Why someone picks you
A position is the reason a buyer picks you from a short list. This is how we find ours: write the reasons on cards, throw out the ones everyone says, sort the rest into three circles, and make the best three show their proof. It takes about forty minutes, alone or with the people who decide.
Three circles
Scott Lerman asks three questions of every candidate for a brand’s position: how far could it take us (Potential), do buyers care (Importance), and can we do it and prove it now (Ease). He scores each from one to five. We draw them instead, as three overlapping circles on a board. A card sits where you put it, and which circles hold its center decides which of four zones it belongs to. Moving a card an inch can change what it is, and that is where the arguments worth having start.
Winners · All three circles
Reasons to lead with. They have to keep their receipts.
Seedlings · Potential, but not ease
Could take us far, but we can’t deliver or prove them yet. We grow them.
Sleepers · Ease, but not importance
We can do them and buyers haven’t noticed. We bring them forward.
Table stakes · Importance, but not potential
Buyers expect them and so does everyone else. We do them well and don’t lead with them.
Six rounds
1 Name it
Who decides whether to hire you, and what would they call what you are? Answered in their words, not yours.
2 Make the cards
Ten to twenty reasons someone might pick you, each one a plain claim you could say out loud, taken from what customers have said, what you can prove and what you would defend in an argument.
3 Cut what everyone says
Any card a competitor could say word for word goes to table stakes. The game catches the obvious ones as you type, and you catch the rest.
4 Sort
Every card goes where it belongs among the three circles. Only three fit in the middle.
5 Show me
Each of the three in the middle is called. You have thirty seconds to show the receipts, or it drops to seedlings.
6 Say it
What stands is written as a sentence a buyer could repeat to someone else.
The third and fifth rounds are where it earns its keep. Cutting what everyone says is Lerman’s instruction to challenge platitudes. Showing the receipts is ours: a reason you can’t back up in thirty seconds isn’t one to lead with, and the game says so plainly, including when the answer is that you’re fine as you are.
Play it
Your game stays in this browser, so a long sort can stop and pick up again. When you have something worth keeping, it offers to email you the whole thing once, as plain text. You can also just copy it. There is a worked example to look at first: ours.
Where it comes from
Character comes first, then the position: the character interview finds three traits a company can be held to, and this finds the reason a buyer picks it. Potential, Importance and Ease, and the instruction to challenge platitudes, are from Scott Lerman’s Building Better Brands (HOW Books, 2013). The four zones, the three-card limit and the receipts round are ours, and so is playing it as a game. It is new, and we have run it once on ourselves; if it tells you something we got wrong, we would like to hear it.