Positioning – LEVY INNOVATION

Get What You Want By Finding a Spot That’s Unoccupied

When I was nine years old, I fell in love with baseball and dreamed of playing first base. To aid me in my dream, my dad bought me a first baseman’s glove. When my friends and I gathered after school for an informal ball game, everyone knew to stay away from first. That was my spot.

Then something happened to change that.

The Little League season was starting up, and I decided to join the local team. During tryouts, the manager told us kids to run onto the field and man the position we most wanted to play. I of course sprinted towards first, but was in for a shock.

Five other kids had beaten me there. Apparently, each of us had the same dream. The manager told us that to win the job we’d have to compete with one another. Before he held the competition, though, he scanned the rest of the field.

Every position had at least one kid occupying it; that is, except for catcher. No one had claimed that spot. “Who wants to catch?” the manager asked. “We need a catcher.”

All of us froze. Catching was the sport’s most thankless position. As a catcher, even when the temperature outside hit 95 degrees, you still had to wear a helmet, chest protector, shin guards, thick metal face mask, and heavy padded glove. A hundred times a game, you needed to squat low and bolt back up. What’s more, foul balls stung you and base runners knocked you down. No one wanted to play catcher.

Which is why I was surprised when I found myself jogging towards home plate to pick up the catcher’s mitt laying there. “Good,” the manager said. “Levy will catch.”

What happened? Why did I suddenly toss aside my plan to play first base? It was out of dread. Although I’d never seen those five other kids play, my nine-year-old self was certain they were better than me, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed.

If the story ended there, it would be one of failure. But it doesn’t end there.

As a catcher, I learned how to block the plate, snag pop-ups, calm jittery pitchers, and in other ways be a credit to my position. At the season’s conclusion, I was selected –- as a catcher –- to represent my team in the All-Star game. I ended up playing a sport I love while excelling in my role.

What’s all this have to do with business? My becoming a catcher marks the first time I can remember using a strategy that has since become a cornerstone of my consulting work.

That strategy: To get what you want, find a spot that’s unoccupied.

Finding an unoccupied spot is at the heart of business positioning. After all, if you have unlimited money, talent, and connections, your business can go head-to-head with anyone in the world. If you don’t have copious resources, though, it’s best to pick a narrow-yet-important position in which you can dominate.

Finding an unoccupied spot doesn’t just work for positioning your company. It’s also a strategy that can help you write books, give speeches, and reach the media.

I’ll give you an example.

A month back, a friend (Thanks, Dan!) sent me a media query from a “Fast Company” magazine writer doing an article on how to be a good conversationalist. Getting quoted in that article would help my business. I knew, though, that dozens, maybe even hundreds, of experts would be answering that writer’s query. How could I stand out from among those other respondents?

I thought about positions. More precisely, I asked myself, “What are those other respondents likely to say?” (Which spots will be occupied?). Then I asked, “What can I say that’s different?” (Which spots will be unoccupied?)

When I thought about what the other respondents might say about being a good conversationalist, I came up with advice like “Be interested in the other person” and “Listen more than you speak.” It’s not that that advice is wrong. In fact, it’s great advice. It’s just that I’ve heard it before, so if I repeated it, I’d lower my chances of making it into the article.

Once I thought about what others would likely say, I came up with a few points about good conversation that were true yet more unusual. I emailed those points to the writer. You can see the resulting “Fast Company” article here.

What for you is the takeaway?

Whether you’re positioning your business, or creating content for a book, post, or speech, begin by asking yourself what the audience expects. If you only give them what they expect, they have no reason to listen to you.

Try finding a spot that’s unoccupied. One that’s valuable yet surprising.

Look At Your Business As If It Were a Book

By Mark Levy

Coming up with a persuasive marketplace differentiator for your business can be difficult.

One reason why: Since your business is your livelihood, creating its differentiator seems like a life-or-death decision. You tense up, thinking: “This differentiator of mine has got to be a one-of-a-kind, revenue-generating winner. Otherwise, I’m sunk.”

Trying to complete such an overwhelming exercise naturally shuts you down. The differentiator you come up with is weak. Or, you leave the exercise with no differentiator at all. What to do?

In the past decade and a half, I’ve created differentiators by the hundreds. One of my secrets: I play with how I see a client’s business. I look at it in different ways.

