Wondering how to move your service offerings forward faster and get your clients to come to you, instead of you trying to find them at that instant that they are ready to buy? Try thinking about how you can better market your services in the same manner that you would market new products.

Service offerings can appear to your customers to be bland, unexciting, or “me too” offerings if they are simply introduced or offered in a reactive manner.

Proactively marketing those offerings, as you would a product, put the services and their value in your client’s minds in advance, so that you can control the message and perception.

Try these basics with your offerings to get ahead of your client requests.

1) What is your go-to-market message and strategy for your services?

2) What is your positioning strategy? Are you the low-cost provider? A niche specialist? Focused on a specific market segment with expertise? The “First-to-Market” with you services?

3) What is your unique selling proposition or value statement? How will you stand out among all of the competitive providers?

Armed with these marketing strategy basics, introduce your services to your target audience as you would a product.

–  Focus the message to the target audience by clearly understanding their business and needs before you create the service solution.

–  Generate demand by providing the solutions offering announcement in advance of their request.

–  Remove the commodity service perception by clearly describing the value of the service and how it will satisfy the client’s stated needs.

–  Differentiate from competitive offerings by being in front of the client before the competitors.

–  Create the product excitement by showing your audience that you have taken the time to develop that solution far in advance of their needs and that is it clearly targeted to solve their unique challenges.

Taking the time to plan you service offering and introducing it to your target market will certainly take more time and effort than waiting for the request for a proposal from your market but the return on your efforts will be rewarded in better positioning in the client’s mind, more opportunities to affect the decision outcome, and a greater chance to win the business at an acceptable profit margin.

When you start thinking about and treating your services as products, your customers will too and you will distinguish yourself from your competitors.

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