Components in Product positioning - Influencer to Top and Bottom Lines

Components in Product Positioning

with respect to Sales

Influencers to Top and Bottomline

The other day, I was working with a friend of mine and happened to see a webinar.
Inspired by that I created an image with 4 quadrants, each representing a combination of two of the most important factors of Sales: Value and Margins.
I also added the following message to the image:
“Which Quadrant are we working for right now?
And which one should we be really addressing?
No Marks for the right answer”




I posted this message in whatsapp groups covering a few hundred members.
Can you guess which Quadrant was voted the highest?
I personally felt that the winner would be Q4.
Interestingly enough, I received varied responses. The first of the responses was favoring Q1.
Then Q3 and Q4 started following.
I was surprised to observe that all the three quadrants are equally favored .
I thought to myself that Q2 will be discarded by all. It actually surprised me when one of the respondents chose Q2 as his model.
The Voting pattern :
Q1 and Q4 were almost the same Finally........ I was pleased since Q4 slightly edged over others...
After all, it makes one happy when a good number of people confirm one's belief.
This exercise went on to prove that there is no right or wrong positioning of a product or service to address top-line and bottom-line, and the same is influenced by the Target groups and the competition in the respective markets.
At this point, Exploration took over Excitement. I kept looking for the hidden component which could influence these two important factors.
One response from a friend interested me a lot:
“My business operates on High Value, High Margins, but the volumes are very low, meaning frequency of orders. So this is also important”
Hence the introduction of the third component (Volume) has become imperative in this context.
Three important components to be addressed in product planning in relation to sales:

1. Value
2. volumes(frequency)
3. Margins
   (in no particular order)

Now I am left with the self assigned role of creating an image with 3 axes to include the volume also in the package.
Frankly, it sounds so simple and elementary by the time I write these last few lines of this article.
But I felt that it is important to discuss this, ending with a question “how often do we give a serious thought to these factors (which could impact both the top and bottom lines of any business) during our sales meetings?”



Muralidharan Margabandhu
Principal Consultant

Turnaround & Debt Management Expert

Founder Startupsuccess.in

Founder Marg Consulting

Connect: muralimarg@gmail.com