The Synaxis Keystone Marketing System provides a phased approach to the implementation, rollout, and operationalization of marketing measurement tools, web tools, and communications tools.
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Is Your Brand Positioning Making Selling Harder?
There are many tools that you as a marketer have in your arsenal to help you market and promote your company. Perhaps the most powerful, yet least understood, tool is positioning.
There are many tools that you as a marketer have in your arsenal to help you market and promote your company. Perhaps the most powerful, yet least understood, tool is positioning. It's more than a plaque in the front lobby or a few words on the back of a business card.
The American Marketing Association defines positioning as "the customer's perceptions of the place a product or brand occupies in a market segment." These perceptions can be your greatest friend, or worst enemy, during your sales process.
The Value of Positioning in Sales
Positioning can only get you to a certain point in the sales process. In other words, your company's positioning is not going to close deals for you. No marketing tool can do that all by itself. Rather, the best function of your company's positioning is to put you into the situation to pursue a deal with high velocity.
Approaching the deal with this forward momentum means that the prospect already knows a lot about your company and is naturally looking forward to the next step in the sales process. There are no speed bumps to closing. The potential client doesn't immediately have questions or objections about your company or the deal. Therefore, the salesperson can immediately start talking about the deal, not the obstacles.
The Liability of Poor Positioning
If your company has poor positioning, the situation is exactly the opposite. Your positioning can act as a barrier to the sale. It places the salesperson in a bad position with backwards momentum. It's possible for the salesperson to adjust and get out of that negative position, but that requires a lot of verbal tap dancing and causes discomfort with your sales team.
When you start from this place, it is always more difficult. So, why make it harder on your sales staff?
The Result
Just like anything else in marketing, positioning can't do all the work for you. It is a necessary piece to the puzzle, but you must build around it with a strong brand and targeted sales tools. If you take the necessary steps to build your marketing on a strong positioning statement, the value of your brand will be exponentially stronger. And, your sales force will thank you for it. Count on it.
