Sizzle without the Steak

I've been observing some entrepreneurs spending a lot of time lately on taglines, slogans, and catchy buzz words to describe their business.  In my view, I think the emphasis in some cases is on the wrong sylABLE.

I also hear from some of these folks that this is their positioning statement.  But a slogan or tagline is NOT the company or product positioning statement.  These are two VERY different things. 

A positioning statement is an internal company document (in my experience 3-4 pages) that spells out the value proposition and positioning for the target audience.  It's the steak -- the master blueprint for architecting things like taglines, sales presentations, etc.  It spells out the following: "for this set of customers with this type of problem, we offer XYZ that has ABC benefits for these customers.  Unlike 1,2 or 3 competitors, we offer these differentiators.  It's grounded in facts and insight about the market, your customers, and direct competitors.

The best business builders use corporate and product positioning as a strategic weapon -- strategic meaning they begin here and then build everything else out from this. It's a discipline they believe in.

the saying goes "you can't sell the steak without the sizzle"

..I prefer to say you gotta have steak to sell sizzle.

Get in to the discipline of developing a positioning document to guide the creation of all materials that tell your story.  And circulate this positioning document internally to everyone to get buy-in to delivering on this positioning statement/promise (I've seen it glue an organization together to deliver). 

Once you've accomplished this, you've got some pretty great steak to start crafting taglines and stories and materials that sizzzzzle!

Wendy Kennedy
author/advisor/lady with the flipcharts
www.wendykennedy.com