🗂️   Simple Clarity
🌥️   Sales Purgatory
⛔️   Learn to Love No
🗂️ Simple Clarity
The foundation of a strong brand is Simple Clarity. It is the ability to describe your business and what makes it unique in 10 words or less.
Simple Clarity is not a wordsmithing exercise. It’s the refinement of your positioning to make it crystal clear.
Simple Clarity distills your positioning into three parts:
- You are… What is your company’s industry or category?
- You do… What does your company do? More importantly, what does it do better than everyone else?
- You serve… Who does your company serve?
For example, Patriot Software states, “Patriot Software is accounting and payroll software for companies with 1 to 100 employees.”
It’s not a particularly colorful or catchy statement, but it clearly positions the brand. You know what Patriot Software does and for whom.
If you’re struggling to get the words to describe your brand, take a step back to consider your business and your market:
- Where do you play?
- How do you win?
- How do you want to be known?
As you define where you compete and why, you can better answer: you are, you do, and you serve.
This concept is so important, Simple Clarity is the first Principle of my book, Sticky Branding.
🌥️ Sales Purgatory
Repositioning a business can be costly. You can go up to nine months with flat or negative growth as you commit to a new niche. This is sales purgatory. It is an inevitable reality of implementing a niche strategy.
To make it through sales purgatory, you will need three things:
1. Cash
Repositioning a distressed business is almost impossible, because they don’t have the wiggle room to commit to grow. Repositioning is for relatively healthy companies that can commit to investing and seeing it through to the end with diminished sales performance.
2. Time
It takes roughly nine months to pass through sales purgatory. You may be able to reduce the time if you have strong ties to the niche with existing momentum, but give yourself time to shed the old lines of business.
3. Communication
Sales purgatory can tear your culture apart if it isn’t managed. Rumors can start, and your employees can become disillusioned. Without clear and constant communication, your staff can lose their way.
Repositioning is a process of reinvention. It doesn’t happen as fast as you want, and you need the team, cash, and commitment to break through to the other side.
đź“ŠÂ One Stat to Watch
55%
of consumers perceive a brand less favorably once they can tell AI produced the creative, according to Clutch Research. “AI-free” is the new “gluten-free.”
⛔️ ​​ Learn to Love No
Rejection is a requirement of doing anything remarkable.
When I was a kid, we’d listen to Tom Hopkins’ sales training tapes on car trips. One of Tom’s core messages was to “learn to love no.” He argued that every no is one step closer to a yes.
Jack Canfield said, “Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected by 144 publishers. If we had given up after 100 publishers, I likely would not be where I am now. I encourage you to reject rejection. If someone says no, just say NEXT!”
If something is worth doing, you’ll face obstacles. Rejection is part of the process. It’s how you learn and refine.
At CoStrategy, we use sales sprints for market research. After every customer meeting, we capture qualitative and quantitative data. The no responses are some of the most valuable data points. They give you indicators that guide you to growth markets.
No provides perspective. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”‍
Use no to learn and to measure progress. Every no is one step closer to yes.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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