One of the most important parts of market planning, your positioning decisions will be reflected in your professional identity branding, figure in your market strategy and should be preeminent in everything you do. Meet or exceed your positioning statement – be honest, realistic and accurate. Moreover, insists marketing author Jeffrey J. Mayer, you should be able to explain who you are and what you do in under 10 seconds.

Example: Here's Joe Associate's positioning statement – or what he calls his "elevator" speech – since it so quickly explains what he does and how his clients benefit from doing business with him.

I want to work with fewer clients. This will let me build stronger relationships with my clients through better understanding their situations, wants, needs, dreams and concerns. This deeper understanding, along with a team of other professional advisers, allows me to find the best possible solutions for my clients, where each expert works within his or her strengths.

Marketing consultant Kevin Beauchamp (ISP Marketing) insists, "Doing business without positioning is the military equivalent of dividing your forces among multiple fronts, weakening your ability to take on your enemy with full force in the marketplace. Before taking on competitors in an arena where they're well entrenched, take the time to analyze their positioning strategy (if one exists) and look for weaknesses that you may be able to exploit."

Example: Ohio National's Kerry Lawing (Lawing Financial Group, Inc. Overland Park, KS) targets local retirees, businessowners, and affluent individuals and families. As discussed, both the Lawing Group and the Hummel firm (Berlin, OH), position themselves in these market segments by building strategic alliances with the other professional advisers already working with these people. By doing this, these organizations don't waste resources building and defending market share in areas that are not a primary focus.

That these other professionals could easily become serious competition should they decide to enter the financial services arena, is a secondary, but not unimportant consideration.

"Competitive positioning is the art of developing and
communicating meaningful differences between
one's services and those of competitors serving
the same target market."

— Philip Kotler, Marketing Professional Services

Identifying Your Resources

Positioning also means determining the marketing and sales resources that will help you enter and develop your new market segments. What resources do you know well, and where will you need help from someone else? What tools and techniques will you use to manage the sales process? What products and services will you sell?

You'll need to ask yourself those questions and more in preparing your plan. None of this is new to you; but you will need to select and adapt familiar marketing and selling resources to your new target market, and whenever you can, create new ones that push the right buttons with your new prospects and clients.

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Ohio National is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse or sponsor, any particular prospecting, marketing or selling system.

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