business because the value proposition for each group of people you serve will be different. People often forget about B2B value propositions, yet they're critical to your growth as a business. -
For your new market position to deliver results and value, you must apply it, learn from it, and iterate it. It is essential to integrate it into the heart of your business. I help you build a framework so your value proposition / positioning drives what you do.• Include it in your communications.
• Integrate it into your brand.
• Teach it to your sales team and show them how to apply it in customer comms.
• Embed it in the messages and behaviour of your service and distribution team.
• Include it in all proposals.
• Use it to open the door with B2B partners.
Most importantly, set up a structure to test and review over time. Your proposition will change and keep changing, it's a living entity that you iterate as you grow. And it's everybody's responsibility to keep up to date, which means there's never a time when you’re not testing.
“Where Andy has added most value is helping us to articulate our value proposition, and his ability to change and adapt that value proposition as we’ve evolved over the last 18 months. To be able to go, that's not a hundred percent right now because we've learned X, so let's do Y. And then back that up with fact and data.”
— James McEniery, Co-founder, Dosh