Positioning - How to dominate a single target market

FOUNDATION TRAINING ON POWERFUL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

REPORT 1

POSITIONING

H o w t o d o m in a te a si n gl e target m arket?

CCS HELPS YOU GROW YOUR PRACTICE At Click.Convert.Sell we use lean startup, theory of constraints, direct response marketing, market leadership, inbound marketing & marketing automation to help our clients succeed.

Delivering you: More Customers More Sales. More Profits.

The Click.Convert.Sell model is designed to position your business as the market leader in your chosen area. In this foundational training we go through the different elements of the powerful business intelligence worksheet. To ensure you have the understanding that we can then build on the more powerful elements of your business growth engine.

We know there are only 3 ways to grow a business.

1. Get more customers 2. Increase the transaction size.

3. Increase the frequency of purchase.

So everything we do is designed to increase one or several of these metrics.

We only work with one type of business per geographic area so that we can ensure they dominate their niche.

If you’ve got a business and you want to grow it to be the market leader in your area then get in touch.

Dr Aalok Y Shukla Founder of Click.Convert.Sell

@Sales_Automator Facebook.com/clickconvertsell clickconvertsell@gmail.com clickconvertsell.com

Aalok:

So, this training we’re going to go through how to dominate a single target market. What’s the problem, Alfred?

Alfred:

The problem is too much clutter. So many messages in different directions, no relevance to you or me, generic messages and the bigger problem is too much choice. What are we going to eat tonight? What are we going to watch on TV? Where are we going to buy our clothes?

Aalok:

And all the businesses that sell each of those individual items they’re competing on multiple fronts because there are so many other competitors. For every one clothes shop, there’s ten clothes shop. For every one food takeaway place there’s ten food takeaway places. The question is, how can you fight through that? How can you survive? Otherwise the problem is with no relevance, too much choice, not enough trust you’re going to be having big problems in your business.

Alfred:

Trust, well, that’s it. Who do you trust?

Aalok:

Absolutely, people want to know who to trust where should I go?

Alfred:

How do you filter out good messages from bad messages, good service providers?

Aalok:

Yes, at the moment you don’t trust anybody like the way we look at advertising and sales is like they are trying to sell me something and tell me something which I don’t necessarily believe and I’ll find out whether or not I believe that through independent other sources. I’ll read articles, I’ll talk to friends, I’ll look at different things. As a business you can’t just send more of the same stuff.

You’ve got to take a different approach.

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Aalok:

And that’s the whole thing. Because if you’re having to constantly discount to compete and you’re only able to compete on price reactively not through your choice like Walmart, it’s an intentional operational strategy to remove all costs from their supply chain and go aggressively to capture for your wallet share. But other companies like for example a local hair and beauty place or a local dental practice, they may have no other choice but then to say, “Oh, I’m going to have to discount the price of my service because otherwise how can I attract people?”

Alfred:

Okay. Interesting that you mention Walmart because most people over here in the UK they know it as Asda.

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

It’s essentially the same company but most people assume that Walmart are in the business of lower pricing but there’s actually what we call the business behind the business. They are actually so good at protecting their margins and creating all sorts of loss leaders that their business is actually managing their margins instead of buying low and selling high.

Aalok:

Absolutely. As a small business –

Alfred:

We don’t have that micro-managerial support. We don’t have the big buying power –

Aalok: No.

True, but their return investment’s going down and everyone comes down to the same things. If you don’t have strong positioning you’re going to be constantly chasing customers, constantly searching for new gimmicks, you’re going to be constantly challenged on price.

People are going to be like, “Well, why is this place down the road cheaper? What’s the difference with you? Why should I see you?”

Aalok:

Every year there is new competitor.

Alfred:

Constantly challenged on price. They are providing a good value service but their service but their customers are saying, “Oh, can you offer me a better deal?”

That’s why starting with the larger companies they actually have the financing to put out their messages. But for the small business owner, for the person out there who is literally hustling on the high-street they have to think a lot more carefully about taking a position and when we say taking a position, taking a position in the client customers’ mind.

Alfred:

They are constantly attracting difficult and fussy customers. You don’t know who is coming through the door.

Aalok:

No and people can fly abroad for different services. Loyalty is gone, what’s in it for me, all this stuff. What’s the solution?

Alfred:

Solution is positioning. Solution is taking – it’s almost like not being greedy but taking a position in your customers’ mind. It’s almost like we start with a problem.

Aalok:

Alfred:

Alfred: Okay.

