POD? What's that? Is it a coffee thingy?

As difficult as it may be to believe, a major prospect, a Fortune 500 company, recently said this to me when I was presenting our proposal illustrating how we would grow their bottom-line with a new revenue source that would not involve any real costs or CAPEX on their part. This happened right when I said that we would leverage their company's POD as part of our strategy. That prompted the question in today's title above.

As patiently as possible, I explained POP's and POD's, ie Points of Parity, and Points of Differentiation to the questioner and other team members attending. On the inside, I was shocked that these well-compensated people with heavy responsibilities didn't understand a very fundamental and critical element in a strong marketing foundation.

Together, we went down the list of items the team believed were POD's, but in fact, they were all POP's, which was easy to point out by referencing their competitors' websites. To say it was an eye-opener for them would be putting it mildly.

I guess this was serendipity in action, as we were engaged to help them fashion a true POD, with work starting immediately, a totally different assignment than what we originally proposed. However, the original proposal will be coming up next.

If you don't have a POD, the chances of success are very low, but even if you DO have a POD, it needs to be sustainable, difficult to copy, truly a differentiator, and requires a lot of thought, debate, research, creativity, commitment at all levels, and most importantly...relevance to your target market.

If you don't have a clear POD, let us help you build one, as we've done many times to help create more success for businesses. And if you DO have a POD? Let us do an audit to ensure your POD is as substantial and long-term as possible, with no obligation.

Drop me a note, and we can chat.