Your ‘soft' factor

ONE OF THE PLEASURES AND SOMETIMES stresses of my life currently is sitting in the passenger seat as my 17-year-old daughter practises her driving. Some of you will be familiar with the emotional roller coaster I experience during these excursions. My right foot tends to stretch out on the floor in 'brake' pose and the kerb has never felt closer. I sit with my hands clenched, trying for Becky's sake to look as relaxed as possible ... And I was once genuinely petrified of going on 'Air' at Alton Towers!

Becky is becoming a very good driver though and the deal is that once she's passed her test my Nissan Micra will be hers to use and I'll buy another car for myself.

I'm not normally someone that takes much interest in advertising, believing that I cannot be influenced by all the clever tricks and smooth words. But, I have started to take notice of car adverts.

Motorvation to buy

I've begun my search for a new motor by listing all the key things it must have: a certain size of diesel engine, five doors, electric windows, good visibility, power steering and decent CD player. Just to make this exercise realistic I also give myself a budget limit of £10,000. As you can see I'm not a big spender!

Armed with my desires list I turn to my car-listing magazine and identify all the vehicles that meet my criteria. But how am I going to choose one car from amongst my short list of fifteen near identical vehicles?

Car advertising is less to do with persuading you to buy a car because it has particular features, and more to do with persuading you to buy the car that best fits your image of yourself, regardless of whether that image is true, totally fictitious, aspirational or completely misguided.

The advertisers are selling you the benefit of buying the car, not the features of the car itself.

However independently minded we might think we are, the influence of years of advertising, branding and ingrained images makes their impact felt ... and my list of fifteen cars becomes a list of three.

So what has this got to do with security, you may be asking?

Well, the principles at work operate in every field of commerce. In the security installation business competition tends to create diversity. At the same time, what security installers do is in many respects very similar. So the differences between installers have less to do with what they offer and more to do with what a particular installer represents - the perceived benefit to the customer.

Think of the subjective reasons a client might choose your company over another installer

These 'soft' reasons for choosing you, rather than someone else, are important to understand, as they can be key to growing your business. For instance, some installers specialise in CCTV, access control or intruder services, whilst others purport to offer everything. So there is some element of differential here that is 'features' based. The analogue/digital/IP division also still exists to an extent but this is fast diminishing. So if they want a digital CCTV system, people are not going to approach an access control specialist. But beyond this, every other way of differentiating between installers has more to do with benefits than features. Another way of describing this is to think of these as subjective rather than objective ways a customer might choose between you and another company, whether seeking a quote or building a tender list.

Specialist by chance

Many installers promote themselves as specialists in particular sectors and therefore offer a clear benefit to a customer in that sector. But this may reflect on chance as much as expertise. Perhaps a series of customer wins in the same sector reflects a preponderance of companies in that sector locally more than specific expertise in that type of installation.

But I don't think this matters if the customer perceives a benefit ... perhaps of your experience or knowledge of their industry and the sense of trust this generates.

On the whole small local companies may prefer to be supplied by small, local businesses. Large national chains usually have procedure requirements that only large national suppliers can fulfil.

In between, there are many regional players that can look after both small companies, particularly those with regional or national aspirations, and large national organisations that don't impose central purchasing on their regional offices or outlets.

So again, the external perception of the installer is more important in many instances than the facts that are known about the company.

A third and final area, which I would still maintain is largely subjective, relates to manufacturer brands. Installers can become associated with the identity of a national brand and 'borrow' some of the attributes of the national name to supplement their own reputations. Installers known to favour a particular brand obviously attract customers experienced with that brand or who align themselves with the attributes that the brand represents. In the case of some generic brands known more for their household goods than their security expertise, this may or may not be an advantage.

Clearly customers choose their security supplier on the basis of a whole mix of rational and sometimes irrational reasons. But most of the time, customers are choosing their installer on the basis of 'soft' reasons that have more to do with the perceived benefit of using such and such a firm than the precise services that might be offered.

It is important to be aware of these soft factors so that you accentuate the ones that will most help your business grow and help attract the kinds of customers you want to have.