I even pretend that my client’s business isn’t a business at all. Instead, I pretend it’s a book.

Whether you realize it or not, your business is indeed a lot like a book.

Like a book, it has a main idea. It’s “about” something. That main idea may be sharp and distinct, or it may be broad and commoditized. It may be easy for people to talk about, or it may be fighting with other ideas, so talking about it is hard.

As I study a business, I think, “Right now, what’s the main idea here, and what are all the pieces of philosophy, facts, and stories substantiating that idea? If this business had a table of contents, what would the chapters be called and in what order would they fall?”

While I’m examining things, I look for storylines that are buried, or that hadn’t been thought of before. I ask myself, “If this new storyline were brought to the fore, how would that change everything? Who would be the readers for this new ‘book’? What would they be buying? How would they talk about it to friends?”

Consider trying this exercise for yourself.

Pretend your business is a book. Into which category would it fit? What would be its title? What about its main idea? Could you tweak that idea to make it stronger? Could you change the book’s meaning by moving a subordinate idea up front? Could you combine a series of subordinate ideas into something new and valuable? What would its cover look like?

Keep playing with the “book of your business” until you have a much stronger book than when you began.

Consider, then, how you could incorporate these rewrites into real life.

You Have Twenty Books in You

By Mark Levy

Whether you are planning a book, or are in the midst of writing one, I have some advice that could be a life saver. That is:

Don’t look at this current book as the only one you’ll ever write. If you do, it’ll mess with your head.

How so?

If you’re convinced this is your only book, you’ll stuff it with everything you know – and it’ll grow unwieldy. You’ll try making it perfect – and it’ll end up dull. You’ll want it to be a permanent monument to your very existence – and it’ll turn into an embarrassment.

Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. The harder a writer presses, the more their work suffers.

When I’m coaching a would-be book writer, I put things in perspective. I tell them: “You have twenty books in you. This is merely one of twenty. Treat it that way.”

If the book you’re working on is only a twentieth of your eventual output, that’ll change your approach. Your writing will become focused, your words will flow more easily, and most importantly you’ll be willing to take chances, because your entire life isn’t resting on this one throw of the dice.

Now, you can take my word that you have twenty books in you, or you could give yourself a dose of proof.

Suppose, for instance, you’re a strategy consultant. What books might you write?

You could write a general book on strategy, but you could also write a dozen separate books on strategy’s subcomponents, such as market selection and business unit strategy.

You could write books for different audiences, such as strategy creation for the CEO and strategy creation for a team.

You could write books on capturing different markets, like winning business in newly industrialized countries and winning business with members of Generation Z.

You could write books in different formats, such as a primer, a field guide, a workbook, a 30-day guide to building a strategy, a six-month diary on execution, a 365-day guide of strategy wisdom.

And those are just for starters.

Since we’re looking ahead, you’ll be learning methodologies that don’t exist yet, and you can write about those. You’ll be having experiences you haven’t had yet, and you can write about those.

What’s more, you can write books that are outside the realm of your current business, or that intersect with it indirectly.

If I gave you a couple of hours, your list likely wouldn’t be twenty books long. It would be double or even quadruple that number.

Of course, listing books and completing them are two wildly different matters. Still, taking a stab at this exercise will show that you have a lifetime’s worth of information and expertise to write about — and when you write one book, you build the capacity to write the next.

I have two questions for you, then:

What are your twenty books?
Which one will you work on today?

How to Increase Your Work’s Value, Without Much Effort

By Mark Levy

One morning awhile back, I awoke early and wanted to know the time, so I reached for my iPhone. Inadvertently, I hit the button for Siri, which triggered the message: “What can I help you with?”

Now, up to that point, I had rarely used Siri. Frankly, I’d forgotten she was part of my phone, so out of mild surprise, I didn’t respond. Siri, though, offered encouragement, filling my phone’s screen with sample questions I might ask, such as:

“What’s the NASDAQ today?”
“How’s the weather this week?”
“What are the best pizza stores nearby?”

It was only five in the morning, but that query about pizza stores caught my eye. When I asked it of Siri, she gave me a list of fifteen local pizza shops – several of which were new to me.

This was turning out to be a good day. I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee, but I already knew there’d be pizza for lunch.

From a business standpoint, I thought about what occurred.

Apple knew I’d already owned their product – an iPhone – but they wanted to be sure I knew about all its functionality, so I could get the most out of it.

