Thursday, October 29, 2026
HBR's review of meeting research found about 70% of meetings kept employees from the work they were meant to enable. Here's Verne Harnish's meeting rhythm, sized for an SME before year-end.
You did the exercise. You sat down, wrote the positioning statement, maybe even put a line on the website about what makes you different. Then a prospect compared you to two competitors anyway, couldn't recall which one was "the different one," and picked on price.
Knowing what makes you different and being remembered for it are two different jobs. Most SME marketing stops at the first one.
Working on 60+ global brands at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi and Saatchi, the lesson repeats: brands don't win because they're different on paper. They win because the difference is impossible to miss, over and over, in the small details.
A positioning statement is a strategy document, not a marketing campaign. It sits in a folder, in your head, maybe on an About page nobody reads past the first line. Customers don't remember what you say about yourself once. They remember what they notice, repeatedly, across every touchpoint — your quote, your voicemail, your packaging, the way your team answers the phone. If none of that carries your difference, the strategy document achieves nothing.
Researcher Jenni Romaniuk, building on Byron Sharp's evidence on how brands actually grow, calls these "distinctive brand assets" — the specific, ownable signals (a colour, a phrase, a sound, a ritual) that let someone recognise you before they've even registered your name. Most SMEs have none, because nobody decided to build any.
One of my own light-and-sound installation clients put a single line on their office wall: "We are big in Japan." It wasn't a slogan anyone tested in a focus group. It was a specific, slightly cheeky signal that stuck with every client, every supplier, every new hire who walked through the door — far more than any positioning statement would have.
"Kevin, you distilled business, marketing and sales strategy into powerful simple concepts and actions with real life stories of your start-up business and corporate life. You walk the talk with empathy and passion. Feedback has been off the charts. The energy in the room was palpable."
— Nikki, MahiTahi / The Colab
Owners skip this step because it feels like decoration after the "real" work of deciding what makes them different. It isn't decoration — it's the only part of the job a customer actually experiences. Deciding your difference is a strategy exercise. Making it recognisable is a marketing system, built and checked touchpoint by touchpoint, which is exactly where most SME marketing plans run out of steam.
This isn't for you if you're comfortable being accurately described and still instantly forgotten.
If people can't repeat back what makes you different, your marketing isn't finished — it's just started.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME content marketing generates activity, not revenue, because nothing in it points to a next step. Here's how to give every piece of content a job and build a path that actually converts.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME growth targets are last year's number plus a round figure nobody can defend. Here's how to build a target from capacity, market, and unit economics instead — one your team can actually plan against.
Friday, September 04, 2026
A new survey found 56% of small business owners hit a major cash flow crisis in their first three years, and 80% still face it yearly. The fix isn't a better bookkeeper — it's a rolling cash system.
Friday, September 04, 2026
88% of founders admit stress causes poor decisions, but only 19% have the delegation skills proven to fix it. Why the fix for founder burnout is a decision-rights system — not rest.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Launching new lines the moment your core product works feels like growth. The data says it's usually what causes the plateau.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Being the best operator built your business. Staying the best operator is now the ceiling on how big it can get.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Buying a new platform feels like progress. Usually it's avoidance — the process was broken before the software, and stays broken after.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Your top performer's secret isn't a better pitch — it's a question sequence that gets the prospect to close themselves.
Friday, September 04, 2026
You don't need a national ad budget to get cut-through — you need dominance in the community your customers already trust.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most strategy fails in translation, not ambition. Here's how to cascade a boardroom goal all the way down to a Monday task list.
Friday, September 04, 2026
56% of US shoppers have quit buying a brand over shrinkflation. Why quietly shrinking packs costs FMCG brands more than an honest price rise — and how to build a value-change system instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most FMCG brands that succeed regionally never make the jump to national shelf space. Here's what the brands that do scale nationally build before the big order arrives — capacity, standardisation, and sell-through data — and why the brands that don't fail fast once they win it.
Friday, September 04, 2026
The owners who get the most from coaching don't walk in with good news — they walk in with a real problem. Here's why the progress-report habit quietly wastes coaching sessions, and what to bring instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most productivity advice optimises the calendar you already have. The real fix is deciding what doesn't belong on it. Here's the 90/10 diagnostic for finding — and protecting — the small share of your week that actually drives growth.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The outcome is usually decided in the first five minutes. Here's the diagnostic-first opening sequence that changes conversion rates without changing your product or your price.