Changing your marketing mindset to an outside-in orientation

Many, if not most, consulting engineering firms are founded by talented engineers who naturally have a passion for their work. Unfortunately, this often translates to what I call “inside-out” marketing.

Inside-out orientation

The inside-out orientation is a focus on what you do, your engineering capabilities. It’s understandable because people hire you for your skills and expertise, right?

The issue is that in highly competitive industries, your skills can look almost identical to those of every other competitor in the market. Everyone claims to be the best at what they do, and even with great case studies and testimonials, it’s hard to prove that you are actually the leader in your niche. 

Even if you get them into a room and bedazzle them with your great technical insights and value-add recommendations, others will be pitching themselves in almost exactly the same way.

When your prospect’s decision comes in, you are too often dismayed to find they have gone with a competitor you know to be inferior.  So what is going on?

What engineers too often do not realise is that when prospects are evaluating you, they are using a set of criteria (beyond technical and cost) that are often unspoken and rarely set out in the project requirements documentation. For example, they may be asking themselves:

• How collaborative will they be? Will their methodology be flexible enough for us?

• Does the personal chemistry feel good? Will we enjoy working with these people?

• Is our business case going to stack up? How do we know the promised benefits will be real? Can we rely on their quote?

• Will this relieve or increase the stress on our team? How reliant will we be on them? Can they back up our internal engineer’s role if they suddenly leave?

• What is the depth of their talent? Will I be getting a graduate on my job? What happens if their lead engineer leaves the project midstream?

• How proven is this new approach? Who else is doing it?

• We really need to make a strong impact in the market. Will we win an award using this approach?

Most of these questions are often not expressed, and they may not even be consciously aware of them as decision-making factors, until they have to justify their decision after the fact.

Outside-in Orientation

The outside-in orientation starts with trying to determine what these other criteria are. Beyond technical competence and price, criteria may relate to non-functional needs, real or imagined pains, and nice-to-have gains. Other factors come into play, such as factors of competition expressed by competitors, the nature and believability of proof points (case studies and testimonials), how customised the proposal is to the prospect’s context and more.

Finding out why people didn’t go with you is obviously a helpful practice, but it is too late to matter. A better approach is to undertake proactive value proposition analysis to discover the "things that really matter" to clients. This analysis can be achieved through formal customer interviews or various qualitative and quantitative survey techniques.

The key success factor in moving toward an outside-in orientation is to capture these factors in some sort of database and analyse them to determine what you think the differentiating factors are, the ones you really need to address to significantly increase your conversion rate. 

Then, you need to ensure that these factors are addressed in every touchpoint of your customer journey – from your digital marketing and presentation materials, all the way through to a carefully crafted proposal that goes beyond the numbers.

Contact InDepth Communication to learn more.