After all, if there were ways their product could improve my life, but I didn’t know about them or didn’t remember I owned them, it would be a loss for me and for Apple.

For me, the loss would be in personal effectiveness. For Apple, the loss would be in poor word of mouth. (Me: “I heard the iPhone could do so much. I don’t get it. Seems pretty limited.”)

What Apple did, then, was to remind me of functionality I had paid for, but wasn’t using.

The sample questions Siri asked served both as a prompt (Remember, you own Siri) and an enticement (Here are just a few of the cool things Siri can help you with).

More recently, I received a similar reminder about paid-for-yet-unused value from a different source: Amazon.

For years I’ve been an Amazon Prime member, because the service ships books for free. To me, “Prime” equaled “free shipping” — and nothing else.

Then Amazon sent a noteworthy email. In it, the company reminded me that as a Prime member I can also stream thousands of movies at no extra cost. Yet I hadn’t watched a single movie.

I owned a membership, but I wasn’t using that membership to its fullest. Amazon wanted me to claim what was mine. They wanted me to get all I had paid for.

Do you see how important this concept can be for you and your business?

Your clients may adore your work, but they’re likely not wringing as much value from it as they could, because they’ve forgotten (or never knew) all it can do for them.

Your job is to remind them.

Remind clients about the products and services they’ve bought from you, and give them tips on features they may not remember they own, or alternate uses that increase your work’s value in their eyes.

Remember, you’re not trying to upsell them. You’re trying to help them derive greater benefit from what they already own. They’ll love you for that.

I’ll be writing more about this strategy in future posts. But for now, consider ways of making it work for you.

What would you be reminding clients about?
What kinds of additional value might they gain?
How might you do your reminding?

By the way, if you’re a consultant or coach who equips clients with tools, matrixes, and other forms of conceptual heuristics, make sure you remind people about deriving greater value from those, too.

Whatever you try, I’d be excited to hear about it.

The Best Brand Story is Often Informal

By Mark Levy

Sometimes your best brand story isn’t the one you think it should be. It’s one of your throwaway stories; an informal anecdote everybody else loves, but you don’t think twice about.

I’ll explain.

I recently stopped by a pet food store. Outside sat a brand representative at a table full of a type of cat food I hadn’t seen before.

I asked the rep what made this cat food distinct from the brands inside the shop. She told me an intricate story about single-source proteins. I kind of got the gist, but not fully.

I asked where the food was made. Here’s where things changed. She said, “It’s made in Thailand. Why it’s made there is interesting.” She then told me a story.

One of the brand’s chief investors is a man who travels the world, and wherever he goes he brings along his pets — 25 cats.

During a trip to Thailand, he ran out of the food he customarily feeds his cherished cats, so he tried the local pet food. His cats wouldn’t touch it.

Disgusted, he visited a nearby food manufacturer; one that had no experience with pet food. They had only ever prepared food for human beings.

He told the manufacturer his dilemma, gave them a rough recipe, and offered to pay if they’d make a few dishes for his cats.

Obviously, the manufacturer didn’t know how the dishes would turn out. Still, they agreed to make them. The result?

All 25 cats loved the food. Couldn’t get enough of it. They enjoyed it so much, in fact, that the man contacted an entrepreneurial friend in the United States, and they started selling the Thai-produced cat food here.

I asked the young lady if that story was a formal part of the brand’s sales pitches and marketing materials? She said, no, it wasn’t a story reps were required to use. She had heard it from the head of sales, and thought it quirky and memorable.

I took a few sample cans of the cat food, and thanked her.

When I returned home, my wife asked about the cans. Do you think I talked about single-source proteins? No way. I said:

“Let me tell you the story behind this cat food. There’s this well-to-do man who travels the world, and everywhere he goes he takes along his 25 pet cats. Can you believe that? Anyway, one day he and his cats were in Thailand and . . . “

For us — as consultants and thought leaders — what’s the takeaway here?

In conceiving your brand story, don’t let your thinking become narrow and buttoned up. Make your mind bigger.

Yes, the people in your market need to know your value proposition, but they want to know other things, too. They want to know about you and your philosophy and how you started and what you’ve done and what you plan on doing and what drives you.

Don’t straightjacket yourself by thinking only of terse stories that demonstrate monetary value. Instead, think of all the anecdotes that bring your brand to life. The stand-up-straight professional anecdotes as well as the bed-headed informal ones.

