Susan Williamson’s company has been doing what it does for 37 years, and doing it well. But until recently, she probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate what that was.
Before the president of C.TRAC information solutions could launch a new niche product — also known as a vertical — within her existing industry, she had to be sure about her core competencies. She knew that C.TRAC specialized in direct marketing and database solutions, such as data entry, hygiene and analytics. But her analysis revealed the sweet spots that she could dig into to reap additional business and future success.
Now, that’s a regular piece of her corporate communication.
“As long as I’ve been here, we’ve been sort of lazy about communicating our value proposition for our core business because at some point, you just think that people know,” Williamson says. “It seems like we’re much more diligent about the value prop to our new vertical because you have to be.”
In order to do that, she needed a keen sense of balance. Through all of the steps — evaluating the core, securing internal buy-in, branding and, ultimately, taking the vertical to market — she had to weigh the new offshoot against its parent.
Williamson leverages the legacy of C.TRAC to build the credibility of the new product, IQ•Systemix, by including “powered by C.TRAC information solutions” under the IQ•Systemix logo.
While that connection is crucial, Williamson must also maintain the vertical’s separation through a unique Web site, a specific core and a distinct target audience.
“It’s so easy to fall back into talking the way that you’ve talked for 37 years about what you do,” she says. “One of the things that can really go wrong with this is that you don’t have enough discipline within the new vertical to keep verbiage and value proposition and staff and everything that you need to keep separate, separate.”