When you look at the business person on the business person on the high-street they are suffering from certain symptoms. Their shoulders are – their head is low, their shoulders are slumped because they are constantly chasing customers, they are constantly searching for new gimmicks.

Yes, or you’ve got to bang a lot louder and that’s what the big companies do. They have the funds to spend multiple millions.

Whether the message is right or wrong the message is louder because they have more money to put the same message out there.

Aalok:

Because you’ve given them no other option to chose you on.

Alfred:

Alfred:

Alfred:

Aalok:

Aalok: Yes.

Yes, there has to be a reason why they come and see you. If you are one of six shops offering exactly the same service on the street, how do they choose? They choose on price.

Aalok: Yes.

Right. That’s the option that they have.

Alfred:

In your mind when you think of cars and safety a lot of people would say Volvo.

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Aalok: Yes.

then you can then pull people from a large geographic area and therefore you can dominate.

Alfred:

They, Volvo, there are a lot of brands or other cars out there but somehow they’ve managed to –

Alfred: Right.

Aalok:

Well they are the market leader.

Aalok:

Alfred:

They are the market leader for safety –

Aalok:

For safety with cars.

The whole thing we’re going to be talking about is positioning, how to be the market leader and to begin with you’ve got to think about the problem you want to solve.

Alfred:

In the car market.

Alfred:

What is the problem? Yes.

Aalok:

What is the thing you are providing for your customers to improve and transform their life? What is the high value service? What is the market you want? What’s the service you want to dominate? Proctor & Gamble have so many billion dollar brands where they focus on a specific target market like this is the product for colored, this is the product for whites or whatever like that.

In the same way where’s the place for hair treatment? Where is the place for laser eye? Where is the place for implants? We are talking about within geographic pockets.

Alfred:

Whittling it down to the problem that you want to solve. A lot of the clues are who is coming through your door. Who comes through your door during business hours?

Aalok:

Who buys that already?

Alfred:

You already buys your services, buys your products and this will give you an idea of your general market. We’re not talking about people on the high street. Anyone who comes through your door and makes a transaction, they are your general market. How do you differentiate yourself within that general market that comes within your door?

There is a bit of a toss-up here because some of them purchase things that are a high margin, some of them would come in, they’d pick up something and they’d leave that has a low margin, so you have to balance it out.

Aalok:

Because they may not realize you offer additional specialty procedures or services. They may just think you offer general things so in their head they think that you’re not qualified or capable leader in that higher value service. The key thing is making sure you intentionally place the message consistently and broadly and repeatedly.

Alfred:

I’m going to give you a problem, Aalok.

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

And then an example would be, if I said to you a toy with your meal what’s the first thing that comes into your mind?

Aalok: McDonalds.

Alfred:

McDonalds, right, the happy meal?

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

Right? If I said to you –

Aalok:

For the car with safety, they can do more innovations around safety and protecting and you’re appealing to the psychology of the person that wants that.

Alfred: Right.

Aalok:

Do I toy with the meal, you’re talking about a harassed parent who wants to have a little bit of respite and so then they can actually find some ways that’s child friendly to take their child for instance.

Alfred:

And if you’re doing more things with that position –

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

[Inaudible 05:48] it kind of protects that position.

Aalok:

Absolutely and that’s what you talked about with the front end of your backend model because you attract people with the initial sale of what you want to go with and then you offer additional services or items that fit the model and the buyer profile of who you’ve attracted.

Alfred:

Right. Another word association if we said books online, what comes to your mind?

Aalok: Amazon.

Alfred:

Amazon, thank you. So you really have to choose. It sounds—

Aalok:

And there’s only space for one.

Alfred:

It sounds like you’re limiting yourself but the customer, because of this so much choice, you have to find a small pocket and guard it with your life really.

Aalok:

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See it’s not even small, it’s focused because these days with more communications technology people will find you out and the whole point is if you establish a very strong, firm brand position and

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

I’m going to give you a problem. The problem is why you don’t want to be the best restaurant in town.

Aalok: Why? Alfred:

Well, we can go back to positioning and market focus. For example, if I said to you, we’re going to open a restaurant and we want to be the best restaurant in town that’s the worst possible –

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Aalok:

Yes, because what does “best” mean?

Aalok:

Or you read their book.

Alfred:

Yes, what does “best” mean? There’s a McDonald’s down the road.

They are the biggest and baddest –

Alfred:

And they are a heart surgeon, esteemed heart surgeon, you’d say here’s my checkbook.

Aalok:

They are best for fast and convenient.

Aalok:

Alfred:

You’ve got it. We can be the best Italian restaurant. We can be the best Lebanese restaurant. It’s about choosing. You’ve got to keep whittling it down.

