Defining Women Newsletter - Winter/Spring 2008, "Repositioning"

Shelby Smith-Sanclare, Ph.D. is a Business and Personal Coach who works with individuals and organizations to break preconceived patterns and create new and innovative ways to blaze ahead in their strategic thinking, decision making, and action taking. She brings experience and training in the fields of research, training, strategic planning, environmental design, organizational management, and business consulting. Shelby is a CoachU graduate and a member of the International Coach Federation. She has lived abroad working with both locals and expatriates in making business and personal life choices. Contact her at (505) 237-2005, or email her at .

"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us."
Robert Burns, Poem "To a louse" - verse 8
'll admit that as a coach/consultant, most of the work I've done with clients in repositioning has been in the business sector: small businesses or groups within larger companies, and individuals interested in repositioning themselves with their employment.
     Just as I do with my clients, however, I've decided to stretch and self-challenge myself to speak about repositioning in personal areas. This challenge comes as a result of my own experiences with my mother, father, sister, and now with my adult daughter. Are there principles of business repositioning that apply to the personal? If so, how can they be adapted to the personal?
     Let's start with what positioning is and how it is used in business. Positioning is a process that places a psychological "anchor" in the minds of prospects so that they choose your company, services, or a specific person over the competition - in other words, how you differentiate your product or service in the mind of your prospect. Positioning refers to the way your customers think and talk about you and your company when you are not there, and also will determine all of his or her reactions and interactions with you both now and in the future.
     Thus, if I learn that you have a negative perception of me; it is I who must change my behavior in order to shift your perception to a positive one. I must prove to you that the way you see me, my products, or my services - now or in the past - are not who I am or not what I offer today. It is easy to see that positioning is hard work and requires examination and reexamination of our thoughts, actions, and behaviors while at the same time understanding how these influence other's perceptions of us, thus the quote about the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us that I started with at the beginning.
     How can this translate to personal repositioning? Let's begin by determining how to see ourselves as others see us. In consulting, coaching, and counseling there are several different assessments that can be given. These assessments consist of multiple questionnaires that are handed out to family members and friends. They answer them from their point of view of who we are and how they see us. These answers provide the mirror that gives us a 360° perspective.
     Once we can see the differences between how others see us and how we perceive ourselves, we can begin by asking the first important question, "Do I agree with their perceptions and if so am I willing to change and reposition myself so they know I've changed? Or, if I think they are misperceiving me, "Am I willing to do the self-examination required to reposition myself in their eyes?" Another equally difficult question is, "Am I willing to do what is necessary to change my behaviors in such a way that others can trust that I am who I say I am now?" I admit, this isn't easy, and having someone else to confide in and give the necessary insight and support along the way will be very helpful.
     Now, you've decided to reposition yourself. Below are some questions as they may be phrased for business and for personal repositioning. These are not easy to answer, and some time needs to be spent answering them as authentically as possible.

Questions to answer for the business sector

Questions to answer for the personal sector

Who are my target buyers or end users?

What products or services do I offer?

Where will products or services be delivered or performed?

Who are my direct competitors?

What unique attributes of the products or services do I offer that distinguish my business from those of my competitors?

Are prices set by reference to what my competitors are doing, and if so, are they higher, lower, or the same?

What is my business' "personality traits?"

Who do I want to see me differently?

What do I want people to see that is different now?

When and where will I speak or behave differently than I have in the past?

What has changed from the past?

What is uniquely different from my past behaviors or traits and how do I distinguish them?

Are my changes setting higher, lower or similar standards to those I've demonstrated in the past?

What are the "personality traits" I now have?

