I am in traffic the other day and a van pulls up to me with the company name and logo painted on the side of it. Affordable Painting! it says. Instantly I thought this is the worst name in the world. Why? Because the name makes every client interaction about price. Affordable becames one of those words that is subjective but always moves towards the low end of the value and price scale. It certainly doesn't indicate luxury brand or premium pricing.
How does your company name, slogan or brand impact the clients and rates you get paid? What about your sales presentation; do prospects perceive you to be at the top of your industry and are willing to pay you for expertise, experience, knowledge and relationship? No one should start out or move towards operating at the bottom end of the market ... unless you are Wal-Mart and you are going to dominate that whole space.
This poor painter fighting with each prospect to cut his rates, reduce his prices and become more "affordable". How does this translate into his payment terms? Not well I bet. Bad debts, likely. The clientele that you attract start to be attracted to your business and you based on the message you give off. If you want to be getting more and able to offer more then everything about your process and offering has to scream more, more, more. That's more value for more dollars.
Take an outside look at every sentence in your materials, every slogan and every message to customers. Do all those messages match up with your offering, your price point and where you want to be in the market. If not, start making changes today!
1 comment:
Hey Marty,
Great article! I came across this and felt compelled to comment.
I think it's also good to mention the importance of the business strategy and how it aligns (how it must align) with the brand idea in order for the brand to succeed. Then developing a strategy to signal and deliver the brand idea - the "brand strategy".
Your example is classic 'name-before-idea' in that there really isn't much imagination involved - at least by todays standards. More importantly, it really doesn't lend itself any ease for people to mentally store the name as a shortcut for making future buying decisions. With our market being so saturated with names and keywords and signals, unless there is a very simple and obvious differentiating element in the idea, people tend to float right past it.
In the positive sense, I do appreciate the explicitness in 'Affordable' - you know that hiring these folks is probably not going to burn a huge hole in your wallet. I agree with you however that using this as the central idea of the business strategy (these days) won't do much for compelling people to buy and as I've also pointed out, will be difficult to mentally recall later amongst all of the other "affordable" and "budget" and "low-cost" offerings available in todays market.
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