Sales Advocate Newsletter

Measurable Impact of Good Positioning on Telebusiness Results

July 2003

With the flood of phone calls and emails that business people routinely have to navigate, you have mere seconds to capture your prospect's interest on the phone and in email. Doing so is impossible if you haven't nailed the positioning for your products or services. Because positioning is a critical prerequisite to the success of any telebusiness program, Phone Works has formed a partnership with Highland Team, highly-respected strategic marketing and sales experts focused on delivering high impact, revenue-producing results. Highland Team specializes in positioning which differentiates companies from the competition and creates a compelling reason to buy.

The following chart illustrates how important proper positioning is to lead generation and corresponding revenue results. These are the metrics you can typically expect in a lead generation pilot campaign, executed by experienced, senior-level inside sales reps with and without proper positioning. Results shown are based on actual Phone Works projects for technology clients in emerging start-up companies with products in an established market. Contact, lead and close results will be higher for larger companies and/or companies in established markets.

Typical Phone Works Pilot Program Results
Parameter	Poor Positioning		Good Positioning
	#	%	#	%
Calls	1080		1080
Contacts	86	8	216	20
A/B leads	4	5	32	15
# Closes	0	0	8	30

* (Results based on 36 days of calling activity)

Highland Team offers positioning expertise and works in conjunction with The Hyde Park Group, Chicago, IL, to offer collaborative, role-playing positioning workshops which put company participants into the lives of their customers. The positioning, coupled with Phone Works’ expertise and sales resources can help you realize the sales development and revenue generation results seen on the right-hand side of this chart. By asking yourself the following questions, you will be ready to start this important prerequisite to telebusiness and sales success.

Are you entering an emerging market? Positioning can help you be the “Trailblazer”*. Positioning will allow you to identify the best target markets for your product, understand what factors are important to them and create the messaging that resonates with the target market, resulting in leadership, ownership of the emerging market and increased sales.
Have you successfully created a new market and competitors are knocking? As a “Trailblazer”*, revisiting your positioning ensures you continue to have a compelling competitive differentiation, letting you rise above the noise and continue to offer a meaningful, differentiable value proposition to the market. Don’t let your competitors take away your market share, make sure you understand what they are saying to customers and that you meet the customer needs better than they do.
Have you captured a market segment and now want to expand to new markets to sustain growth?As you move to new markets, it is critical that you ensure your position and messages reflect your new target’s needs and desires and stand out from the new competition in this market.
Are you in a rapidly expanding market? Are you capturing the large share you desire? It’s “Beat The Clock”* time. Capturing market share is the name of the game in a fast growing market. If you are having problems capturing and growing your market share, you must revisit your positioning to make sure the benefit you communicate differentiates you from your competition and is meaningful to the market.
Has the market gone through huge growth and it is now a market share war between you and your competitors? You want to ensure you take market share. In these highly competitive “War Games*, you must fight in a crowded market by finding market segments which you can make your own, and creating products, services or messages that meet their exclusive needs.
Is your product or company focused in a stagnant market? Positioning can find areas of needs that no one else has targeted, enabling you to “Leapfrog”* over the competition, creating new product features, services, positioning and messaging which allow you to stand out and change the actual market dynamics.
Is your market in decline? You can “Leapfrog”* over your competition, find a fresh, new position, by finding product features and customer needs which have not been met by competitive offerings in the past and are important to customers. By simply stressing new features that are unmet benefits desired by customers, you can re-position and change the game.

* The terms Trailblazers, Leap Frog, War Games and Beat The Clock are copywrited by Mary Haderlein, President, Hyde Park Group, Chicago, IL.

Highland Team is a high tech sales an marketing consulting firm focused on maximizing revenue opportunities and delivering results.

Highland Team's areas of expertise and specialization include:

Strategic Marketing
Channel Management and Marketing
e-Business Strategy and Implementation
Go-to-market Planning and Implementation

This newsletter is provided as a complimentary service from Phone Works, Inc., the San Francisco Bay Area's leading sales consulting firm. Phone Works helps technology firms increase revenue, shorten sales cycles and implement successful, repeatable sales models. The industry's largest technology companies and newest start-ups turn to Phone Works for lead-generation, lead-qualification, telesales and sales-productivity programs.

You can reach Phone Works at 510.749.9073.