How to Define Your Market Position
When someone says “Disney,” what immediately comes to mind? Whimsical fantasy, endless possibilities, magical neverland and infinite imagination might be adjectives to describe your initial thought. The Disney brand embodies “a magical world where dreams come true.” Disney is an example of a brand that can effectively convey a philosophy consumers want and meets their expectations. Through consistent value, Disney maintains a strong market position.
The goal of market positioning is to find the ideal opportunity in the market based on customer needs, market forces and financial and strategic considerations. Once you find that market opportunity, further develop your product and elevate your brand to deliver outstanding value. To clarify your market position, find an overarching theme, then define the details. To get you thinking about your market position, here are three essential elements of market positioning:
Small Business - A Recession Strategy in 7 Steps For Retaining New Customers
1. Provide A Reason To Come Back To You
You don’t know why some individual or company uses your product or service for the first time. You do know that they’re more likely to use it again if you make their first experience positive, satisfying and memorable. Create that experience.
2. Obtain Their Details
If yours is a “business to business” operation, this should be a simple task. If you run a retail store it can be at least awkward or even difficult.
Many individuals are reluctant to simply provide personal details. That’s OK. You could offer a special bonus or gift redeemable next time they use you. Make sure any bonus has high perceived value to the customer. And use a coupon that looks professional and articulates your offer professionally and clearly.
Make Them an Offer They Must Refuse
In the KARRASS Effective Negotiating® Seminar we talk about how you might utilize the “Bogey” as a discovery tactic to gain more information. The more you know about what’s on the other party’s “sheet,” the more opportunities you have to find ways to create a Both-Win agreement.
There may be times when you should “make them a offer they must refuse.”
Why should anyone give the other party such an offer? There are lots of reasons.
Such proposals help set the stage for making offers later that look good by comparison (i.e. help establish aspiration levels). These types of negotiation offers can serve to give you time to think things through. They can tie up the negotiation, force talks to break down, or help postpone decisions. All of these events may provide you more time which you can use to create a better agreement.
Negotiation Probes
Your negotiating leverage is determined by how much you know about the other party’s attitudes, preferences and position. This is true whether you are selling something, buying something, or dealing with a project, manufacturing plan, delivery schedule, a budget, or any of a hundred other situations where you are trying to resolve differences.
These encounters are all negotiations and you should approach them as such. Negotiation Probes are valuable - if you discipline yourself to use them.
It is just not possible for you to get as much information as you probably would like to have. There is not enough time or resources. But you should probe for answers to six essential questions PRIOR TO NEGOTIATING. If you can gain insight into these questions, you will be in a much better position to negotiate.
1. What specific objections to my position could the other party have? (Use others in your organization as ‘Devil Advocates’ to help reveal different points of view.)
Scrambled Eggs: How to Defend Against Disorder
It is wiser to simplify matters than to confuse them. “Scrambled eggs” does the opposite. Scrambling is a negotiation technique, it deliberately mixes things up for tactical reasons. Scrambling can be used to forestall a deadlock, make the other person work harder, force through a last-minute demand, or retreat from a prior concession. Sometimes it is used to determine how well the other person keeps his or her wits under pressure.
Negotiations should be conducted in an orderly fashion. The scrambler knows that disorder can also work.
The scrambler takes advantage of the negotiating mistakes people make when they are confused. Suddenly apples can’t be compared to apples, and cost comparisons become impossible to make.
It takes self-confidence to stop a scrambler. These steps help:
1. Have the courage to say, “I don’t understand.”
2. Keep saying “I don’t understand” until you do.
3. Insist that matters be discussed one at a time.
Roundtable: Getting Your Strategy Right From the Start
Jamie Liddell, SSON’s online editor, sat down with a few practitioners at the recent Planning & Implementing Successful New Shared Services event in London to identify winning strategies from the get-go. Site selection, according to the consensus, is not key; rather, getting the process right from the start.