     Thus far I've spoken only about the internal work, just as a company might do an internal audit of how others perceive their business before they develop an action plan to take into the market place.
     How does this become real when we interact with others? We must be consistent in both our speech and behaviors. The actions we take and the responses we make once we have pointed out how we are different will determine whether others can trust our self-proclaimed repositioning. For example, do we want our parents to see us as responsible adults, able to manage our own finances, when in the past we've had to ask them to bail us out of one scrape after another?
     The messages we want to give is that we are responsible, and for our parents to perceive that these are the actions they can count on from us - now and in the future. This will take time and consistent action until the trust is gained, and it most likely will have to be consistent - not only with finances - but with other traits such as keeping our promises and commitments, and behaving and responding in ways that mark adult behavior instead of child behavior.
     What about that friend who long ago stopped lending her favorite book or sweater to you, because either it was never returned - or worse - returned in deplorable shape? I doubt that just saying, "I've changed" will do the trick. We start by stating how we've changed, sincerely apologize, and make amends for the past. We then prove our trustworthiness with small steps - and that may mean not asking to borrow something again! Instead, you may have to willingly take the actions other parties have defined as necessary to make true amends.
     If, in the past, in our interactions with friends, we've been chronically late for every event, or indecisive about choosing some place to eat or activity to do, again, we state how we have changed and begin arriving on time, expressing our preferences for eating, or offering suggestions for activities to share and participating equally in the decision making.
     Right now, I'm repositioning myself in my daughter's eyes. Thus far, this has been a painstakingly slow process, and sometimes I wonder if she'll ever see me as anything but the "mother who didn't provide what she wanted" to her childhood "daughter who didn't receive the type of mothering she wanted." Being an only child, she grew up with an overly heightened sense of responsibility - despite my repeatedly stating she wasn't responsible for me. Clearly, she saw in my actions and personality traits some things that led her to conclude that I couldn't take care of myself - and further - couldn't be depended upon to provide what she wanted from me. For me to say anything to counter this perception was not the approach I had to take.
     Talking was a surefire way for her to tune out and only gather that information which was proof that validated her opinions and perceptions from the past. Being alert not to respond to her as a mother would to a child, and getting out of that behavioral rut, is challenging, but our last visit was refreshingly new in both my actions and responses to her and hers to me. In fact, this was the first time she was asking when I was planning my next visit - before I left to come home. That is great progress in my eyes!
     My question for you this issue is, "What steps are you willing to take to see yourself as others see you, and where and how do you want to reposition yourself?" I wish you success, because I know it is not only a challenge - but also an exciting adventure and one to take pride in its accomplishment!

Lenann McGookey Gardner is an internationally known sales consultant and author of the book, �Got Sales? The Complete Guide to Today�s Proven Methods for Selling Services� (Jarndyce & Jarndyce Press, 2007). A Harvard MBA, Lenann was the number one sales representative worldwide at a unit of Xerox Corporation, and achieved unprecedented results as a marketing executive at Mattel and in leadership roles at Blue Cross Blue Shield. She is a winner of the American Marketing Association�s Professional Services �Marketer of the Year� award. For more information, including purchasing her book, please contact Lenann at or at 505-828-1788.

hat in the world is "positioning" ... and why should you care?
     Positioning is what you want your prospective clients to believe about you.
     So, in the words of Al Ries and Jack Trout, who coined the term, positioning "is not what you do to a product ... positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. You position the product (or service) in the mind of the prospect."
     And positioning is the key to your message getting through!
     Today, the world is inundated with communication.
     There is advertising everywhere. Information everywhere. Studies have shown that, every day, we are exposed to thousands of "messages" in the form of ads on TV, radio, in magazines, newspapers, billboards, junk mail, junk email, the sides of buses, even on the floors of supermarkets. If we paid attention to all of that, we would do nothing else all day. So we screen most of it out.
     What do we pay attention to?
     Simple messages. And messages that are consistent with what we already believe - or at least, messages that don't say, "You're wrong to think as you do"!
     Do you think prospective customers know you, and what you offer? Think again.
     If you have a business, or if you are involved in any way in reaching out to market a service or product, chances are that people know very little about you now. And this is true even if you have been around for a long time. If they haven't purchased from you, chances are that, at best, they have some vague notion that they've heard your name, or the name of your product.
     If you want to change that - if you want more people to know what you do and how they can benefit from working with you or buying from you - you may have a problem. If you're offering the world a necessary service - say, for example, that you're an accountant to businesses, or a hairdresser - your prospective client probably already has a relationship with an accounting firm or a hair salon or barber shop. So your message about how wonderful an accountant you are might be heard as, "You're wrong to be working with that other accountant!"
     People often reject messages that say, "You're wrong." Their egos won't let such messages into their minds!
     And if you're offering a - for lack of a better term - "unnecessary" service (like massages, a gym, or even consulting services) you run the risk of being seen as, "just another crazy way to spend money." And your message is rejected then, too.
     So what's the answer? How can you get your message heard?
     Start with your prospect. What is likely to be causing her pain? By "pain", in this context, I mean:

What is going wrong for her right now?

What has gone wrong for her in the past, that still bothers her?

What is she afraid will go wrong for her in the future?

