Focusing on a broad audience means you have a bigger audience but not a better one. You can’t be all things to everyone, nor do you want to be. Instead you want a targeted approach.
In Danita Bye’s article, How to Put Your Firm Out of Business, Bye explains how a targeted approach allows you to better target sales and marketing budgets, offer services that better meet your target’s needs, and get better referrals.
“Because your focus establishes you as a specialist, your business is the first one that existing customers will think of when associates mention a problem you can solve, giving you a prequalified and, in some cases, presold lead,” Bye says.
Having a targeted approach goes hand-in-hand with building your value proposition. Figure out who your ideal clients are and then determine the value you offer them. But your value proposition is more than a simple value statement, writes Mike Schultz and John Doerr in 3 Rules for Building a Value Proposition that Sells Like Crazy. It’s a concept about why people buy your services, and it’s woven into the fabric of your firm and your relationships with clients. And to develop that concept, you must determine what resonates with your buyers, differentiate yourself from others in the market, and build trust.
When you know who your targeted audience is and the value you have to offer them, then sales conversations are much easier. You have a strong foundation and can focus on conversation and presentation techniques that help you stand out even more among firms vying for the same buyer. In Deliver the Perfect Pitch: 9 Rules for Winning Clients, Charles H. Green explains how it isn’t your PowerPoint presentation that buyers want to see. They want to feel what it’s like to work with you. Follow his guidelines to meet that desire.
Strong Company, Strong Brand
Accenture is one company that seems to have embraced all of these best practices. Teresa Poggenpohl, Executive Director of Global Image for the firm, says the company has created a client experience that is strong, consistent, and differentiated. In addition, everyone in the company understands the value the firm offers, buys into its brand, and is motivated to contribute to their clients’ success.
All of that has resulted in a strong brand and brand strategy that allows Accenture to attract and retain its targeted clients. It also enables the firm to endure any marketing issues it may encounter, such as the one with Tiger Woods, Poggenpohl explains in her podcast interview, How a Strong Brand Helped Accenture Withstand the Tiger Woods Scandal.
“Our brand strategy didn’t change [because of what happened with Tiger Woods]. We used Tiger Woods in a very specific way. He was our metaphor for high performance, and he enabled us to own that idea,” she says. “We made the decision that we had to move away from Tiger. It was really that he was no longer the right metaphor for our high performance message.”
And rather quickly and seamlessly, the firm replaced its metaphor and has continued to offer clients high performance.
Now take a look at your firm, the value it offers, and its brand. Are you on your way to establishing your firm as the most valued, most trusted firm in your target market? Have you already done so?