Participating were:
Peter Pan
Senior Executive
MSC Malaysia
Walter Jess
Shared Services Strategic Planning Manager
Caterpillar
Michael Radford
Process Improvement Manager
Serco
Jenny Coombs
Shared Services Director
Barnet Council
Gary Critchley
Head of Finance Shared Services
Marks & Spencer
Hindrik Jan (René) Zigterman
Business Development Shared Services
SAP Belgium
SSON: To start, tell us how you decided what to include in your shared services operations when you set up.
Jenny Coombs: We looked at the corporate services we were already delivering, the standard things: information services, finance, human resources, procurement, facilities management… all these things had been delivered disparately in the past. We also looked at the nature of these services and added specific services around collecting council tax and delivering housing benefits because they are transaction-based processes. The challenge was to discover how the processes would fit together.
Walter Jess: I think it is really about identifying what is not core to the business; what protects your brand name and your sales points in the market — quality, design, etc; Also: look at what does not support day-to-day decision making; so general accounting issues such as calculating, recording, etc. … as opposed to the activities that business unit managers use on a daily basis to decide on their business. It is also important to gain sufficient volume to manage the costs of the initial stage.
Negotiating With Emotions
Emotions play a powerful role in negotiating because people find it difficult to tolerate unexpected outbursts. When the other party lets loose, we find it hard to cope.
Some people try to get their own way by yelling, screaming, and being generally belligerent. They know from experience that most people find such negotiating tactics uncomfortable to cope with. Their plan is to intimidate the other party into submission. The victim cringes at the thought of having to deal with an obnoxious character—so he or she gives in.
When people are emotional they don’t think clearly. Experiments confirm that people distort reality, don’t listen, and pick up only those inputs most in-tune with their emotional wants.
You may need to call a recess—or change negotiators.
Negotiating Threats
Have you ever been threatened during a negotiation? You probably have received more negotiating threats than you realize. Most often negotiating threats are not of a violent nature during a negotiation. They come in the form of an “or else.”
“Get this to me by Thursday or else I’ll be forced to work with someone else.” “I need to get the contract signed today or else you’ll be last in line for shipment.” “Drop your price by 5% or else I will go with your competitor.”
Negotiation, by its very nature, involves a degree of threat. Rewards can be withheld or punishment inflicted by a deadlock. Deadlock constitutes an ever-present threat.
During the course of a negotiation you may be tempted to make a threat, or probably more likely, you’ll receive a threat. Look at it this way. Negotiating threats are a form of concession. In effect, the threat says, “If you stop doing what you are doing, I will concede by waiving my power to punish you.” A threat puts the burden of proper action on the person being threatened. The other person suddenly become the master of their own fate.
Resist Like Water
The Chinese have a saying, “It is well to resist like water.” When water is put under pressure or suddenly made to flow into unfamiliar channels, it falls back. Then, in its own good time, it seeps and creeps back into position, first slowly and then with greater strength reaching its level.
In the face of strong opposition, a negotiator is wise to resist like water; fall back, listen, think, and move forward slowly.
Invest the time to understand the position that is being taken and evaluate ways you can effectively modify the other party’s stated expectations. Create alternatives that can be introduced into the negotiation and determine where your best opportunity for success lies.
Keep Negotiating Tactics Flexible
There is no right negotiating tactic if you have the wrong strategy or policy. Strategic objectives and priorities are more important than tactics. Yet history is full of great strategies that were defeated by poor negotiating tactics. The two go together but are not the same.
Flexibility in the choice of your negotiating tactics is imperative. Tactics that are right for one person are wrong for another. Tactics that are appropriate at the start of a negotiation may prove counter productive later. Tactics that worked yesterday may not work as well with the same person tomorrow. Negotiating tactics that worked well in a buyers’ market may prove to be stupid in a period of short supply.
Continual reassessment is the key to good tactical planning. I ask myself these questions over and over again in every negotiation:
1. Can I combine tactics for better effect?
2. Is this a good time to change tactics?
3. How will the other party react or interpret my tactic?