What has she heard that has gone wrong for other people who are in circumstances similar to hers?

     Are you able to lessen, or take away, any of that pain? If so, your most powerful message should communicate the results you achieve, or that you help others to achieve for themselves - in a short, provocative way. Figure out a message that builds on the pain your prospect may have, rather than outlining the features of your service or product.
     Here's an example: I am a sales and marketing consultant to businesspeople. I help people position their services and products, and then get their powerful, provocative messages out to those who can spend money to buy what they have to sell. But that's not my message.
     When I go to a networking event, or write an ad, or give people some ideas of things they can say to introduce me before I give a speech, I always tell them to use this phrase
"Lenann helps people figure out how to make more money."
     That's the core of my company's positioning. It's short, it's powerful, it's provocative - perfect! I actually want people to challenge me, "How the heck do you do that?"
     My response is, "I'm glad you asked." And so we begin a dialogue in which I answer that question while inquiring about them and their pain. I might say, "In different ways, depending on your situation. May I ask what sort of business you have, Mary Lou?"
     And what if your prospective new customer pushes back?
     If someone responded to my question about the nature of their business by saying, "No, you may not ask what sort of business I have. I asked you a question, will you please answer it?" I'd say, "Well, sure! Usually I help people by improving their sales figures. I help businesspeople develop a powerful, provocative message about what they have to offer, and then I work with them to get that message out. Then I update their selling skills so that they can close more sales. Have you had an opportunity to update your selling skills lately, Mary Lou?"
     By the way, here's an update to your selling skills, right now: when you are asked a question, answer it. People hate sellers who answer a question with a question, or otherwise fail to give them a direct reply! And by the way, if you are put off by angry people challenging you, think about this: the people who push back most aggressively are often people who are in pain - people who think they may need your services, and are afraid that they'll spend a bunch of money and end up with no results. Angry and aggressive people are often my best prospects!
     Is one powerful, provocative message enough?
     I've learned that it's best to get four to six powerful, provocative messages prepared. Arrange them in order of power, from most powerful to least. This gives you a framework for more detailed communication. For example, if I'm looking for a "tag line" - something short I can put, say, on my business cards - that's a place for a short message.
     But if I'm doing an advertisement, I might be able to convey a second thought - perhaps that hundreds of businesspeople have learned how to sell by working with me, and that I'm happy to provide a list of those people so that you can contact them and learn their experiences and their results before you invest a lot of your time in talking with me.
     If someone needs to introduce me before I give a speech, they'll probably want more than that; they might also use the third or fourth most powerful messages in my "Positioning Statement".
     And, if I am on a plane to Africa - as I was just recently - and my seatmate asks me what I do for a living, I'll have time to work all five of my powerful, provocative messages into the conversation!
     Why take time to put your four to six most powerful, provocative messages into a "Positioning Statement"?
     Because it's important that you deliver and deliver and deliver those messages. Don't assume that, because you've said it once, or twice, or a hundred times, that people have really heard your message. I'll go a step further: maybe you keep thinking of powerful, provocative things you might say about your services or your product. You would be better off repeating a few strong messages for awhile than continually introducing new, even more powerful ideas. If you've worked hard to come up with some messages about your business and they're strong and attention-grabbing, keep reinforcing them rather than thinking of more great stuff to say. It's very hard to get people to remember anything - harder yet if your message is all over the place!
     So when is it time to "reposition"?
     Let's say you've had powerful, provocative messages for a long time. You've communicated these messages to the people who can spend money to buy what you have to sell, they have responded, and your
sales have grown. But maybe you want to do something a little different - or introduce a new, different product. That new offering will need a positioning message! That's what happened to me.
     I've been doing sales and marketing consulting and training for years now. But after thirteen years as a professional speaker, I joined the National Speakers Association and learned that there are people who share their expertise as keynote speakers, and have very rewarding experiences doing that. I decided that I'd like to be a keynoter!
     Easier said than done. Keynoters typically speak at conventions, big events. Because they "set the tone" for the entire gathering, they're important, they're well paid, and they are competing with lots of other people who call themselves keynoters, too. What would I need to do, I wondered, to get into that competition? The answer was, publish a book! It's the "ticket of admission", the "union card" for the keynoting profession. And I'd never had a desire to write anything more than short articles!
     After five years of outlining the book, looking for an agent, searching for the right publisher, writing the book, and recording the book-on-CD, I was ready to reposition my business - not to walk away from consulting, but to make sure people who are in a position to spend money on hiring a keynoter know that I'm available.
     The program we developed is titled, "A Change Will Do You Good: Simple Changes to Turbocharge Sales Results"; it dovetails nicely with the positioning messages we've been reinforcing for years. Then we made investments in a new website, a book tour, and public relations support to get this new message about our business out to people who can spend money for a keynoter's services.
     Last year, placing articles I'd written in about 80 magazines, newsletters and e-zines - with a positioning message attached to each article - supported my new message, as did my other advertising efforts. It's challenging to get a new message out there into a crowded marketplace, but it can be done!
     Where might you be making a mistake?
     In 15 years as a sales and marketing consultant, the mistakes I see most often are:

