IT service provider sharpens its positioning in three weeks

Situation

A managed IT service provider in Frankfurt-Bornheim, 14 staff, revenue of about €1.8 million a year. Founded by two engineers, grown by referral. The website said “IT solutions for companies of every size”. So did the websites of every competitor. Sales calls opened with a 20-minute explanation of what the firm actually does. Enquiries came from one-person shops and from 300-person corporates, and the firm could serve neither well. The partners knew their strength was owner-managed firms with 20 to 80 desks and no internal IT. They had never written that down.

Approach

We ran the lower tier of our positioning work. A one-day workshop with the two founders and the sales lead, held at their office. Before the day we reviewed the last 40 enquiries and the last 20 won and lost deals, and we mapped three direct competitors in the Rhein-Main area: what they claim, whom they name as clients, what they charge where it is visible. In the workshop we worked through who the firm serves, what problem those clients feel first, why the firm wins when it wins, and why it loses when it loses. The output was a one-page positioning statement, a short list of five claims the firm can back with evidence, and a list of five claims to stop making. We delivered the statement, the competitor map and a two-page note on what to change on the homepage first.

Result

In this scenario the partners signed off the statement in the second week and rewrote the homepage themselves in week four, using our note. The new copy names the segment (“owner-managed firms in the Rhein-Main area with 20 to 80 workstations and no IT team”) and the three things the firm does for them. Over the following three months the share of enquiries from that segment rose from about one in four to about three in four. The sales lead reported that first calls dropped from about 45 minutes to about 25, because the prospect already knew what the firm does. Two of the three competitors still describe themselves as serving “companies of every size”.

What it cost

€3,900 as a fixed price, quoted before the work started. That bought the pre-work on enquiries and deals, the analysis of three competitors, the one-day workshop, the positioning statement and the homepage note. The standard tier at €9,500 would have added customer interviews, a full brand platform and a messaging playbook. This firm did not need those yet. The work is covered by our 100% money-back guarantee: full refund on request within 14 days of delivery, and for a monthly programme the first month is refundable in full.

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