SPURspectives

“The view never improves unless you’re the lead dog” - anonymous

Did you ever take an introductory marketing class? I can still hear the professor harrumphing from the front of the class about the three fundamentals of market differentiation — the three P’s: price, product, and performance. Harrumph, indeed. Apparently some folks weren’t awake during that lecture. On a routine basis I ask prospects and clients where they try to excel between the 3 P’s. Do you know what they tell me almost every time? All three. Sigh.

Sure, you have to compete on all three, but you need to lead at one. Just as you need to focus your business on the one thing you do really well, you need to position your business or organization as a leader in one of these categories. If you haven’t done this or haven’t done it in a while, here are some thoughts to consider.

Every market has 6 primary leaders, two in each category at opposite ends:

• Price: Lowest price / Most exclusive
• Product: Industry standard / One of a kind
• Performance: Total simplicity / End-to-end solution

Every leader competes in all three categories, but they each own one end of one category. Everyone else is trying to lead a category, but they aren’t, and that puts them closer to the middle. The middle is deadly, just ask Sears. However, the extremes are good according to Walmart and Nordstrom.

It’s true for positioning all types of businesses. Buying GEICO insurance is so simple a cave man can do it. Fidelity makes investing simple, just stay on the green line. Dyson vacuums are the only ones that don’t lose suction. Quick, name a tape measure brand. Stanley, and another would be, um, not the industry standard.

How about community benefit organizations? The American Red Cross is the nation’s premier emergency response organization according to their website. They lead on performance offering an end-to-end solution. Are they the low cost leader stretching every cent to the max? Nope, they exude quality. Are they the only emergency response organization? Hardly, but they may very well be the industry standard. Do they earn more than other emergency response organizations? You know the answer to that.

P is for positioning — price, product, and performance. Pick your spot and own it. Your bottom line will thank you and you just might make it into your old marketing professor’s next book. Harrumph!

Photo: Copyright (c) 2007 Yeti Hunter.Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this documentunder the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNUFree Documentation License”.

Tags: focus, leader, marketing, position