Having no real systematic way to approach selling; therefore, you just wait for the phone to ring.

Having no up-to-date selling skills (and thinking sales skills are something you're born with).

Having no powerful, provocative message. Anyone can say, "We, too, are providing X services". That's boring. What makes you different/better/interesting?

Misunderstanding how much repetition it takes to make an impression on people. Combine that with a weak or "me-too" message, and your marketing is shot!

     If this article has caused you pain - if you're making any of these mistakes, or if you know that you need to reposition your business to go in a new direction, or to reach the people with whom you would most like to be doing business, get some help from people whose track record in positioning impresses you. Ask for examples of their work, and data on the sales improvements that followed the work they've done for their clients.
     Are you curious about the results of my own repositioning efforts? Our new strategy is yielding keynotes, but those certainly don't pay all the bills, at least not yet. It will help if my book wins the Axiom Business Book Award, for which it is nominated. We plan to continue to pursue getting our new message out, reinforcing it, and creating awareness, systematically and methodically, of who I am and what I do, and the results people experience after they've worked with me.
     And now I need to run to prepare for an appearance on a radio show today, where I will be delivering our new message in, hopefully, a very powerful and provocative way!

Lynn C. Miller - click here for her article

Lynn C. Miller, Ph.D., coaches individuals and groups in writing and developing creative approaches to thinking and life change. In fall of 2007 she left the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a professor in women's studies and theatre, to found WriteSpace International in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Author of the novels The Fool's Journey and Death of a Department Chair and co-editor of Voices Made Flesh: Performing Women's Autobiography, she has conducted writing and performance workshops at dozens of universities, art museums, and community organizations. You may call Lynn at 505-918-5978, email her at , or visit www.lynncmiller.com.

