How to map your bran
Table of ContentsIntroduction xi
Chapter 1 Size Is Not a Strategy 1
Maintaining Pricing Integrity 2
Better to Be a Profit Leader than a Market Leader 3
Why Bigness Doesn’t Lead to Greatness 5
Hired to Be Effective, Not Efficient 6
Chapter 2 How and Why Brands Become Homogenized 9
The Urge to Copy 10
The Folly of All-in-One 11
Line Extension Is Not Branding 12
There’s No Such Thing as Full Service 13
The Natural Fear of Focus 14
Chapter 3 The Mature Company ’s Identity Crisis 17
Differentiation and Price Premiums 18
Columbus, Not Napoleon 19
The Diffusion of Identity 22
Landing in No-Man’s Land 22
Strategy at the Edges 23
Not Best Practices, But Next Practices 25
Chapter 4 Expanding Your Business By Narrowing Your Focus 29
There’s No Such Thing as a General Market 30
Vertical Success versus Horizontal Success 32
The Strategic Value of Going Deep 34
Chapter 5 Positioning as the Centerpiece of Business Strategy 37
What Are You Really Selling? 39
Becoming Hard to Imitate 39
Two Critical Dimensions of an Effective Value Proposition 41
A Category of One 43
A Brand Is the Customer’s Idea of the Product 44
Natural Outcomes of a Powerful Value Proposition 46
Chapter 6 Building Brand Boundaries 47
Brand Boundary 1: Calling 49
Brand Boundary 2: Customers 55
Brand Boundary 3: Competencies 60
Brand Boundary 4: Culture 66
The Confluence of Calling, Customers, Competencies, and Culture 72
Chapter 7 Validating Your Value Proposition 75
Be Rooted in the Future, Not the Past 76
The Value Proposition Team 77
Asking the Right Questions 80
Chapter 8 Without Execution, There Is No Strategy 83
Services 85
Staffing 92
Self-Promotion 100
Systems 107
Staging 112
Executing a Positioning Strategy with Alignment Teams 116
Rebuilding Your Ship While at Sea 119
Chapter 9 Getting Paid for Creating Value 121
The Perils of Cost-Based Compensation 122
Changing the Language 124
Pricing as a Core Competency 125
Why a Value-Based Approach Is in the Client’s Best Interest 126
The Alignment of Incentives 128
Creating a Virtuous Circle 131
Chapter 10 A New and Better Way to Price Professional Services 133
Forms of Value-Based Pricing 133
The Right Clients for Outcome-Based Agreements 136
The True Meaning of Partnership 138
Uncovering Missed Opportunities to Make Pricing a Core Competency 139
Key Questions in Setting a Value-Based Price 140
If Complex Global Companies Can Do It, So Can You 142
Better Time Tracking Is Not the Answer 144
Thinking of Compensation Plans as a Stock Portfolio 147
Setting the Stage for a Value-Based Approach to Compensation 150
A Declaration of Value 154
Appendix A: The Before-and-After Survey 157
Appendix B: More Ways to Differentiate Your Brand 161
Appendix C: Indicators of the Firm’s Success 165
Notes 173
About the Author 179
Index 181
