By Al Ries, American Author
If positioning strategies can be used to promote a product, why can't they be used to promote yourself? No reason at all. So let's review positioning theory as it might apply to your own personal career.
Define Yourself
Many people suffer from the same ailment as products—they try to be all things to all people. The problem with this approach lies in the mind of the prospect. It's difficult enough to link one concept with each product. It's almost impossible with two or three or more concepts. The most challenging part of positioning is selecting that one specific concept to hang your hat on. Yet you must if you want to cut through the prospect's wall of indifference.
What is your position in life? Can you sum up your own position in a single concept? Then, can you run your own career to establish and exploit that position? Most people aren't ruthless enough to set up a single concept for themselves. They vacillate and expect others to do it for them.
Establishing Your Position
“I'm the best lawyer in Dallas,” are you? How often would your name be mentioned if we took a survey of the Dallas legal community? “I'm the best lawyer in Dallas” is a position that can be achieved with some talent, some luck, and a lot of strategy. The first step is to isolate the concept that you are going to use to establish that long-term position. It's not easy, but the rewards can be great.
Anything worth doing is worth doing lousy. If it wasn't worth doing, you shouldn't have done it at all. On the other hand, if it is worth doing and you wait until you can do it perfectly, if you procrastinate, you run the risk of not doing it ever. Therefore, anything worth doing is worth doing lousy. Your reputation will probably be better within the company if you try many times and succeed sometimes than if you fear failure and only try for sure things.
Learn from the Greats
People still remember Ty Cobb, who stole 96 bases out of 134 tries (70%). But they have forgotten Max Carey, who stole 51 bases out of 53 (96%). Eddie Arcaro, perhaps the greatest jockey ever, had 250 straight losers before he rode his first winner. Remember Leonard Sly? Few people did until he changed his name to Roy Rogers, an important first step in becoming a motion picture star. How about Marion Morrison? A little feminine for a he-man cowboy, so he changed it to John Wayne. Or Isadore Demsky, who first changed to Isadore Demski and then to Kirk Douglas.
They tried to conceal him, said Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., by naming him Smith. Common law grants you the right to adopt any name you want as long as you're not trying to defraud or be deceptive. So don't change your name to McDonald and open up a hamburger stand. Also, if you're a politician, don't bother to change your name to None of the Above. Luther DeNoxa, a candidate in a Louisiana gubernatorial primary, had his name legally changed to just that. However, a federal judge had Mr. None of the Above's name taken off the ballot because the move was deceptive.
Avoid the No Name Trap
Many business people fall victim to initial letters personally as well as corporately. As young executives, they noticed that top managers usually use initials: J.S. Smith, R.H. Jones, so they do the same on memos and in letters. It's a mistake. You can afford to do that only if everyone knows who you are. If you're on the way up, if you're trying to burn your name into the minds of top management, you need a name, not a set of initials. For exactly the same reasons your company does.
Write your name and look at it: Roger P. Dingellacker. What a name like this is psychologically telling management is that you are such a big company, and you have such an insignificant job that you must use the P to differentiate yourself from the other Roger Dingellackers on the staff. Not likely. It is possible if your name is something like John Smith or Mary Jones, and you actually do need a middle initial to differentiate yourself from the other John Smiths or Mary Joneses. If so, what you really need is a new name.
Confusion is the Enemy
Confusion is the enemy of successful positioning. You can't burn in a name that's too common. How are other people going to differentiate between John T. Smith and John S. Smith? They won't bother. They'll just forget you along with the rest, and the no-name trap will have claimed another victim.
Avoid the Line Extension Trap
If you had three daughters, would you name them Mary One, Mary Two, and Mary Three? As a matter of fact, would you name them Mary, Mary, and Marilyn? Either way, you're creating a lifetime of confusion. When you hang a junior on your son's name, you do him no favor. He deserves a separate identity. In show business, where you must burn a clear-cut identity in the mind of the public, even a famous last name should probably not be used. Today, Liza Minnelli is a bigger star than her mother Judy Garland ever was. As Liza Garland, she would have started with a handicap.
The Power of a Unique Name
Frank Sinatra Jr. is an example of the most difficult kind of line extension name. He literally started with two strikes against him. With a name like Frank Sinatra Jr., the audience says to itself, he's not going to be able to sing as well as his father. Since you hear what you expect to hear, of course, he doesn't.
Some ambitious, intelligent people find themselves trapped in situations where their future looks bleak. So what do they generally do? They try harder. They try to compensate by long hours of hard work and effort. The secret of success is to keep your nose to the grindstone. Do your job better than the next person, and fame and fortune will come your way, right? Wrong. Trying harder is rarely the pathway to success. Trying smarter is the better way.
Finding Success
It's the story of the shoemaker's children all over again. Too often, management people don't know how to manage their own careers. Their own promotional strategy is often based on the naive assumption that ability and hard work are all that count. And so they dig in and work harder, waiting for the day that someone will tap them on the shoulder with the magic wand, but that day seldom comes. The truth is, the road to fame and fortune is rarely found within yourself. The only sure way to success is to find yourself a horse to ride. It may be difficult for the ego to accept, but success in life is based more on what others can do for you than on what you can do for yourself. Kennedy was wrong. Ask not what you can do for your company; ask what your company can do for you.