You never know which type will take your market by storm.

(This post was inspired by a comment made by my pal Nick Corcodilos about my previous post. You can read that post and Nick’s comment here.)

How You Tell a Brand Story Matters

By Mark Levy

Sometimes it’s easier to learn positioning and branding lessons when we look outside our field.

Let’s look at a lesson from the world of fast food. Then we’ll see how it applies to our brands as consultants and thought leaders.

A few days ago, I was eating at my local Quiznos sub shop, and a sign inside the store caught my attention.

The sign is hard to miss. It’s affixed to a barrier separating the food-preparing staff from customers. To place an order, customers more or less have to peer over the sign. Given such prominent placement, it must say something important, right?

Its headline: “The Quiznos Story.”

Now, that headline might not mean much to you, but I’ve got to admit — as a positioning and branding geek — when I first read it my curiosity was piqued. In my world, the word “story” carries weight.

Sometimes story refers to a business’s brand story, and how the business delivers value through a big differentiating idea or striking promise.

Other times story refers to a business’s backstory, which tells us why the business began in the first place, and how what it does is important in ways that go beyond merely making money.

Whatever kind of story being used, when you see the word in a marketing context, you know you’re likely going to find out about the brand’s core idea or competitive advantage.

What’s more, the brand will probably tell its story entertainingly, so you’ll share it with others.

I continued reading.

The sign’s first line taught me three facts about Quiznos: 1. It began, not as a franchise, but as a single store. 2. It started thirty years ago 3. It originated in Denver.

So far, so good. I could picture the company’s birth, because the scene was established with facts. Facts are concrete and fashion explicit images in the mind.

I was ready for the payoff: How is Quiznos different? What intriguing point would I share with my wife and friends? (“Stella, I was in Quiznos today. You want to hear something cool?”)

Here’s where the story sputtered.

The sign’s second line mentioned “BOLD IDEAS,” which threw me. I enjoy Quiznos’ food and atmosphere, but I never think about the experience as bold.

The third and fourth lines explained what Quiznos considered bold: “Great Tasting Food,” “HIGHEST QUALITY INGREDIENTS,” and “FRESHLY-SLICED MEATS, CHEESES & VEGETABLES.”

I felt duped.

Here I was excited to learn what separated a brand I enjoy from the rest of the pack, and what I was fed was a surface story that – excluding the part about thirty years ago in Denver – could have been trumpeted by any competitor.

For a sub shop to say it believes in great-tasting food, consisting of freshly-sliced quality ingredients, is like a automobile manufacturer saying it believes in building cars that drive forwards and backwards. Or, a computer maker bragging about how its machines can connect to the internet.

The story Quiznos told may be true, but it wasn’t told in a way that would make a dent in anyone’s consciousness. I’m guessing few customers have read that sign fully or remember what it said if they did.

What can we as consultants and thought leaders learn here?

How we tell a marketing story matters. If we tell people only what they know and expect, they’ll ignore us.

What our brand story or backstory needs is . . . a context . . . an insight . . . a promise . . . a substantiation . . . a frank detail . . . an unexpected bit of color . . . that forces our audience to look anew at what they thought they already knew.

For example, if you’re a consultant whose main message is about helping organizations “change” and “accelerate results,” you’re not giving your audience any reason to consider you over a competitor, because you sound like hundreds of thousands of other consultants.

Your language is too general. There’s nothing for us to picture. Your message needs a meaningful difference and specifics.

You need to tell us things you know, but we don’t. Doing so will make us sit up and take notice. We may also be intrigued enough to call you so we can find out more.

If you’d like to try your hand at creating a brand story that people will remember, consider the following three questions:

1. What do you know that (most of) your market doesn’t know about your subject?

2. What do you know that (most of) your market doesn’t know about your company?

3. In answering the first two questions, what ideas and stories did you discover that your market would find equally surprising and valuable?

Your answers can serve as the basis for a draft of a brand story that is fresh, exciting, and uniquely yours.

Writing an Elevator Speech “Lifelike in the Extreme”

By Mark Levy

To prepare for a workshop I’m giving, I’ve spent hours doing exploratory writing on how to create an elevator speech.

On the page, I’ve asked and answered questions like, “What’s an elevator speech supposed to accomplish?,” “What are the best ones I’ve heard?,” and “What are the worst ones?”

