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Many companies have asked me, “How can we get from a lower quadrant into the “winner’s” quadrant?” For those of you unfamiliar with the “Quadrant,” it is essentially an interpretive visual representation of how a research analyst believes vendors are competitively positioned. Ordinarily, the highest possible level of X and Y attributes are used to visualize an entire competitive segment of a market. While with Meta Group in the nineties, I was asked to show the healthcare-based Interface Engine market on one slide, so used Vision and Execution as the X & Y axis designations to ambiguously position all competitive vendors in that segment. The lower-left quadrant represents vendors with neither a vision nor execution to warrant hope. The upper-left and the lower-right quadrants designate the hopeful vendors with only improved vision or execution (in the analyst’s perception) to eventually be in the upper-right, or “winner’s,” quadrant.  As much as this representation proved successful, the “quadrant” has been highly subjective and historically created by junior analysts unqualified with the contextual understanding to make such designations. Gartner has gone as far as to trademark their interpretations as the “Magic Quadrant.”  

I believe that any company should invest into buyer alignment disciplines (e.g., win/loss analysis, client satisfaction, prospect perception) in order to “prove” they are a market-driven company. Furthermore, the proof should not be subjective. Therefore, positioning a company by its unique and validated attributes (company and product) will enable a company to run a race that only it can win. Alternatively, a company can continue to position itself comparing its effectiveness of every day operational activities (e.g., support, product, quality, commitment), which, will ultimately lead to price as its undesired differentiation attribute.

An aligned vendor is able to change the criteria being used to affix the attributes within the quadrant positions. As a result, positioning validated product differentiation ranked against your company’s unique attributes will position you to run a race that only you can win. As long as a buyer alignment discipline can be credited for the selected attributes to be assigned the quadrant, a company is market driven. Furthermore, a company can uniquely position itself with its prospects and against its competitors.

To align a company, recent evaluators must score you and your competitor attributes before being in production (live) with the acquired solution or product. This is a critical step missing in many win/loss analysis initiatives. When completed correctly, comparing aggregate scores will reflect buyer perception of each company activities (e.g., demo, RFP, reference call) and attributes (e.g., innovation, flexibility, viability).  Claiming the most appropriate of the top 2-3 ratings in this comparison will give you your X axis attribute. Product alignment requires the compilation of a function commonality comparison. This comparison scores functionality expected by a prospect when acquiring your solution.  Score your functionality against that of your top 3-5 competitors using a scale of 0-1 with the following designations: 0-Function unavailable; .2-Function can be customized; .4-Function is available from a 3^rd party; .6-Partial functionality is planned or available via work-arounds; .8-Function is in Beta and GA within 3 months; 1-Available and part of standard deliverable. Aggregate the scores of each function against the total responses. If you score above 85% of expected functionality and competitors do not, this is validated functional differentiation. If competitors score high and you do not, this function needs to be addressed by product development. Select differentiated functionality that best validates your company and positions you with your prospects as your Y axis designation on the 4-square quadrant.

When completed, map your validated company attribute on the X axis of the 4-square quadrant against the differentiated product functionality on the Y-axis. It is critical to ensure that all cross-organizational departments (e.g., sales, marketing communication, customer service, product management) use these attributes to position your company and products.  Of course, this is an abbreviated and simplistic description of a more complex discipline. However, if followed, it will enable you to prove that you are a market-driven company and to reap the rewards of buyer alignment.

The Problem: Sales Organizations have forgotten how to articulate their corporate and product differentiation!

Henry Kissinger once said, “The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.”  In sales and marketing, no one would dispute that perception is reality. If interpreting Mr. Kissinger’s quote into a sales and marketing context, I would restate that “understanding prospect perception, whether reality or not, can be used to create differentiation to fulfill corporate sales and marketing goals.” WorldNet defines differentiate as “to be a distinctive feature, attribute, or trait.” Therefore, creating a prospect’s perceived differentiation would simply mean to understand your prospect’s perceived reality of their needs and to fulfill those needs with a unique attribute or feature of your company or product.

Solution-centric sales training and principles teach “Probing” or “Discovery” stages, but do not account for market perception or provide the differentiation of your products. Furthermore, when previously successful sales performance falters, the differentiation articulation has sprung a leak. The only way to discover differentiation messaging is to understand prospective buyer perception and to align the findings with real attributes of your company and products.  As such, there are two types of differentiation: Product and Company.

Remember that to differentiate is to have a distinctive attribute. Likewise, ownership of an attribute is validated by prospect perception. Therefore, verifying an organization’s attributes requires a simple validation process ensuring that attribute ownership realistically matches the organizational culture. Company differentiation is validated using the discipline of post-decision interviews after sales cycle opportunity wins and losses with its goal of aligning the marketing and sales messaging. Any subsequent efforts after the original internal process is completed should have the goal of mapping external (e.g., prospect, competition, market) findings and trends to ensure continuity and accuracy of your attribute and organizational message. Without this message validation, marketing agencies and departments give up perspicuous aspirations of a systemic, singular approach in lieu of the path of least resistance – catchy marketing slogans and phrases - the dysfunctional cycle continues.