Therefore, if you want to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that your career has to offer, you must keep your eyes open and find yourself a horse to do the job for you. The first horse to ride is your company. Where is your company going? Or more importantly, isn't it going anywhere at all? Too many good people have taken their good prospects and locked them into situations that are doomed to failure. But failure at least gives you a second chance. Even worse is the company with less than average chances for growth. No matter how brilliant you are, it never pays to cast your lot with a loser. Even the best officer on the Titanic wound up in the same lifeboat as the worst, and that's if he was lucky enough to stay out of the water. You can't do it yourself. If your company is going nowhere, get yourself a new one. While you can't always pick an IBM or Xerox, you ought to be able to do considerably better than average. Place your bets on the growth industries of tomorrow—types like computers, electronics, optics, communications. And don't forget that soft services of all types are growing at a much faster rate than hard products. So look into banks, leasing, insurance, medical, financial, and consulting service companies. Don't forget that your experience with yesterday's products can blind you to opportunities in totally different product areas, especially services.
Choosing the Right Company
When you change jobs to join one of those tomorrow-type companies, don't just ask how much they are going to pay you today. Also ask how much they are likely to pay you tomorrow.
The second horse to ride is your boss. Ask yourself the same questions about your boss as you asked yourself about your company: Is he or she going anywhere? If not, who is? Always try to work for the smartest, brightest, most competent person you can find. If you look at biographies of successful people, it's amazing to find how many crawled up the ladder of success right behind someone else, from their first assignment in some menial job to their last as president or CEO of a major company.
Some people actually like to work for incompetents. I suppose they feel that a fresh flower stands out better if it's surrounded by wilted ones. They forget the tendency of top management to throw the whole bunch out if they become dissatisfied with an operation. Two types of individuals come in looking for jobs. One is inordinately proud of his or her specialty. He or she will often say, “You people really need me around here. You're weak in my specialty.” The other type says just the opposite, “You're strong in my specialty. You do a terrific job, and I want to work with the best.” Which type is more likely to get the job? Right, the latter person. On the other hand, strange as it might seem, top management people see more of the other type—the person who wants to be an expert, preferably with a big title and salary to match.
The Importance of Networking
“Hitch your wagon to
a star,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Good advice then, even better advice now. If your boss is going places, chances are good that you are too.
The third horse to ride is a friend. Many business people have an enormous number of personal friends but no business friends. And while personal friends are awfully nice to have and can sometimes get you a deal on a TV set or braces for the kids, they are usually not too helpful when it comes to finding a better job. Most of the big breaks that happen in a person's career happen because a business friend recommended that person. The more business friends you make outside of your own organization, the more likely you are to wind up in a big, rewarding job. It's not enough just to make friends. You have to take out that friendship horse and exercise it once in a while. If you don't, you won't be able to ride it when you need it.
When an old business friend you haven't heard from in 10 years calls you and wants to have lunch, you know two things will happen. One, you are going to pay for the lunch, and two, your friend is looking for a job. When you need a job, it's usually too late to try that type of tactic. The way to ride the friendship horse is to keep in touch regularly with all your business friends. Send them tear sheets of articles they may be interested in, clips of publicity items, and congratulatory letters when they get promoted. And don't assume people always see stories that might have mentioned them. They don't, and they always appreciate it when someone sends them an item they may have missed.
Embrace Innovative Ideas
The fourth horse to ride is an idea. On the night before he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, “Nothing—not all the armies of the world can stop an idea whose time has come.” Everyone knows that an idea can take you to the top faster than anything else. But people sometimes expect too much of an idea. They want one that is not only great, but one that everyone else thinks is great too. There are no such ideas. If you wait until an idea is ready to be accepted, it's too late. Someone else will have preempted it, or in the vocabulary of a few years ago, “Anything definitely in is already on its way out.”
To ride the idea horse, you must be willing to expose yourself to ridicule and controversy. You must be willing to go against the tide. You can't be first with a new idea or concept unless you are willing to stick your neck out, take a lot of abuse, and bide your time until your time comes. One indication of the validity of a principle, according to psychologist Charles Osgood, is the vigor and persistence with which it is opposed. In any field, says Dr. Osgood, if people see that the principle is obvious nonsense and easy to refute, they tend to ignore it. On the other hand, if the principle is difficult to refute, and it causes them to question some of their own basic assumptions with which their names may be identified, they have to go out of their way to find something wrong with it.
Never be afraid of conflict. Where would Winston Churchill have been without Adolf Hitler? We know the answer to that one. After Adolf Hitler was disposed of, at the very first opportunity, the British public promptly turned Winston Churchill out of office. And you remember what Liberace said about the bad reviews one of his concerts received? “I cried all the way to the bank.” An idea or concept without an element of conflict is not an idea at all. It's motherhood, apple pie, and the flag revisited.
Trust in Others
The fifth horse to ride is faith—faith in others and their ideas. The importance of getting outside of yourself or finding your fortune on the outside is illustrated by the story of a man who was a failure most of his life. His name was Ray Kroc, and he was a lot older than most people and a failure to boot when he met two brothers who changed his life. The brothers had an idea but no faith, so they sold their idea, as well as their name, to Ray Kroc for relatively few dollars. Ray Kroc became one of the richest people in America, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The brothers? They were the McDonald brothers, and every time you eat one of their hamburgers, remember it was the vision, courage, and persistence of the outsider who made the McDonald's chain a success—not two guys named McDonald.
Ride the Best Horse
The sixth horse to ride is yourself. There is one other horse, an animal that is mean, difficult, and unpredictable. People often try to ride it with very little success. That horse is yourself. It is possible to succeed in business or in life all by yourself, but it's not easy. Like life itself, business is a social activity. As much cooperation as competition takes selling, for example. You don't make a sale all by yourself. Somebody also has to buy what you're selling.
So remember, the winningest jockeys are not necessarily the lightest, the smartest, or the strongest. The best jockey doesn't win the race. The jockey that wins the race is usually the one with the best horse. So pick yourself a horse to ride and then ride it for all it's worth.
