A strong brand position makes selling so much easier:
- Better quality leads: Your customers self-select if they’re a fit or not.
- Quickly qualify prospects: Your sales people can qualify their leads faster, and prioritize where to invest their time and attention.
- More referrals: It’s easier for partners to remember and refer your services.
When you get your positioning right your sales funnel accelerates. It makes your brand more findable, referable, memorable and desirable.
Quarry Integrated Marketing has their positioning dialed:
- They’re an advertising and communications agency.
- They work with technical or engineered products.
- They focus on companies experiencing a marketplace disruption.
- They target relationships that will invest greater than $100,000 in billings per year.
Quarry packages the bullets with stories and prose, but the essence is clear. They know who they are. They know who they work with. And they know where they deliver the most value.
Just the facts
Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.” A positioning statement shouldn’t have any fluff. Just the facts. That’s all you need.
Positioning statements quickly lose their impact when they’re fluffed up into an elevator pitch or unique selling proposition. There’s nothing wrong with an elevator pitch, but people often believe the facts aren’t enough. They try to spruce them up with flowery words and phrases.
Fluffing up a positioning statement waters down its impact. The facts are far easier to remember and share than a creative play on words.
Quarry’s positioning is effective, because it’s quick and to the point.
Qualification checklist
Quarry’s positioning accelerates their sales process, because it functions as a checklist. They specify who they are and what they do, and ask if a prospect fits their criteria:
- Category: Are you looking for an advertising agency? (Yes or No?)
- Target market: Do you need an agency with targeted expertise in B2B and technical products? (Yes or No?)
- Situation: Is your market experiencing a shift or a transformation? (Yes or No?)
- Size of account: Do you invest over $100,000 in external marketing services? (Yes or No?)
If a prospect fits all four, they have the foundation to do good work together. If not, they can move on. It’s that simple.
For example, Quarry works with John Deere. A creative ad is not going to sell a $300,000 combine. Deere’s products are technical, and require human intervention to sell. They require rich marketing collateral, messaging and branding to support their sales efforts — the type of expertise and services Quarry provides.
Deere and Quarry can quickly qualify each other based on Quarry’s clear positioning. The relationship can get off on the right foot, because they know they are a fit for each other.
A clear point of differentiation
The X factor in Quarry’s positioning is their emphasis on “companies experiencing a marketplace disruption.”
Quarry’s mantra is “Imagine Something Better”, and they have a culture of reinvention. Over their forty year history they have re-thought, re-imagined and re-positioned their brand and services several times. And this culture of reinvention follows through into their client relationships.
Quarry’s culture is driven by curiosity and discovery, and they do their best work when the playing field is in flux. They look for companies that are experiencing a transition that is impacting their clients’ competitive advantage. The shift could be caused by new technologies, new government legislation or policies such as Obamacare, a new competitor, or some other force.
Whatever the shift, a company has to approach their marketing with fresh eyes. This is where Quarry shines.
Every organization will have their own point of differentiation in their positioning. The category, target market and size of account are table stakes. But the situation in Quarry’s positioning is where they separate themselves from the herd.
Arrange the statements to your needs
Clear positioning is adaptable and sharable. You can rearrange the elements to fit the situation or the audience. Sometimes you will share them all, and other times you may only focus on one.
The key is making each element easy to understand, share and remember.
When you achieve clarity, your positioning becomes fluid. The words become secondary, and everyone can speak to them and share them as needed. It elevates your brand, and makes it more findable, referable, memorable and desirable.