I’ve also made a list of elevator speech ingredients. Most of them, naturally, are the things you’d expect. A good speech mentions one’s target market, product or service, and benefits to the customer.

One of the ingredients I came up with, though, is more unusual. You rarely hear about it in business literature. That often overlooked ingredient is honest detail.

To better describe what I mean by honest detail, which might also be called “telling detail,” let’s turn to an outside source: novelist and essayist, George Orwell.

A Detail Saves a Life

In late 1936 to early 1937, Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War. During one battle he was shot in the throat. Orwell not only recovered, but in the ensuing twelve years he penned his most notable books, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

He also wrote an essay, “Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War,” which included the following passage:

“At this moment a man, presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him . . . I did not shoot partly because of that detail about his trousers. I had come here to shoot at ‘Fascists’; but a man who is holding up his pants isn’t a ‘Fascist,’ he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t like shooting at him.”

In analyzing this passage in their textbook, “Finding Common Ground,” educators Carolyn Collette and Richard Johnson write: “The life of Orwell’s enemy may have been spared because Orwell noticed a detail, the man holding his pants up with both hands – an awkward, slightly comical, and bizarre detail; lifelike in the extreme . . . “ (p. 4)

The honest detail, “lifelike in the extreme,” can persuade. The telling image – drawn, not from the mind, but from reality — can capture people’s attention and coax them into action.

Most business writing, especially elevator-speech writing, lacks such realism and candor. It stays on the surface, espousing “big ideas” through generalization and abstraction. The writer ends up saying what they think they’re supposed to say, instead of what’s real. Their words don’t make a dent in anybody’s mind.

Statistics as Detail

When I started Levy Innovation, my elevator speech used to talk about how I helped make people memorable and compelling. As I’ve written before, there was nothing wrong with saying those things. I still say them. What I hated was talking about those concepts in unsubstantiated form. Without supporting facts and detail drawn from life, they were mere opinion.

As I examined my projects for facts, I realized something that had previously escaped me. Due in part of my efforts, several clients had become popular enough to raise their fees by 600%, 800%, and even 2,000%.

Figures like those became my substantiation — my telling detail. When asked what I did, I began saying: “Consultants and entrepreneurial companies hire me to help them increase their fees by up to 2,000%.”

Painting a Candid Picture

While creating elevator speeches for other situations, I always sought that telling detail to make my point. Sometimes the detail came in the form of a statistic. Other times it came by painting a picture that let the listener know I understood what they might be going through.

For instance, if I met a consultant who explained their services awkwardly or seemed embarrassed as they spoke, I’d introduce my work in the following way:

“You know how when a businessperson meets a prospect, say, at a conference, and that businessperson starts talking about who they are and what they do, and the prospect starts looking right past them to see if there’s anyone in the room who is ‘more important’?

“So, not only has that businessperson lost any chance to gain a client, but they also feel awful about their life, because they put so much effort into their business, and this prospect looking past them is, in a way, dismissing their entire being. (At least that’s what it feels like to them.)

“Well, what my work does is to help people like that businessperson who find it tough explaining what they do and why their work matters. I counsel them on writing elevator speeches and talking points that hold attention and make prospects eager to have a conversation with them.”

More times than not, the person I was talking to wanted to find out more about how my work might help them, because the details of the picture I painted struck them as undeniably real.

(Where, you might wonder, did I get those details? From my own life. A couple of decades ago, while I was in my early twenties and manned the trade show booth for a book wholesaler, attendees would ask me, “What does your company do?” As I explained, they’d at times leave while I was in mid-sentence. You don’t forget a detail like that.)

“Help me! Help me!”

The other day I spoke with a consultant, Kathy Gonzales, whose elevator speech delighted me. It’s not because Kathy meticulously crafted every word, or delivered the speech with flair. It was the realism of her detail. Her speech sounded like it came straight from life. When I asked what she did, she said:

“I work with executives, mostly men, who want to leave the corporate world and start their own business. I don’t make them better at what they want to do. I won’t make a financial planner a better financial planner, or a baker a better baker. I just help them make the jump. They’ve got one hand on the corporate ledge, and they want to let go, but they’re crying, ‘Help me! Help me!’ That’s my client.”

Notice how Kathy didn’t make a lot of promises or claims. That adds to the persuasiveness of her speech.

