Six steps to differentiating your solutions

Aargh! Six weeks to launch, and so much to do. The solutions management folks have spent months putting together the new offering, and now we've got about 87 things to do to get ready on the marketing side. Press release...internal webinar for the sales team...customer presentation...special briefings for the top account leads...white paper...update the public site with descriptions...collateral for the trade show. Oh yeah, and all the social media stuff, too: some blog posts, tweet schedule, maybe a few videos. 

The real challenge, of course, is getting anyone to care. Your customers are inundated with shiny new offers every day of the week, and they pretty much tune them all out. If they're actually looking for a new solution, sure, they might want to chat or at least check out your stuff, but otherwise...forget it.

Unless, of course, you actually make the new offer relevant, compelling, and truly evocative of real value. We all say our new solutions are important and different, but the sad reality is that the vast majority are me-too offerings that fail to connect or excite.

Some of this is inevitable in a world of intense competition. But a great deal reflects that fact that we simply don't put in the time or energy to identify and communicate the true differentiators that actually matter to prospective buyers. We get so caught up in cranking out the stuff of the launch process that we fail to step back and methodically work through why our solutions are better than those of the competition, and how to connect those differentiation dots to the issues our customers care about the most.

It's not rocket science, but it does take some effort, and a formal process helps. Over at Solutions Insights, we've spent a lot of time with companies that do this the right way (as well as many that don't!). Based on that experience, we've put together a quick six-step guide for defining and demonstrating clear and relevant differentiators for solutions that can make or break the launch process. 

Six Steps to Differentiating Your Solutions Offerings

We'd love to know what works for you!

Comments

[David Dodd]

Rob,

I really enjoyed this post and the embedded paper. I think your approach is similar to the one articulated by James Anderson, James Narus, and Wouter van Rossum in a Harvard Business Review article titled "Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets." The same authors also described their approach in a book titled "Value Merchants."

The basic idea is to create a value proposition based on the one or two points of difference between your solution and those of competitors that will deliver the greatest value to the customer. Anderson, et. al. call this a "resonating focus" value proposition. This is a powerful idea, but it does mean that you have to create a value proposition for each prospective customer that matches his circumstances.

[Rob Leavitt]

Thanks David -- I havent read the book or article, but you remind me that a friend had also actually recommended the book to me a while back. Now I have to read it! I agree that, ideally at least, you should create value props for each prospective customer -- although the significance of the opportunity should guide the scale of the effort. It is a lot of work but usually well worth it. Good segmentation and micro-segmentation can also get you a fair ways toward the focused value props and differentiators you need without having to do a huge effort for each individual opportunity.