A common question we ask our MSP clients is, “What is your Portfolio?”.
The most common response is, “We sell security and security management, Microsoft products and communication technology.”
While not wrong, they are answering a different question which is more along the lines of “What do your customers buy from you”.
Portfolio is More Than What You Sell
Portfolio defines your “Where to Play” strategy and is the linkage between your business’s specific value and outcomes it provides to customers in the market segment(s) you choose to be in and focus on.
An effective portfolio:
- Provides specificity for not only what you need to be providing the market – but why; how are you specifically addressing your key markets’ most important issues and opportunities
- Defines entry points into new accounts and the “how” to expand those accounts to drive more value for them and revenue for you.
- Aligns customers in a segment or sub-segment to their specific needs rather than the ‘inward-out’ view of who will buy what you have to sell
Connecting Your Portfolio to Your Target Segments
To make sure your portfolio is aligned to your target segments:
- Think about a specific segment’s needs, rather than beginning with market demographics (size, etc.)
- Build a strategy for how to solve those needs
- Evaluate and determine what products and services apply best to fulfill the strategy
A word of caution: You will most likely identify gaps in current products and services at some point when taking this approach. Prioritize new solution design to complete the puzzle required to solve your customer’s key challenges or opportunities – this may result in having, providing or needing some high value professional services on the front end of a new solution that is designed to pull-thru much larger purchases.
Conclusion
A Portfolio and Portfolio strategy is more than a catalog of the products and services you sell. It brings to life your growth goal and strategy in a deliberate manner that makes it easier for your selling and marketing teams to connect the dots between target customers and their needs and what we say to them in our messaging.