I don’t know anything about Kathy’s company, Modern Happiness, and I’m not in the market for her type of service. But if I was, I’d be intrigued enough to have an initial chat – a “How do you do that?” talk — and that’s what an elevator speech is supposed to accomplish, isn’t it?

Your Challenge

If you’re struggling to come up with an elevator speech that captures attention, here’s an assignment using a standard speech format:

Think about the three most common problems your product or service solves, and create a speech for each. Don’t labor over the speeches, though. Just talk them out. Consider recording them as you go.

As I did in a speech above, begin with the phrase, “You know how when . . . ,” and describe the type of person you serve and the problem they experience in as much honest detail as you can. Stay true to what really happens. Don’t think you need to make things sound more dramatic than they are.

Once you’ve painted the scene, talk about what your work does to alleviate the problem you mentioned.

You may not get the most telling details right away — the ones, “lifelike in the extreme.” If not, don’t sweat it. As you do your project work throughout the day, pay attention to what really happens and try incorporating the most intriguing facts into future drafts of your speeches.

Breaking a Solution Ahead of Time

By Mark Levy

When it comes to business practices, what you’re confident about today may be proven wrong tomorrow. I’ll explain.

When I was a kid, I’d go to the candy store and spin the squeaky, revolving rack of comic books to see if it held a new issue of “Sergeant Fury,” “Captain America,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” or “Thor.” If I spotted one, I’d stare at its cover for a minute or two to get a sense if the story hidden inside promised to be worth twelve cents (or twenty-five cents for a double issue).

Why didn’t I judge the comic by thumbing through it? If I tried, the store owner would lean over his counter and shout: “This isn’t a library. Are you looking or buying?”

I’d be forced into buying, because “looking” was akin to theft.

When I was growing up, most stores dissuaded you from sampling a product. Their reasoning? Maybe they thought if you got even a taste for free you wouldn’t value the product enough to pay for it. Maybe they wanted customers to absorb the transactional risk and judge the quality of a product on their own dime.

Such thinking now, of course, is considered unenlightened. It hinders sales. Instead of keeping products away from customers, businesses try hard to get them into people’s hands.

Want to play around with a software program? No problem. Go for the free ninety-day trial and see if you like it. Want to know if a certain car hugs the road? Don’t sweat it. Take the auto home for a few days and test it.

Going from the “no sample” strategy to the “try the complete product for free” strategy is a radical about-face. But you and I have seen other strategy reversals just as drastic.

Years ago, it was assumed that the smartest person in most companies was the leader. After all, the leader was in charge of the organization for a reason. In many organizations, that thinking has now changed. They believe in the genius of the group, and think its people are smarter in the aggregate than they are separately. These organizations put collaboration tools in place, so people can more closely work together.

Along the same lines, many organizations used to assume that their employees couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information; the hierarchy, therefore, hoarded data. Now, thanks to the influence of practices like Open Book Management, certain leaders share financial and strategic information with the company, so employees can take responsibility and make better educated business decisions.

I could go on recounting business strategies, like Reengineering and Management by Objectives, which were once thought to be best approach to solving a particular problem, but are now looked upon, at best, as one tool in a diverse strategy toolkit. But I won’t. I know you get the picture.

The point I’m driving at is this: Right now, you and I are using strategies in our business that will, one day soon, be thought of as wrongheaded. We’ll look back and think, “How could I have wasted so much time believing that?” or “focusing on that?” or “doing that?”

Rather than waiting for that day to come, get a jump on uncovering those strategies and on hatching alternate ways of doing things.

Think of it as a game. Look at how you prospect and sell. Look at your products and services. Look at your infrastructure and how you get things done. Look at your pet philosophy and manifesto ideas.

Even if what you’re doing is working, pretend it’s not. Pretend it’s broken and you’ve got to come up with something new – you have no option.

What would you try?

Is there a way, even a small way, of trying it now?

Strengthen Your Business Through Journaling

By Mark Levy

When I started doing positioning a decade ago, I didn’t have a defined methodology. I worked intuitively.

I’d hang out with a client, talk to their customers, study their marketing materials, and scan their field. A few weeks, and dozens of phone calls later, we’d have their marketplace position, competitive advantages, elevator speech, talking points, and case studies.

My informal approach worked well. The client got what they wanted, and I was able to conduct business in a way that felt natural.