Aalok:

And even then we could go with the best Lebanese fast food or the best Lebanese sit down.

Alfred:

Right, right. There you go. You know you’ve taken a position when your customers start speaking in those terms like, “Oh, we haven’t got long; let’s get a pizza. Oh, these guys are the fastest.” It’s about choosing, whittling down, choosing that position.

Yes. So the key thing is choosing your niche. So for example you want to make sure that that customer has a high 30-day customer value, what does this mean? We’re talking about acquiring customers.

Customers don’t come by accident. You have to do some sort of marketing activity or go through that and for future trainings to get your message out there. That carries a cost. It may be a cost you can leverage but it’s a cost. How much you spend on the customer is much less than they spend with you. Therefore this is scalable.

Alfred:

Is it scalable?

Aalok:

Yes, it is. Because, if for example they spend, it costs you £150 to get that customer, they spend £1500 with you in the first 30 days, you’ve then got £1350 or you put your £150 back straight into getting another customer.

Alfred:

Well, another way of saying it is, if you knew that a certain segment of your clients are going to give you £1000 over the course of six months would you invest in £150 to acquire that customer?

Aalok:

Yes. So that in that situation you’ve got to have cash flow that would manage that period. But I’m talking about like for small businesses.

If you focus on a service which means that in the first 30 days with you they will spend a multiple of what it cost you to acquire them, it’s very scalable because you don’t need to rely on banks to fund your overdrafts and you could rely on that –

Aalok:

Generic never wins so you have to focus on one thing at a time and the thing is you could actually have several different focuses but you have to have each one towards a specific market to begin with.

You’ve got to chose a niche and you’ve got to think like who’s going to be my target customer. What’s the problem we’re going to solve and it’s always good to focus on transformative problems, problems that really are problems, genuine problems to your customer.

Alfred:

Transformative you mean … the experience means the client is transformed?

Aalok:

Yes, their life is significantly better as a result of purchasing your item.

Alfred:

Okay, okay.

Alfred:

You can finance your own growth.

Aalok:

That means that they are like going to feel, their health is going to be massively improved, their finances are going to be improved, it’s something which transforms and improves the quality of their life.

Generally those sorts of products and services are quite expensive.

There’s also generally some perceived risk in taking them. So then people are thinking, “I’d like to improve my life but I don’t know who to trust.”

Aalok:

Alfred:

Risk, right.

Aalok:

Yes, absolutely. The question then is who do I trust, because I’m not going to buy a heart surgery on price.

It’s self-financed growth. What you want to be looking at is thinking about what’s the problem, what are people searching for? What are people frustrate by? Where are they looking? And then you also want to think about, “Okay, so how I’m I going to get these customers? Where I’m I going to kind of attract them from?” I’m going to be using like word of mouth, I’m going to try to use like just have something where when people use they talk about something.

We’ll use adverts. All these things are place through which you can place your market leadership positioning and –

Alfred:

And protect your market leader position.

Alfred:

The other way around is if a general doctor approached you and said, “Oh, you’ve got heart problems and we’re about to operate,” you’d say, “Wait a minute. Are you qualified?”

Aalok:

Yes, because nature doesn’t like a vacuum. If there is a gap, if there is a space, somebody will take that space. Why does Coke spend so much money on advertising? Or why does McDonalds spend so much money on advertising? Because they’ve got to reassert and maintain where they are. That’s the formula for market leadership, content times consistency. The market leader in any market, they

Aalok: Yes.

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Alfred:

Even though they’ve been through medical school.

Aalok:

They are qualified in one thing but are they expert in another thing?

Alfred:

They are a general practitioner. But if they came to you and said, with the costume and everything and they said that –

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are a thought leader.

Alfred:

They are the ones putting the ideas out. In order to put the ideas out, you have to communicate across different media. You’ve got to have different written articles, you’ve got to have different audio articles, you’ve got to have different videos, you’ve got to have different explanation tools.

Well, let me say something a little bit about consistency because you can have the right message, the right content that’s going out to the public but a lot of people sometimes they get bored with their message and they start switching their focus.

Aalok:

But that’s the business owner. The customer is never bored; they don’t even know you exist.

Alfred:

That’s why consistency is important because I could tell you something and you put it on a piece of paper but if I keep telling you it, telling you it, you won’t have to write it down. You know.

