So what?
At one point in my career I worked for the U.S. division of a large, international consulting firm. I held a variety of positions, the last being account executive. This company wasn’t as rigid as some I’ve seen with enforcement of “officially sanctioned” sales presentations, but toward the end of my time there, they became more prevalent. The presentations themselves were actually well done with one exception. I always got a chuckle out of the “Key Differentiators” slide. They were things like:
- On-time delivery
- Project management expertise
- Local presence
- Senior staff
I remember thinking these sounded more like must-haves as opposed to key differentiators. The thing is if you’re going to start talking about key differentiators, aspects of your business that set you apart from your competitors, they really should be different.
So was born the seeds of my “so what” question. I’ve since turned the question into a facilitated process I run entrepreneurs and personal clients through. It can be helpful in a variety of ways, but I find it’s best suited to helping companies get to the bottom of what is really special about their company/product/service.
The basis of the game
It’s a “game” I play with entrepreneurs or anyone really who is working hard to represent the true value essence of their business. Every time they portray an aspect of their business as “strategic” or “game-changing”, I ask them: “So What?”. I usually get this look that conveys something along the lines of “What are you, crazy? So what? Isn’t it obvious?”. We then have a chat about the difference in perspectives between business owners and their customers and how too few business owners judge the value of their products through the eyes of their customers.
My service is available online through a SaaS (software as a service) model.
So what? So are a thousand other companies.
Sometimes I have to explain the game, sometimes they catch on quickly. The point here is to both weed out talking points in your pitch that aren’t truly strategic while getting to the root of what is strategic in others. The goal of course is to move your message “up”, making it more strategic, while simultaneously connecting deeper with the value you are truly offering your customers. You know you have a winner when you can connect your strategic value to a customer’s emotional driver.
My product offers features not currently available in this space.
So what? Maybe no one wants those features.
So you can see the game might sound a bit blunt, and to be honest it can be. My experience though is that almost all the entrepreneurs and personal clients I’ve worked with that truly are committed to succeeding, take no offense. In fact, they see the game as quite the opposite and generally embrace challenges to their business model as an opportunity to either reinforce their value proposition or identify an area that needs improvement.
I only work with non-profits.
So what!?
Turning the game into a process
So this idea had been rummaging around in my head for a while how to turn my little game into a process, and several months ago I got the opportunity. An entrepreneur I’ve been working with had an important funding presentation upcoming. She had a good product, but one that suffered from an image problem – the potential of the opportunity was getting lost in aspects of a business model that came off sounding small. She also suffered a bit from having a technical background. I find technicians to have no shortage of big ideas, but sometimes they can struggle conveying them conceptually without retreating to the comfort of details. And, stereotyping here, technicians are horrible marketers.
So, in a coaching session, using a large whiteboard, I drew five columns with room for headings and asked her to name up to five key/strategic differentiators of her product. Those things that truly set her apart, would ultimately make her a success and were essential elements of her value proposition to customers. She came up with five key differentiators and we boarded those as headings for the columns.
Why up to five? This is just my number, one that “feels” about right. I say that if you have more than five key differentiators then you have way too many to start with. Likewise, I would say that you should try to start this exercise with at least three differentiators as I’ve found the process may lead you in directions you hadn’t anticipated.
Working the board
So, after the starting 3-5 key differentiators are on the board as column headings, I work one column at a time. There’s no magic here and I generally work left to right unless there is some over-riding reason to attack a particular column first. For each column, I start by re-stating the key differentiator, then asking:
So What?
From there, you whenever a answer is offered to that question, I follow up with another “So what?”.
Obviously, it’s not quite that easy and there is much more to facilitating a strategy session than asking a simple question. It helps to have a background in facilitation and knowledge of the entrepreneur’s industry. In my days as a consultant, I ran many facilitated sessions and went through a variety of training sessions on how to facilitate. All that training really helps these sessions as many times you need to draw the entrepreneur’s thoughts out and help them answer that So What question.
It’s also important to be able to “work the board” as more and more information gets posted in more and more columns. What I often see arise out of these sessions is interesting linkages between thoughts in columns and new messages arising out of other comments. Staying aware enough to recognize when these new pathways of discussion present themselves can help take the session in important new directions.
So when do you know you’ve answered the So What question? I really don’t have a good answer. With very few exceptions, you just get to a point when the subject of the session answers the question and you just know that what they said is important enough, strategic enough to qualify as a So What. I know that sounds kind of soft, but I can say that most of the time my client’s have agreed with me. I think it helps to have a seasoned facilitator who is both brutally honest about what is strategic or not, and also has a fair amount of business perspective to bring to the session.
Frankly, the other option is the column is simply crossed out. Sometimes after extended conversation, it just becomes obvious that the differentiator really isn’t all that special, and the discussion isn’t leading in the direction of a replacement. Crossing out a column is an opportunity to hone your message and focus in on those differentiators that truly are special.
Outcomes
So obviously, the main outcome is the more targeted strategic differentiators for the client. As I’ve mentioned though, all kinds of other linkages and information can arise out of a So What session. In particular, I have found the following to be quite common:
- Central themes – in a session with the Marketing Director of a regional park system that has several extraordinary spaces available for rent, we uncovered two central themes aligned with two different target markets. The information spoke to potentially two separate marketing campaigns for the spaces.
- Emotional drivers – any time you can connect your brand with emotional drivers you have the potential to create especially strong ties with your customer. Working with an entrepreneur offering an online service targeted at college students, we uncovered emotional drivers of laziness and fear; two very strong emotional drivers in support of their brand.
- New directions – sometimes, like the session I most recently ran for a consultant focusing on C-level services, between columns crossed out and answers to repeated So What question, we find the general theme of the company’s strategic differentiators heading in a completely new direction, or uncovering new themes. In this particular session, a theme rose out of several columns and ultimately became an important new direction for the consultant to market their services.
How do you approach defining your key, strategic product differentiators to your clients? How would you answer the So What question for each one? Are you sure your differentiators are important to your clients and not simply what you think is important? Feeling uncomfortable answering any of those questions? Let’s run a session together…
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