Product differentiation must first be discovered by comparing real product functionality to real competitive functionality. I am not suggesting a competitive side-by-side detailed feature-to-feature comparison because that is both impractical and unnecessary. Instead, I compare functionality because functionality is a summary of many features. For example, invoice matching is an accounts payable function, but how the function performs is the result of many features. I recommend comparing no more than 150 functions of 2-4 competitive products to thoroughly understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors as well as the functional expectations of the market. Note, it may be easier to distinguish between reality and perception with prospects than with internal company product development teams because most company branding and positioning activities are inconsistent with what sales and sales support people are telling prospects and customers. Therefore, is it a surprise that most product development teams design products based upon the loudest screaming client and not the principles of prospect-driven product differentiation?

In summary, prospect perception offers a world of understanding to discover your corporate attributes and the validated attributes owned by your company is your differentiation. Affixing your unique company attributes to unique competitive product differentiation creates the highest articulation of your common sales cycle “story” ,of which, should be incorporated into all prospect, client, and shareholder communications (e.g., prospect demonstrations, presentations, messaging, web site, shareholder annual reports, customer service, trade show booths, brochures, installation manuals). Understanding prospect perception is the most important discipline required if your company is serious about buyer alignment or being a market-driven company.

The Problem: Your sales process is misaligned with your buyers!

Fewer than 10% of polled organizations claim to have initiatives targeted to align selling and buying processes. I am sure that, if probed, the positive responses would change their responses when adding “…with discipline and regularity.” This statistic is not so much a condemnation of an organizations dysfunction, but an alarming missed opportunity to stay in alignment with its buyers.

Sales organizations don’t knowingly want to miss prospect opportunities, but this glaring oversight costs organizations millions in lost potential business. Sales organizations spend millions of dollars on sales process training. Yet, 3 out of 4 sales training initiatives fail to return its investment. Sales training focuses on the process used to qualify prospects when selling a vendor’s products and services. Not a single dime is allocated to understanding the buyer’s evaluation process. Therefore, when training is complete, most sales processes are out of alignment with their buyer after the first sales cycle. This resource risk (people and money) could be avoided by simply adding a buyer-based diagnostic back-end step after every sales cycle is concluded. That diagnostic “insurance policy” step is a win/loss analysis or post-decision interview (PDI) conducted with prospects who have evaluated your products and services.

Other than mitigating investment risk, the greatest benefit of embedding an iterative PDI process into daily operations is the assured organizational alignment with your buyer. There are three types of buyer alignment: Process (Sales, Evaluation); Differentiation (Solution, Company); Messaging (internal,external). All three types are embedded into the buyer evaluation process and can be quantified using a PDI process. Four priorities that buyers continually strive to align during their evaluation processes are the: buyer needs; vendor solution; solution cost; aversion to risk. Furthermore, the primary keys to aligning these buyer evaluation priorities to a vendor’s selling process are the articulation of the vendor’s differentiation and the validation of that differentiation. Therefore, the PDI process can diagnose the sales cycle to quantify a vendor’s competitive differentiation and the articulation performance of the “differentiation story.” What’s more, the PDI verifies the prospect’s perception of the sales cycle processes (e.g., site visit, references, demonstrations) taken to “prove” the differentiation claims of the vendor. Considering that they are responsible for the sales cycle, should the sales organization be responsible for the PDI process?

Excellent question. Solution-centric sales process training focuses more on single opportunity qualification from the seller’s viewpoint than it does on the buyer’s process. What’s missing are the “proof” and “validation stages” that are so critical in setting the differentiation hook in the sales process. I constantly wonder why being able to successfully position (align) differentiated solutions isn’t the primary focus of the seller process rather than leaving it up to generic messaging tools and templates? When I refer to buyer alignment, I am referring to the alignment of buyer and seller processes from the continued demonstration and positioning perspective to guarantee that the prospect needs match (align) to the seller’s differentiated solutions. This is accomplished by instilling a discipline of continued evaluator post-decision interviews (win/loss analysis) that extracts “actionable” results. The benefits of continued win/loss analysis are alignment of processes (sales, buyer evaluation), differentiation (company, solutions) and messaging (internal, market).

A vendor must continually understand how a prospect perceives it’s messaging, functional differentiation and corporate attributes so it must align that perception to the buyer’s evaluation process. Therefore, in order to align with a buyer, a seller must align with the buyer evaluation process. Buyer priorities change throughout a sales cycle, so a vendor needs to understand its perception in advance of the selling process and align its positioning to the priority affixed to the buyer’s risk, cost, needs and solution. Post-decision Interviews (win/loss analysis) gather attribute ratings that are aligned with each of these four buyer priorities. Moreover, attribute ratings provide performance measurement to inform the sales organization what decision criteria is most critical to its prospects during the sales cycle and how the vendor meausures against that criteria. Armed with this knowledge, the sales, marketing and product management teams can continually align with the changing buyer needs (solutions), priorities (process) and perception (messaging) during the sales cycle.