Most entrepreneurs think they’re selling what they do: catering, coaching, retailing, consulting, design, and training.
They’re not.
This is your weekly Entrepreneur Insights 5-minute read with ideas to improve your business.
They’re selling a position in the customer’s mind. And that position quietly decides whether a prospect sees you as a premium solution, a commodity, or background noise.
If your positioning is fuzzy, everything gets harder: you have to explain more, justify your prices, and chase clients. When it's sharp, prospects show up already half sold.
So, what is positioning, in practical terms?
Positioning is the promise you make to a specific person in a specific situation, relative to their other options.
Three questions clarify it fast:
1. Who is this really for?
Not “small businesses.” More like “firms doing $250k–$2M who want catering services for their staff who want healthy options"
2. What painful status quo are they stuck in?
Example: “Referrals are slowing down, and they don’t have a predictable way to bring in qualified leads.”
3. What is the sharpest outcome you help them achieve?
“Add 5–10 qualified sales conversations per month without paid ads.”
Put this together, and you move from:
“I help entrepreneurs grow their business”
to:
“I help B2B service founders doing $250k–$2M add 5–10 qualified sales conversations a month without ads, using an outbound (personal selling) system they can run in 30 minutes a day.”
Same business. Very different position.
Start there. Everything else in your business gets easier when the market knows exactly who you are and what you are the obvious choice for.
Quote for the week
“Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”—Al Ries & Jack Trout, authors of Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
See you next week for another edition of weekly Entrepreneur Insights!
May you always have the mindset of an entrepreneur.
Sajjad Hamid is an SME & Family Business Adviser who supports entrepreneurs in scaling their ventures. In his spare time in Trinidad and Tobago, he cultivates organic tropical fruits and vegetables, practising sustainable farming in his home garden.
He is the author of Build Your Legacy Business: Solopreneur To Family Business Hero. Sajjad is a Fellow of the Family Firm Institute. He writes a column titled Entreprenomics in the Business section of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. You can contact him at [email protected] or visit www.entrepreneurtnt.com.
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