Being First in a New Category
This is a story about how to secure a spot teaching a class at the world’s most prestigious business school. And, along the way, it’s about the importance of distinguishing one’s offering from everything that has come before.
The Initial Conversation
Last year I connected with a gentleman with over 30 years of experience in sales and senior leadership positions. His last role prior before teaching his business school class was as the CEO for a well-known software company in Boston.
Our initial conversation went something like this:
- Me: We train salespeople to expand their scope of influence by teaching them how to identify the personality type of others based on clues in behavior – and how to adapt their sales approach accordingly.
- Him: That sounds like Sandler?
- Me: Well, Sandler is more of a sales process methodology.
- Him: OK, so what you do is more like Challenger?
(I begin to realize he’s trying to put us in a category he already knows)
- Me: I can see why you suggest that. However, Challenger is a whole different thing. Maybe the easiest thing would be for us to schedule a longer chat so I can share some of our techniques so you can get a feel for our rather unique approach.
Fortunately, he very generously agreed to spend that additional time with me. I had a chance to put him through our online tools and then deliver a healthy slice of our content. Halfway through the session he exclaimed:
- Him: Wait a second, I’ve never seen anything like this before!
From there I had a chance to teach that same content to his business school class.
Landing New Business Prospects
The “aha” moment above was not a given and, candidly, that I had the chance to get there was only due to my patron’s generosity. This points out one of the biggest difficulties in the process of bringing a new category to market. Because people want to understand products, etc. by thinking of things they already know and use, there is a BIG risk that they don’t appreciate what is unique and valuable about your offering. By comparing you to the wrong things, you likely end up in the proverbial “sounds great, no thanks” bucket.
The Importance of a New Category
In the classic marketing/branding book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Jack Trout, the authors brilliantly convey (OK, hammer home) the importance of explaining to prospective customers that what you are offering them is a
whole. new. category.
Distinguish Yourself
Instead of trying to compete in an existing (and likely crowded) category, it’s key early on in the interaction to explain to prospects that they need to be open to something entirely new. Tim Ferriss agrees and rightly points out the similarity to other books such as Blue Ocean Strategy. The message?
Go where there is little to no competition by creating something new instead of wading into a crowded category and trying in vain to distinguish yourself.
It’s great advice and it opened my eyes to several things that our team needed to be doing differently. The benefits are huge – easier customer acquisition, decreased price sensitivity, and fewer competitive threats/challenges. Many of the world’s most successful businesses have risen to their current heights by being the first in a new category. I recommend at least reading the chapter on The Law of The Category in 22 Immutable Laws.
Anyways, the big “aha” for me was realizing that we had unintentionally created a new category and had not told anyone! We’d missed out on telling our story in such a way that would have made it WAY easier for people trying to understand who we are.
The Challenges of Being New or First
So, here are some REAL challenges we’ve experienced in being the first in a brand new category:
1. You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do.
People we approach about our work tend to be business leaders or their colleagues in HR. Everyone is busy, and they are therefore strongly likely to want to place us into a known category, explain that they already have a solution, and send us on our way. For example, one of the most crowded categories we deal with is the “assessment” category. It’s full of pre-hire screening tests, leadership readiness assessments, psychometrics, etc. When people hear that TypeCoach involves “personality type,” their reflex is to put us into the assessment category and politely explain that they have all they could ever need in that area. Our success or failure hinges on our ability to avoid the assessment category’s gravitational pull, and to be seen as something new and different.
2. Where Does the Budget Come From?
Assuming the prospective client sees you as something new, you face another challenge – who oversees this new sort of thing, and who is paying for it? Within larger organizations, people like to work within existing budget line items. Creating a new line item in the budget often leads to huge hassles, lots of approvals, long timelines, etc. But, when you’ve introduced a new category, it’s not clear what’s being replaced and where it fits in the current budget. This can take a while to sort out and often requires being extremely focused on hearing from the client contact where their most obvious burning business issues are. When we’re unable to align with those priority items, we can up being seen as an “interesting novelty” or “luxury item” which is a death knell for the sale.
3. Internal Messaging… A Bad Game of Telephone.
The third main challenge we frequently encounter is having our internal client contacts try to explain what we do and who we are. Since it is a new category, they often struggle to get the message across without sliding inadvertently into an existing category. Our lead contact might say to their boss “Well, TypeCoach is like an assessment but…” and the other person only needs to hear the word “assessment” and will definitely put us in that dreadful bucket. Once there, it’s even more difficult for our internal contact to get us out since they haven’t practiced that conversation hundreds of times the way we have.
Marketing to Prospective New Business Clients
So, here are some of the things we have found helpful in overcoming these challenges:
Use the Word “First”
I’d like to believe that Ries and Trout would be proud of us. We are, more and more, letting our prospective clients know as early in the conversation that we’re introducing a whole new category – and that we’re the first ones to do it. It really does seem like the word “first” is important to helping our contacts properly “hear” that this is something that won’t fit into a familiar bucket. Obviously, this has to be true for someone to claim it in their marketing and client conversations, but we’ve held ourselves back for many years by not making it REALLY clear early on.
Emphasize Your Unique / New Elements
While we offer a lot of things to our clients, the ones that help us explain that we’re first in a new category need to stay in the front row. It’s easy to overload the narrative with all of the other things we do. But, while it’s true that we have better reporting and admin functionality than our legacy competitors, that’s a side dish to the main entrée and can be a distraction when the initial conversation is unfolding. When the prospect is trying to figure out what we’re all about, it’s much more powerful for us to focus on being the first platform to improve interpersonal communication since a) we know that’s what clients are really after and b) our competition doesn’t do this.
Remove Barriers; Let Them Try/Use/Test/Pilot
It’s often the case that our prospective new business clients won’t really “get” what we do until we let them create an account, go through the tools on our platform, attend one of our workshops, and so on. That’s how strong the preconceived notion of what we do happens to be (and/or how much room for improvement we have in our marketing…). Our biggest challenge in converting even a very warm introduction into a client is that they don’t do more than the cursory look (in order to put us into an existing bucket and explain they already have a solution there).
Telephone Rarely Works
Assuming your primary contact is going to be able to get your message across to their colleagues is usually a mistake when you’re the first in a new category, trying to land a new business client. You can either try to participate in that conversation, or provide resources that do your talking for you. Personally, we find short video explainer videos or insisting on a 15-minute demo/QA to be critical parts of the process. If your internal champion says, “Let me see what my manager thinks,” there is a slim (<15%) chance they will tell your story in such a way that you move forward.
A Real Example
It can also be helpful to write up a scenario or case study that your prospective new business client can relate to and which showcases how your solution is uniquely valuable/useful. While it may be obvious to YOU how you can help, really spelling it out for the prospective client is frequently required when they have never done something like what you’re proposing. In the case of the business school referenced above, we drew up a scenario that the students in the class would have to solve and which could only be solved based on the learning we would deliver in the 90-minute session. It provoked a lot of good questions and “aha” moments. The decision makers were curious if it would work and when it did there was some real magic.
Landing New Business as a New Category
So, to sum up… pursue the new category concept as it is the best path forward. And then, do the work to make it clear to your prospective clients that this is a whole new thing… from there you’re off to the races.
*Update
Since this post was written, we are thrilled to share that the business school decided to roll out TypeCoach across their entire first year MBA program of 960+ students!
