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5 Questions

We Should be Asking Ourselves

… if we want to consistently win more new customers.

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1. Are we clearly communicating what makes us different?

2. Are we absolutely focused on our target customers?

3. Have we uniquely positioned our offering in the minds of our customers?

4. Is our message and offering one and the same?

5. Are we more convincing than our competitors?

Please read on!

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Question 1

Are we clearly communicating what

makes us different?

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It’s not good enough if we just offer something different

… we need to also make it meaningfully visible for the customer, and help them remember it.

Even if we only have 2 other competitors, our customers will still have 2 other choices!

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Differentiation – It’s Do or Die

It’s task is to communicate how we are different, focusing on the one key thing that we want customers

to remember about our product or company.

And to do that, we need to know our competitors. This is where we need to begin our strategic planning.

Differentiation is key to seizing customer mindshare and the cornerstone of successful marketing!

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Question 2

Are we absolutely focused on our

target customers?

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The philosophy “Love All, Serve All” might work for Hard Rock Café …

… but most businesses need to focus on those that they are meant to serve! Others just consume our time and lead us to

make wrong decisions.

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Clear segmentation and targeting allows us to …

• Design and deliver solutions that we know will satisfy the most urgent needs of our chosen customers.

• Craft messaging and value argumentation that is “spot on”.• Know who we should concentrate our marketing and sales efforts on.• Know who we should not waste valuable resources on!

We know that we cannot be best for everyone, so we need to decide on who are we going to be best for.

Our competitive edge depends on it!

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Question 3

Have we uniquely positioned our offering

in the minds of our customers?

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The battle takes place in the mind

Positioning is about favorably distinguishing ourselves in the minds of our target customers.

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It’s about perception – Advice from strategic marketing guru Jack Trout (father of positioning) in his book “The Power of Simplicity”

“A differentiating idea must have a competitive mental angle… This does not necessarily mean a better product or service, but rather there needs to be an

element of differentness.”

“It’s the perception that must be considered in the selection of the idea, not the reality. A competitive mental angle is the point in the mind that

allows your marketing program to work effectively. That’s the point that you need to leverage to achieve results.”

The power of positioning is so strong that we need to make it visible in all we do.

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It’s hard to drive away with the customer if you haven’t first “started their engine”!

First we feel, then we act

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But we sell to engineers who rationally evaluate

Still, that doesn’t stop them from first “feeling”. It’s just that what gets them smiling is probably different than for a music teacher.

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Three very important and integrated strategies

Customer

DIFFERENTIATIONHOW we should be best

POSITIONINGPERCEIVED as best

SEGMENTATIONFor WHOM should we be best

PurchasingProcess

Productrequirements

(Rational)

Short listing

(Emotional)

Final buyingdecision

(Emotional)

Evaluation

(Rational)

ProductCompanyResearch

Pre-PurchasingProcess

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Question 4

Is our message and offering

one and the same?

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Meaningful messaging

is not a pitch.

It’s something we earn!

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And this requires that we are in sync!

We need to harmonize our strategies and tactics across the company and work as a synchronized team. That’s the only way to ensure the customer that we are rowing with them towards a

common destination.

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Question 5

Are we more convincing than our

competitors?

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We need to deliver a simple and more compelling reason to buy from us.

Skepticism is easily created when our positioning, branding, value argumentation and actual offering are not tightly intertwined

and also in sync with how people perceive things.

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Construct solution messaging like a sky scraper

Features &Technology

Benefits

Customervalue

CredibilityNeeded product capabilities

Product desirables

Value propositions

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But you know what?We aren’t the only ones building a sky scraper.

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But you know what?You aren’t the only one building a sky scraper!

You might not be the tallest, but you can offer something DIFFERENT. Make it visible and meaningful!

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So we need to make sure that we stand out

Features &Technology

Benefits

Positioning

Customervalue

CredibilityNeeded product capabilities

Product desirables

Value propositions

Perceived reason to buy andwhat we base all our marketing communications & strategies on.

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We live in an overcommunicated world where more is sent and less is received.

Positioning

Customer values

Benefits

Features & Technology

Val

ue A

rgum

enta

tion

Mes

sage

Tria

ngle

Core message

Information needed for ourmessage to be successful

Additional and helpful info

Nice if they also read

Our communications need to be clear, simple and resonate with the customer. Therefore we need to tell it top-down, not bottom-up

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We also need to remember that customers see us from the “outside-in”

We’re not going to connect with them if we tell things from the “inside-out”.