Aalok:

Trust is when you know what that person will do for you. You don’t want to keep hearing about McDonalds offering you happy meals and burgers and then suddenly they say, “Actually, now we’re a high value restaurant,” and then next week, “No, actually now we’re this or that.” You are thinking, “Well, what do you really do?” People will go through their lives and every few months they may have the problems that your business can solve but if you’ve been flip flapping and changing your marketing, they will be like, “I don’t know. I don’t think these people are really serious about what they are doing.”

They claim they do laser hair removal and they claim that they do all these things but now they are talking about doing other treatments and other things like this. And so I’d rather go to the place that just does that and they know their stuff and they seem more consistent.

Alfred:

So what or who occurs in your customers’ mind when they have a problem?

Aalok:

Exactly and so that’s your opportunity is to own that space, that mental space in their head in your local area.

Alfred:

Let me just touch on a problem there that most business owners will have is that like when I ask one of my clients I say, “So, what do you do?” They go, “Oh, we do everything.”

Aalok:

Yes, that’s terrible.

Alfred:

That’s the mistake is you’ve actually got to first of all think about your general market, people that walk in through your door. Who I’m I going to take a segment out of that general market and what is the problem that I’m solving for them?

Aalok:

Who do you want referrals for? Like if you offer ten services, so let’s just say for example you offer simple teeth cleaning hygiene services but you also offer full mouth implants, the person –

Alfred:

As a dentist?

Aalok:

Yes, just as a dentist basically. You want referrals ideally for the larger cases. Therefore you need to consistently communicate that you do that in a better way. So until you put in a consistent message out there, everyday you’re saying I do this I do that I do that every day to ten people they’re all confused and they’ll basically say, “Well, I don’t really know. He does a few things.” That’s not going to be a strong sell when they are talking to their friend.

Alfred: Right.

Aalok:

Versus if they said, “Look, here’s his book or here’s his guide,” or something like this or, “This is the person you need to go to for ...”

Alfred:

Interestingly the people that we trust in our general lives are friends.

Alfred:

Or a person has a nagging or your friend has a nagging problem and all of a sudden –

Aalok:

And they have consistent behavior.

Aalok:

Alfred:

Are the ones that have a consistently positive influence on behavior in our lives.

Aalok:

Yes, you know what they will do.

Alfred:

Yes, that’s why we trust them.

Aalok:

Exactly. Your business has to project a presence and it’s not what you spin it to be. It has to be what it has to be.

You recognized that solved that problem. Exactly. What you want to do is position yourself and your business so that you can own a space then you won’t be constantly chasing customers they’ll be attracted to you. You’ll be attracting new people and new gimmicks because you’ve got your proven message which you just repeat over time. You won’t be costly challenged on price because the people understand that you’re better because you’re offering a more trusted valuable service.

Alfred:

You don’t argue with a heart surgeon when they tell you the price.

Aalok:

It depends on how things are but the best one really. There’s different elements that you can do within positioning and we’ve got to look at what occurs in the customer’s mind when they are choosing to solve the problem. If we look at the different elements of positioning we’ve got like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Just nine to begin with, for example.

Alfred:

At least.

Alfred: Okay.

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you brand name or your offering.

Aalok:

But you have to make it like a stick of rock. The message has to go right through it.

Alfred:

Right. Aalok, what is positioning?

Aalok:

Positioning is owning that thought, that association in your customers’ mind so when just think of the problem they think of

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Aalok:

At least, but then it just gives you an idea. If we talk about positioning, you can have premium optioning, premium positioning.

For example, you will have different levels. Virgin upper class, they’ve premium positioned.

Alfred:

Some people actually claim that position to start with like Boise.

The sound system Boise, right?

Aalok:

Absolutely. You want to script and make people ask for your solutions with their language. You want to train them to say, “Oh, I have this problem therefore I need your solution.” That’s all part of education. Other things are visual positioning. Would you pay more for a Coke in a boutique or at a hotel or would you expect to pay more on like a stall just in the middle of the street? It’s the same product but different margins; sometimes the prestige factor of where you are located or the convenience factor that can play like a role in it.

Alfred:

It’s a bit like duty free as well.

Aalok: Absolutely.

Alfred: Aalok:

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How much is a speaker? You can go to the pawn shop and get one for a pound but Boise will say, “Oh, excuse me. Minimum £600.”

I saw on the tube yesterday, like M-Beats by Dr. Dre audio headphones.

It was on Warson city lines targeting business commuters and it had a picture of their executives as executive headphones and it said, “The sound of first class.”

Alfred:

Oh, that is a position.

Aalok:

But then my question is, is that congruent with Dr. Dre? But, that’s a different story.

Alfred:

That’s a different story.

