Technology Is Not Logical, But Deeply Emotional
July 16, 2020
I need to know, have I gone mad? Am I alone in my dichotomy?
May 26, 2020
Sharka Chobot
Sharka Chobot is the creator of the CRM product category (1995) and Chief Transformation Officer of Neural Impact. Sharka applies research from behavioral economics, neuroscience and persuasion psychology to help technology providers develop an effective customer acquisition and go to market strategy. She has over 30 years of technology-specific expertise and teaches behavioral marketing at universities in Canada. Sharka has worked with hundreds of tech companies on six continents to develop their cloud product, packaging, pricing, and vertical market strategy and to accelerate their transition to a SaaS business model.
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[…] This value equates to a ‘we can do it for you better than you can do it yourself” position. Your customers are trying to streamline their business and focus on their core competencies. If you can position your company to be their strategic partner in one or more core areas of their business (which they aren’t experts in) you have a winning value proposition. However, you can only do this if you focus on key vertical industries or become experts in one or two business process areas, or specialize in solving a specific problem. You must not only know as much about your customer’s businesses as they do but MORE. Your value is that you can teach them things they don’t know about that are critical to their success and help them avoid costly mistakes. They learn from you, and you contribute to their growth. Universities should focus on engaging and educating students, hospitals on saving lives, they should leave the technology problem to you to solve. You become a valued and trusted partner. By focusing your solutions and the problems you solve, you end up knowing more than they do because they only do this once for their own business, whereas you do this repeatedly in multiple and challenging environments and across diverse situations. You leverage what you learn from working with customers in a similar situation or industry. You can also start to benchmark your customer’s performance against competitors so they know how well they are or aren’t doing in key areas. This approach positions you firmly as a strategic partner, not just a commodity product or service provider. To offer this type of value proposition it is essential to specialize. It is often not feasible to be horizontal and have this level of emotional differentiation. The goal is to become critical to their business. This value proposition is highly defensible and allows you to charge a premium and maintain high margins. You become so valuable to them, that they can’t live without you (leading to high stickiness in the cloud). Horizontal, less strategic competitors don’t stand a chance against you. Need help articulating your value proposition now? Use the free tool to craft a succinct value proposition statement here: Value Proposition Generator | Neural Impact | The Neuroscience of Emotional Engagement Value proposition Video blog Vlog – How to Define Your Value Proposition – (neuralimpact.ca) […]