n May of this year, I left Austin, Texas and my job as a professor of performance and women's studies at the University of Texas, to move to Albuquerque. As a novelist and playwright who had spent over thirty years in higher education, I decided that if I was going to fulfill my dream of focusing more fully on writing and coaching others on their creativity and writing, the time was now.
     The surprises of the move have all been on the upside, including how many other people I've met here who, like me, are wishing to re-create their lives and careers. I've particularly met many women who have chosen Albuquerque as a place to start a new phase of their lives; for some, one with a deeper component of spiritual practice, or a more intense relationship with landscape and the environment; others have sought out Albuquerque as a place to jumpstart their creativity, whether in their careers or as artists.
     Change has much allure, but it's seldom easy; we often describe it as making a leap or falling off a cliff. I reference the feeling of falling into change in the opening of my first novel, The Fool's Journey, "One day, dreaming of change, we jump out of bed and dive headfirst into the shock of the new."
     Making the leap myself "into the shock of the new" caused me to reflect on our need, and our resistance, to life changes. The fact is that as we develop our first adulthood, we acquire mastery of various kinds: we learn pragmatic and creative skills, develop a career or succeed in a job; if we're young we develop an independent adult life apart from our parents and families, we perhaps get married and have children of our own. The choosing and the making of that initial path are creative acts, requiring us to use many aspects of ourselves.
     Developing a personal or career path takes us through initiation, when we take risks and move deeper into ourselves. Initiatory events are those that define who we are, allow us to come into our power, or strip everything away until all that is left is the essential self. We experience initiation when we go to college or start out on our career path, for example, or risk physical well being to meet a physical challenge, or trust in another person in the act of marriage. I found that in my twenties teaching for the first few years required a leap of faith, as did developing a series of solo performances in my forties that I toured throughout the country.
     In time, whatever path we've chosen becomes routine. No matter how exciting initially, it's impossible to live forever in the heightened state of initiation. And so we pass through many initiations in the course of our lives: for the new place we find cannot stay new. In time, as in a romantic relationship where excitement gradually gives way to the everyday, the breakthrough takes on the trappings of the habitual. If we're in midlife, we've most likely forgotten, as the Jungian psychologist James Hollis says, "the freedom, the wonderful naivet�, the joy even, of life lived freshly."
     We resist change, even when we need it most, because it's scary. It's not comfortable to abandon the status quo, it's often financially risky, for example, or we fear we won't be prepared. While the inner voice tells us to try something new, the harsh critic we all carry around in our heads tells us to stick with what is proven and familiar.
     Giving up my profession as a professor, something I knew how to do and I'd been successful doing, felt very risky. Yet I felt like I was stagnating after three decades doing it: I didn't have enough time for writing novels and other creative projects, I wanted to work with a different, adult population, and I wanted to move to a more open landscape.
     As a writer and someone who works with people to enhance their creativity, I'm interested in how we regain our sense of life as an adventure, the satisfaction that comes of using the parts of us that may have become rusty from disuse. In fairy tales, there are frequently three brothers or three sisters: it is always the youngest, the least experienced, the least invested in "the way things have always been done," who makes a breakthrough. When the times call for change, we need to engage this youngest part of ourselves--this part, not invested in the status quo, will find creative solutions because it isn't jaded or cynical but willing to go down the new path and try something that hasn't been tried before.
     It's essential when encouraging this vital part of ourselves to silence the inner critic. This critic--the older brother in the fairy tale--resides in our ego, our conscious being. While the ego helps us to survive, allowing us to act and project authority in the world, it also, like the older brother, bullies the nascent parts of ourselves that are trying to emerge. When we want to do something new--start a new draft of a book or project, learn a new sport, develop a new part of ourselves--we must give ourselves permission to be beginners. That permission allows us to make mistakes, experiment, and rediscover our lost vitality through play. Great gifts often come from initial fumbles when we try something for the first time. Relinquishing the inner perfectionist is essential to this phase of renewal.
     As I work with clients individually and in groups, I encourage people to take risks, explore possibilities, and allow themselves to be initiates. The goal is to make the learning process a creative act by providing a safe place where participants can take a leap into the unknown and land in a place of renewal.
     This brings me to the notion of vocation as opposed to career. Our vocation is our passion, what we love to do; the thing or things that resonate deeply with our authentic selves. Often in life we leave behind something of this authentic self to forge an independent life, to be successful. We may choose a career because it has chosen us or because favorable events led us that way. As a noun, the word career indicates an occupation undertaken for a significant time, one with opportunities for progress. As a verb, career means to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specific direction, as in `a car careered across the road and went through a hedge.'
     A career can serve one's vocation or it can obscure one's vocation: sometimes we leave a career because we feel we have trod a path for a long time and have covered the path repeated times. We long for rediscovery. I think when this happens we have forgotten how to be a beginner, how to be an apprentice. If we retain the innocence of learners, of initiates, we will always reinvent ourselves, which is one way of saying we continue to discover the selves that have always been there.
     We all have the power to choose a more creative, engaged life. Or as Joseph Campbell would say: "We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

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	"One valuable piece of advice widows/widowers receive is *not* to make any major decisions immediately. With this advice in mind, and because my life has not quite yet jelled into a routine and there are still things to resolve and take care of, I am not pushing myself to make any big decisions about my future. Yet."
	"Technology is making distance learning exciting - and I am a part of that trend - repositioning to take my 25 years of experience and expertise and reach as many people as can call in on a phone line, or download a podcast from I-Tunes, or take my home study programs on-line, from wherever they are."
	"Right now, I'm repositioning myself in my daughter's eyes. Thus far, this has been a painstakingly slow process, and sometimes I wonder if she'll ever see me as anything but the 'mother who didn't provide what she wanted' to her childhood 'daughter who didn't receive the type of mothering she wanted.' "
	"I've been doing sales and marketing consulting and training for years now. But after thirteen years as a professional speaker, I joined the National Speakers Association and learned that there are people who share their expertise as keynote speakers, and have very rewarding experiences doing that. I decided that I'd like to be a keynoter!"
	"We resist change, even when we need it most, because it's scary. It's not comfortable to abandon the status quo, it's often financially risky, for example, or we fear we won't be prepared. While the inner voice tells us to try something new, the harsh critic we all carry around in our heads tells us to stick with what is proven and familiar."