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We have to excel in all phases

5 things that we need to do well in order to … Attract Customers, Convince Them, and then Close the Deal

• Meaningfully differentiate our offering. • Segment and target.• Uniquely position our offering in the mind of the customer.• Work as a well synchronized team to make sure that our messaging

and offering are one and the same.• Deliver a more convincing and memorable message.

Attract ConvinceClose the

Deal

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Have you spotted some weak points?

You might then appreciate some help.

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My offering

I specialize in helping ICT companies win more customersby more powerfully differentiating and positioning themselves in the minds of their target customers.

The result is not a pitch, rather it becomes the cornerstone of the company’s marketing and competitive strategies.

Operating after an established 12 point plantailored to specific objectives for your company, I work with you

to get customers coming to you with a desire to do business,

not just asking what you can offer them.

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Plan ingredients include

- Helping you to refine your market landscape: Competitive information, Differentiation & Positioning are key areas of focus.

- Helping you clearly articulate your distinguishing idea in your marketing messaging: Website, Collateral, Presentations, Case studies, Testimonials, White Papers.

- Integrating your distinguishing idea into a strategic plan of objectives, and help you select tactics that work in harmony to realize these objectives.

- Making sure that everyone is in the same boat, rowing in unison towards a common goal that you share with the customer.

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Your brand

Strategic marketing is an integrated process ... that gets us synchronized and rowing with the customer

Differentiation

Positioning

Web

Sales kitmaterials Messaging

Arguments

Offering

Competition

Marcomplan

Training

GTM plan Segmentation

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Dante Iacovoni – Biography

Dante has over 25 years of successful business experience in sales and executive marketing roles from the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry. He has extensive experience from working in multi-national, startup and value added reseller organizations. During the past years he has driven comprehensive rebranding and solution marketing transformations with crucially successful results that have lead to significant increased brand awareness and sales.

Strategic in nature and creative since birth, Dante is also able to combine his technical understanding with his marketing savvy to communicate business value from technical capabilities.

In 2010, Dante founded Difrent Strategic Marketing. Difrent is a strategic marketing services company specializing in helping ICT businesses more succinctly articulate their differentiating idea and reinforce it as the cornerstone of their marketing and sales strategies. Difrent works according to an established 12 point plan that gets customers coming to them with a desire to do business, instead of having customers just contact them to see if they have any good products to offer.

Dante graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Washington University and Bachelor of Arts from Lake Forest College. After completing his university studies in the USA, he moved to live and work in Sweden.

Dante has worked with marketing differentiation, positioning and value argumentation since the early-90’s. Since then, they have served as key strategic solution marketing puzzle pieces.

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Dante Iacovoni – Experience

Dante has served as a leader in the business world for over 25 years. During his corporate career, he has achieved the following results.

- Dante drove a very comprehensive and complete rebranding and marketing turnaround of a startup, including company positioning and branding, product portfolio and more. This process significantly contributed to a 9-fold increase in company revenues, from 52M SEK to 450M SEK.

- At a time when Ericsson was known for their circuit switched solutions, Dante convincingly contributed to establishing mindset leadership for Ericsson’s IP multi- service backbone and Voice over Packet solutions amongst many leading Telcos.

- Working at a Lucent Technologies sales representative, Dante transitioned the company’s sales and marketing to become Lucent’s biggest value added reseller of broadband solutions in Sweden.

Dante has a wealth of hands-on experience from the ICT industry, most recently from converged IP communications (broadband, core networks, VoIP, IPTV, Network Mgmt, IMS, Connected Home, …). He is skilled at helping companies ascertain and communicate their differentiating idea and succinctly articulating their positioning, integrating it then into product and company messaging and marketing communications. After working so many years in the ICT industry, Dante has the technical know-how needed to research company competition and the market in general (a necessary ingredient for crafting differentiation and positioning strategies).He is also experienced in crafting strategic marketing plans (with defined objectives) and executing on them.

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My contact details are

Dante Iacovonidante@difrent.se

Office +46 (0)8 517 85 755Mobile +46 (0)73 88 00 150