Most companies have it backwards.

They say, “We’re easy to work with!” in their marketing, while their internal processes, policies, and decisions make life more complicated for customers.

This is the fundamental difference between marketing-driven and positioning-driven businesses:

Marketing asks: “What should we say?”
Positioning asks: “What should we be?”

Let me show you what this looks like in practice:

MARKETING-DRIVEN APPROACH:

• Creates tagline: “We’re easy to work with!”
• Trains support team to sound friendly
• Makes ads about convenience
• Tells stories about customer service
• Measures message effectiveness

POSITIONING-DRIVEN APPROACH:

• Asks: “How can we be the easiest company to work with?”
• Redesign processes around customer convenience
• Removes unnecessary friction points
• Makes decisions that prioritize ease
• Measures actual customer effort

The difference?

One is saying.
One is being.

One is perception management.
One is reality creation.

Look at Amazon.

They don’t just say they’re customer-obsessed.
Every business decision – from Prime to 1-Click ordering – is driven by making things easier for customers.

That’s positioning driving business strategy, not marketing trying to convince you of something.

Want to test if you’re marketing-driven or positioning-driven?

Ask yourself:

Are we trying to CONVINCE people we’re easy to work with?
Or are we trying to BE the easiest to work with?

The first is marketing.
The second is positioning.

One leads to temporary perception shifts.
The other builds empires.

Stop saying what you want to be.
Start being it.

That’s the power of positioning-driven business strategy.

P.S. Next time someone on your team says, “We should tell people we’re easy to work with,” ask them, “What if we focused on actually being the easiest to work with instead?”

That’s where the magic happens.