The Power of Positioning Yourself For Success

Right now, I'm still on the road, traveling through Western Australia, towards the northern territory. Lately, I've been reading and reviewing my book, More Bums on Seats. Although the book is already 10 years old, the lessons and topics from that book are still very relevant today.

At the beginning of the book, I talked about how I first began my own business even though I knew absolutely nothing about it. I came from a social work background so we weren't used to making sales. We were used to spending other people's money. The money was paid by ratepayers and taxpayers, and it was given to the council and employers. So we never had to do anything that generated sales.

There we were at the Mind, Body, and Spirit Festival, and we had no understanding of business whatsoever. But within a few moments when people arrived at the festival, we went from being naive and ignorant about business and products to being seen as experts .

The only thing that changed was my position, from being in front of the table where we had all our products set up to being behind the table. We basically positioned ourselves as experts in our customer’s minds, and our booth at the festival was a success! Suddenly, we had a place to come from where we had authority . That was a life-changing event for me since it taught me the power of positioning and collecting customer databases (customer databases will be discussed further in my other blogs).

Currently, I’ve been working with a client who is looking for staff. I mean, who isn't looking for staff these days? We've worked with them for nearly five years, and we've built their database up to around 24,000 people.

We put together an email advert for them the other day. We sent it out, and because of their position, people are receiving an email from a restaurant saying, "Would you like to come and work for us?" The theme of that email was all about who they are, what they've achieved, and what kind of people they are. The email also contained, "Wouldn't you like to be supported by somebody who has this position as an expert who is loved and awarded? So that you can grow as a person and a professional?" In this case, it was obviously an employment email.

Thinking through what I learned about positioning in those opening moments of our first business is still stuck with me. It was 20 years ago but I can truly say that the power of positioning is still highly applicable these days.

Here are some questions that will give you an idea of how you should position yourself for success:

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