One day a colleague asked me how I got my results, and I told him about my loose approach. A heavy-duty structure guy, he assured me that clients would be more at ease if they knew I had a codified process with predictable steps.

Since I was relatively new to consulting, I decided to take his advice. What I didn’t want to do, though, was create a process that was phony, mundane, or that got in my way.

That’s when I turned to my old freewriting files.

Freewriting is a way of thinking onto paper that helps you get to your best problem-solving ideas. Whenever I had a client positioning project, I’d open an empty document and would use freewriting to clarify my thoughts and create ideas. It was scratchpad thinking done for my eyes only.

Fortunately, I’d saved much of this exploratory freewriting. It sat in my computer throughout dozens of throwaway documents. I sifted through them.

Not only did I discover that I, indeed, had methods I’d called upon again and again and, therefore, had a kind of rough process; I also found I’d used tactics and had insights I’d completely forgotten about. For me, reading through my rough writing was revelatory. By studying it, I created a process and steps that were based on who I was and what I actually did.

What I stumbled on, you might want to do on purpose.

That is, keep a project journal that you can write in daily or at least a few times a week. The journal can be a physical book, or a file in your computer. Whatever format you choose, use it to talk to yourself about what’s happening in a particular project.

You can, for instance, write about a session you held, a question you were asked, a piece of advice you gave, a discovery you made, an insight your client had, a road block you experienced, a process you created, a list of things to stay away from, a list of things to do again, big successes, small successes, bits of dialogue, or an image that flashed into your mind.

The act of keeping a project journal can help you immediately, as you’re doing the writing. It can also help you long after the fact – as you review it days, months, or even years later.

Consider, too, asking a client to keep a project journal. Doing so will help them work out problems, remind them of strategies and ideas that they can use over and over, and get them focused on how things are changing due to the work you’re doing together.

Each week, you could schedule time to review their journal with them. They don’t have to read the actually writing, unless they’d like to. Instead, ask them to summarize interesting findings.

By the way, make no bones about asking them to look for changes and results in their writing. Say things like, “What problems have you had? What solutions have you tried? And what results have you seen?”

If you do this enough, people start focusing on results. They start looking for progress.

Without a results-oriented focus, some people forget how far they’ve come. When you point it out to them, or when they discover it for themselves, it inspires them to do more.

Make sure you point out all the ways they’re progressing personally, their company is progressing, and their own customers are progressing.

If you or your clients have kept a project journal, I’d love to hear about it. What insights did you gain? What snags did you encounter? What might we learn from your experience?

The First of Its Kind

By Mark Levy

Everyone knows how important an elevator speech is to a business. The right speech gets people excited about what the business can do for them. The wrong one makes them yawn.

A snappy attention-getting elevator speech doesn’t just work for a business. If you’re an author, you need a speech to describe your book, too.

A few years ago, the great Mac King and I co-wrote a book called “Tricks With Your Head.” How do I describe it? This way:

“Tricks With Your Head’ is the first of its kind: a book of magic tricks where the human head is the main prop in every trick. Readers learn how to stab a fork in their eye until it pops, suck a French fry up their nose, and read people’s minds with a drinking straw.”

From the twelve second speech, listeners immediately get a feel for the book’s premise and tone, and understand the kind of things they’ll learn from it. A lot is accomplished in a few sentences.

A key to that speech is its opening: The book “is the first of its kind.” That phrase opens listeners’ ears and piques their curiosity. We all want to hear about firsts and distinctions.

If you’re positioning a book (or yourself or a company or a cause), a good exercise is to scour your material for slants that might make it “the first of its kind.” Ask yourself questions like the following:

Does my book speak to an audience that’s been ignored? Does it name a concept that’s never been named? Does it explain a methodology that’s brand new? Does it combine ideas that have never before been combined? Does it tell a story no one has ever heard?

If a first jumps out at you, use it. If one doesn’t, consider revising it until a first appears.

Your book doesn’t have to be “the first” to do anything. Working to make it so, however, may help you build a work that stands out from the pack.

My challenge to you, then, is to look over the book you’re writing — or thinking about writing — and ask yourself:

What are all the ways my book is a first?
What are all the ways I can convert it into a first?

(By the way, if you’re interested in understanding why being first in people’s minds is important, do yourself a favor and read any book written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. The work of these men on positioning is astonishingly valuable.)