It goes to 11 - Introducing BluePrint Marketing

I may as well introduce my friend Scott Santucci, because I'm about to steal one of his posts. And with his permission, of course. Here is the original, just in case the splogging police are in the house (here).

Scott is a former META Group guy who now runs a consultancy called BluePrint Marketing. BluePrint is very cool because his process models the "conversations" that vendors and users should be having through a complicated sales process. He works with big vendors like Unisys, Sungard and BMC and helps build content (BluePrints, in fact) that give reps what they need to differentiate and match customer requirements based on the customer BUYING cycle, not the vendor's sales cycle. I'm sure I did a crappy job of describing BluePrint, so if you work for a big vendor and your reps need some help making your products relevant to your customers, Scott is the man to talk to.

Scott has assembled a rouges gallery of former META Group analysts to provide perspective on almost every aspect of technology. I've been working with Scott for the past 6 months on adapting my Pragmatic Security architecture into a set of blueprints that big security vendors can use to model the conversations they should be having with customers. We are going to be doing a number of relevant podcasts and publishing some additional information over the coming months, so keep an eye out for that.

But first things first, Scott's post on creating a compelling value proposition really resonated with me. First, I love Spinal Tap, so anytime you mention "It goes to 11," I'm rolling on the floor. Second, we in the security business have this problem in spades. Every category has 5-10 players (if not more). Every vendor sounds the same. They make the same claims and they think that their "unique" way of solving the same problem matters. Customers don't give a rat's ass. So lots of what I see from security marketers on a daily basis is futile and lame.

Here is the post with some of my security mojo in [brackets].

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Do Your Value Propositions Go to Eleven?

In Rob Reiner’s 1984 “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap, one of the main characters, Nigel Huffens, proclaims they are different than other bands because their speakers “go to ll.” (Click here to see a video clip of the scene).

I cannot help but be reminded of good ole Nigel every time I talk to clients who are working on their value proposition. A few claims I’ve heard over the years:

• “We are more scalable”
• “We are truly global”
• “We are more adaptive”
• [we stop zero day threats with proactive protection and zero false positives is a common security claim]
  

Translation? "These go to eleven".

I hear those claims and think to myself, “What prevents their competitors for saying the exact same thing?”

Almost every marketing organization I encounter seems to be making a major effort to differentiate or improve value propositions.

So, what happens?

A bunch of people (mostly a blend of product or solutions people and marketers) have a series of meetings and word smith a set of ideas into a few paragraphs and then say, “If we can only get our sales force to deliver this message, we will outsell our competitors”.

Here is an example. Given our META Group heritage, we know a lot about outsourcing and continue to advise G2000 IT organizations on selecting vendors to meet their needs.

Many of these outsourcers claim they are “truly global” while the others are just globally dispersed. It is almost comical to watch them try to communicate the idea that they are the only provider that is “truly global”. With all of the vendors parroting the same concepts, is it any wonder that the outsourcing market is becoming increasingly commoditized, win rates across the industry are about 30% (or less), and the costs of pursing these opportunities are on the rise?

Don’t laugh. It’s happening in your market too.

[NAC, extrusion prevention, email security - you name it and all of these markets have the same characteristics. Too many vendors, not enough differentiation.]

Why?

Anything you can say on your website, your competitors can say as well.

Let’s say your value proposition is different than anyone else’s and that you do come up with some concepts that resonate with customers as truly unique, and this helps get you traction. How hard is it for your competitors to steal this value proposition, reword it, and use it?

[I know this is true because it happened to me in every marketing job I've had. I came up with a cool term (like Early Warning System or Connection Control) and every other vendor talked about their capability to do this within a month. Literally a month. Of course, none of it was real - but it still confused the customer. That means longer sales cycles, etc.]

The approach violates three of the Seven Irrefutable Laws of Customer Centricity:

• Law 1. Customers buy solutions to their problems, they do not buy products. Creating a generic value proposition implies you have the solution for all clients before you understand their problems.
  

• Law 3. Only a customer can call it a solution. The formula for value propositions that people follow today is a legacy of the product-centric marketing world that is dying out in B2B markets. Basically it is: problem statement, solution, how you deliver that solution, how it’s unlike your competitors, and what outcome your customer can expect. How can you determine all of that for a specific G2000 organization in a meeting room?
  

• Law 6. Value is in the eye of the beholder. For argument sake, let’s assume for a minute that your value statement meets a customer’s needs, is compelling, and has tremendous impact. Who is it written for? The stakeholder (or set of stakeholders) this message is delivered to each listen to, as Zig Ziglar likes to say, “radio station WIIFM. What’s In It For Me”.

Please don’t fool yourself into thinking you are creating messages for CXO’s. I’ve yet to meet a CFO whose issues who are identical to those of his CIO.

[Sound familiar? Of course it does. Check out Scott's site. Learn more about what he does. It's very cool and it works.]