How do you align your positioning and offer to the market?
Which niche and which customer would you start with if you had to fire the last shot of your flare rocket to be seen by a ship on the open sea? There are many container ships, a few fishing boats and very few cruise ships, but there’s a better chance of being seen because you’re more likely to be the focus of attention due to the number of passengers.
Story on business positioning
With storytelling this has to do with the fact that your emotional effect makes it possible for you to activate the brain behind these eyes in the first place. If a drunken tourist sees you, he might think “Man, he’s got it good – a whole boat for himself alone”.
However, if your rocket decides to kill you, even a hacked-tight passenger will realize that you need help. Your emotion decides how you will be with him. My sister only has a spider phobia because my mother used to scream like a chicken when my sister pointed at the spider sitting on her shoulder when she was 3 years old. My mother is actually not afraid of spiders at all, but caused by the scream that my sister frightens herself to death every time and runs away.
If you can tell a story well, it’s because you feel the feelings in it. Through them you pick up others and sell yourself. Consequently, through storytelling you can learn how to position yourself in order to be able to sell in the first place.
Positioning guides often show you that your own niche intersects with PASSION, CAPACITY and PROBLEM. As an entrepreneur, you usually have certain inherent abilities to solve problems. Storytelling then answers the supplementary question about passion.
Everyone has different passions, but fortunately there are rough decisions, such as cinema, cycling or stamp collecting. It’s not about finding a niche, but about getting involved in a topic you love. Something that you are already doing, but that the right story will make you big. Your positioning helps you to communicate which people you have to reach so that you can live out your passion.
I grew up in a village where there were only three children my age. Today we are networked with almost all people worldwide and don’t have to search for overlapping passions anymore. You should position yourself very pointedly in order to target the most suitable customers in your business. This in turn makes your story and your entire marketing easier – you no longer need the listener, but the listener.
Tasks for positioning with storytelling:
- Which 10 independent topics can be derived from your history of videos and films that you have watched on YouTube/Netflix/etc. in recent years?
- What are your interests based on your browser history, your Facebook activity log and the environment you’re in?
- Which activities provide the most positive emotions?
- Which products of the last 5 years can be found in your purchase history at Amazon or similar?
- Which people would you take a risk for?
- Which people inspire you, although you don’t really know them?
- If you decide to go for a single customer among these people, what problem would you have to solve for them to make business progress?
- How many of these people are there and how high is the chance that you will reach them?
- What objections could these people have if you offered them the same solution to their problem?
- How much does the problem actually tie this person’s throat?
- Through which story can you make them very aware of the problem?
- Who offers them an alternative solution to this problem?
- What is the difference between the people who actually have such solutions solved and the people you want to work with?
- What secret desires are behind the solution for these people?
- What annoys you so much that you would come across understanding with these people?
- Which positive and which negative trends exist in your life?
- What influences the decision for the solution you want to offer?
- How do the conversations in which you talk about the problem end?
- What do you get to hear again and again?
- What is exciting and what is boring about it?
By answering the questions the parameters “people”, “problem” and “objections” will be clear to you. You will find people who are similar to you and whose problems you can solve without leaving out their objections.
The shorter and more unusual your message, the faster people will feel addressed. If you don’t succeed with this positioning (or similar) despite disciplined continuity for weeks, your story will either not be listened to with the necessary attention or you won’t hit the right stimuli to activate people for your solution.
A storyteller’s reputation always determines how strongly his appeal is followed. Personal branding is therefore also an important topic for your appearance.