Aalok:

But the intentional crafting was there. Another thing would be solution scripting. You want to use unique, transformative, nonsearchable language. What does this mean? In the age of Google, you tell somebody a brand name or a generic thing. They will then price shop you and check you. You want to have your own solution.

You cannot get this anywhere else.

Alfred:

Right. It kind of touches on branding your own problem solving.

Aalok:

Yes, experience design.

Alfred:

Right. So give me a problem that you solved.

Aalok:

For example, one treatment that we do as a dental practice we would do and helping people rebuild chipped teeth edges. You could say that we do white filling on the front edge of the tooth but a white filling on the front edge of the tooth and you’re open to, “Well, how much do you charge for your white filling versus somebody else charge white filling?” You’ve got no value built into that phrase versus if you said –

Alfred:

But if you give it a label?

Aalok:

Yes, add special enamel. We do like an AER, artificial enamel replacements so we’re replacing that. Now, it looks like you are replacing a tissue that was lost from me and it sounds like a more precise treatment.

Alfred:

But it also makes it more tangible. It gives a kind of nebulous concept. It gives it form.

Aalok:

Yes. Plus at the same time if nobody else is using that terminology –

Alfred:

Your position.

POSITIONING

Aalok: Yes. Alfred:

People actually spend more in the duty free. It’s not so much how – people say the argument is cheaper but they actually spend more because of the –

Aalok:

It’s where you are and using the visuals as I say. If you have different services, if you can use association, visual association is so powerful. If you can have a service and you say that the diamond and you actually have a picture of the diamond. All these sorts of things that people straight away, they may not know your service but they know what diamond is.

Alfred:

Yes, so packaging? A lot of it is –

Aalok:

It’s part of the packaging; it’s part of the visual positioning. Other things are like in terms of that you’re positioning like in terms of the complex problems. You want to solve bigger and more profitable problems. You want to look at like the biggest things that can do so you position in a simple way that you can do those things. You also want to position like a trusted expert. How to trust experts to do things. Look at chefs on TV. They teach you and they sell you recipes, they show you how to do it, they show you everything.

The best leaders and chefs they don’t say, “Oh I’m not going to tell you my secret recipe.” They’re open with their recipe but it’s the way they do it and they know that they can do that. So you think, “Okay, I’ve got the same recipe that you’ve got but I know that it would be better at your restaurant. So, I’m going to come and eat at your restaurant.” The true leaders are able to show exactly and completely transparently how they do it and then people then there before believe because they are teaching people how to do it.

Therefore, they must be the expert. Therefore, I’m going to seek you out.

It’s the market leadership thing that we talked about. Being a category authority, publishing regularly, establishing yourself as the pre-eminent expert and constantly looking to improve the information that’s out there and then you want to look at like what’s the narrowest and most profitable market that you can target. Like to me a category of one being incomparable, being the leading coach or leading expert for autism among 79-year-olds or whatever it is you want to do. You just look at what’s the category of one? So therefore –

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Alfred:

That’s the challenge, niche in terms of choosing one thing because we all like to say that we have many skills. You’ve heard that phrase, “Master of none,” right?

Aalok:

Yes, but you start with one. Make it real, make it up. Make it real, make it recur.

Alfred: Okay.

Aalok:

Dance all over them. Make it up, what you want to do. Make it real, make it happen, make it recur, make it happen without you and then do the next.

Alfred:

And if it keeps recurring then it’s real.

Aalok:

Absolutely. And so then you can set up one target market then another target market. It’s a model. You are just going down that way. You also want to look at where is the starving crowd. You want people that desperately want to solve the problem that you have that you are able to solve.

Alfred:

Is it actually a problem that needs to be solved?

Aalok:

It’s a real problem because there’s also people that make things up and they think it’s a problem but it’s not actually a problem. The problem is dictated by the person that is coming about it. That’s why you’ve got to understand your customer. And that started with the point that you made, who is coming through your door because it all starts and ends with the customer.

Alfred:

If they are actually paying then it means they are paying to solve an existing problem.

Aalok:

Absolutely, and then that can be scaled up.

Alfred:

Exactly. Are you going to take the clients that have the problems with the highest margin or the clients that have the lowest margin but more frequency? It depends on your business model is.

Aalok:

That’s –

Alfred:

But you have to take a position.

Aalok:

Yes. You can set up The Doughnut Shop as the best place or you can set up The Diamond Shop and they’ll both work in different ways. It all depends on what you want.

Alfred: Right.

Aalok:

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Yes. I think that’s enough for positioning.