MVP – Monetized Value Proposition
Why do good technology companies suffer with poor sales? The demand for technology has never been greater, but still most technology companies suffer with slow growth and too few customers. Why? The answer is simple: They are using the wrong marketing and sales strategy.
Product Marketing is concerned with product distinction through describing and explaining the product. Conversely Service Marketing is focused on service quality and the value of the service.
Most technology companies use product marketing to describe and explain their services as a product because customers are confused by services’ invisibility, intangible and abstract concepts.
Product marketing is the wrong strategy to sell services because services are valued, not described. It’s not what you do, it’s what your services will do for their bottom line.
Technology companies should stop using product marketing and start using service marketing to display the monetized value proposition (MVP) of their service to drive hot leads and close more customers to grow their business. The key to selling technology services is to demonstrate the value of the service. Determining the value of service isn’t new, but monetizing the value proposition is.
The information technology industry is $5.2 trillion annually. Small medium business (SMB) make up the majority of the industry and 90% of these companies are non-technical buyers. Non-technical buyers are companies, whose limited revenue size and cash prevent them from acquiring in house technology talent sufficient to purchase strategic technology. Non-technical buyers don’t understand where technology plays in their business, but know they need it.
Companies buy technology for three reasons: want, need, or required.
- Want – the product or service allows the prospect to exploit advantages in the market
- Need – the product or service allows the prospect to reduce cost and increase efficiencies
- Required – compliance is required to remain in business
Most technology is marketed as a product for a “want” because its implementation gives companies a competitive advantage in the marketplace, and “wants” have a broader market appeal than “needs.”
Most technology companies also utilize product marketing to sell their services by describing them as a product, because products are easier to describe than abstract services to SMBs.
These same technology companies then employee direct sales prospecting representatives, using these product descriptions and explanations to sell services to their prospects.
Product marketing is the wrong marketing strategy to sell services because it fails to demonstrate the value of the service, which is the point of the service. Product marketing does not give a prospect a reason to buy! Product marketing makes selling technology a long drawn-out and expensive process with no way to “motivate” the buyer because the central value of the service is not defined.
Non-technical buyers simply don’t understand where technology works and don’t have the time and wherewithal to learn or want to pay for it.
It’s more important to be interesting than accurate to consistently sell technology services.
Technology companies should implement service marketing to display the value of the service to gain prospect interest first. Service marketing is focused on the monetized value proposition of the service (MVP) to deliver hot leads to close more customers. The key to selling service is to display the MVP of the service to the prospect.
Your MVP maps to improvement levers for your prospects main business drivers; as example, SMBs need cash, customers and credit to grow their companies. Your MVP creates “bait interest” in the mind of the buyer for more cash, customers and credit.
The MVP is used as “bait” where the bait is cast near the target customer to “lure” the prospect to take the bait for more cash, customers and credit, which are too much for non-technical buyers to ignore.
Because people are naturally curious about that which interests them; your MVP creates a paradigm shift away from “pushing” information to prospects who didn’t ask for your information, to prospects “pulling” information from you based on your MVP, giving your prospects a reason to call you.
The MVP also provides a virtual merchandizing opportunity to show off your samples, examples and concepts that create a trusted adviser relationship that your prospects will rely on and come back to in the future, if not an immediate buyer.
The benefits of service marketing using your MVP as bait are:
- Provides hot leads that buy sooner and more often
- Prequalifies prospects by showing them a predetermined value
- Merchandizes your bait by presenting samples, examples, demonstrations and results
- Is independent, nonintrusive, scales, personal and persistent
- Differentiates you from competitors without a demonstrable value proposition
- Is much more efficient and affordable than direct prospecting sales with no MVP
Technology companies should use service marketing to display the MVP of their service as bait to drive hot leads to close more customers to grow their business.
How many new customers are you missing by missing your MVP?
“Nothing happens until a sale is made.” Thomas Watson, Sr., President of IBM from 1914 to 1956, coined this expression. He knew what he was talking about. Selling technology in the first half of the twentieth century, before the moon landing in 1969, was not an easy sale to make. Companies then, like many still today, did not understand the transformational power of technology to reshape industry and company fortunes.
What is a “sale” and how is it made? A sale is made when a buyer and seller agree to exchange values. The customer’s value is revenue, but what is your value to the customer? It’s not your price.
New sales are the lifeblood of every business, but not every business knows that yet. Without predictable new sales year over year, no matter how well intended a company’s mission or goals, the company will suffer with limited growth. New sales breathe life into all other company possibilities.
How to attract new customers year over year is the seminal question every business must solve first if it wants to maximize its value proposition and reach its potential.
Technology companies must monetize their value proposition to make more business. A company’s value proposition is the monetized value of its service or product to the customer - “your value.” If you don’t know the monetized value of your value proposition to your prospect, neither does he.
Sales are the problem, sales are the answer, sales are the point. Monetize your value proposition to make more sales and grow your business at scale.
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