If you are a motorcycle rider, your life could depend on your road position. Whether on a highway or in a curve, during the day or at night, in dry or rainy weather, a proper position will provide you with the needed visibility and grants you safety.

When teaching riders about positioning techniques for the first time, many describe this as alien to them and not anything they would have considered themselves.

Being smaller than most road users is both an advantage and a disadvantage of riding a motorcycle. However, many riders do not give much active consideration to how they can apply one and mitigate the other. Thanks to lane positioning options afforded by a bike’s small size, we can take proactive steps to keep those big, lumbering vehicles from becoming overly intimate with us. Your choice of position within the lane can give you three critical benefits.

• First, by creating a protective bubble of space around you, it is called a “space cushion” in MSF (motorsport federation) parlance, you can give yourself more time to respond should an inattentive car driver start claiming more than his fair share of the road.

• The second is to make yourself more visible to other traffic and vehicles by taking the correct position. Understanding the blind spots of other vehicles around you and consistently positioning yourself outside those areas ensures you are continuously visible to their drivers.

• The third is communication. Many riders neglect to consider the message they are sending to drivers with their lane position. The sad truth is that, as fewer people use their turn signals, drivers are forced to make assumptions based on limited information about what the other road users will do.

So, proper positioning of your motorcycle on the road and within the lane:

• It gives you a better view
• Increases your safety margins
• Maximizes your visibility to other road users

As a Growth Consultant – being the Co-Founder of boutique advisory firm, LINK Advisory and MENA Partner of UK’s leading Growth Acceleration Programme 2Y3X – aside from being a motorcycle instructor, I find the above analogy about motorcycle positioning perfectly applicable to a Brand Positioning, and the cornerstone for that is a clear cutting-edge value Proposition. It all starts from here. That must be the beginning.

Proposition development is the single most crucial thing that you can do for your business from day one. Define clearly what you do and whom you do it for so that those people can find you and will not get mixed messages. We call it a “self-qualifying tool”- an outstanding proposition should ring like a bell – yet most companies struggle to stand out.

It is impossible to nail a proposition without outside help to get it over the line with everyone’s buy-in. And in a recession, what your customers see and how that matches their needs makes the difference between success and failure.

Establishing competitive differentiation is the starting point for most of the ambitious businesses we work with. We believe the clarity of the Proposition is a critical success factor for companies that achieve stellar growth. https://2y3x.com/proposition-development/

This is very important when a company comes to the 2Y3X Programme; the first thing we address is their “Proposition” because a clear one makes everything else less difficult.

The Proposition will have to meet this Venn diagram introduced by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, known as The Hedgehog Concept. 

The Hedgehog Concept developed in the book Good to Great is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of three circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic or resource engine.

A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial. Every company would like to be the best at something, but few actually understand —with piercing insight and egoless clarity— what they actually have the potential to be the best at and, just as important, what they cannot be the best at. More information on https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-hedgehog-concept.html

To be the best at something, you need to be passionate about it, and it should be capable of making you money.

And to my mind, there is an additional Venn diagram here. A clear Proposition should communicate your competitive edge, allowing you to stand apart from your competition and own unique territory; it should also clearly define your target clients, allowing them to self-identify and find you easily. And most importantly, you should be able to substantiate your claim with Case Studies, Records, Customer Testimonials, Reviews and so on…

Therefore, your Proposition is the sweet spot at the intersection of both Venn diagrams shown above.

Below are few samples of really great Propositions we developed by 2Y3X for our Clients, and we’re proud of them.

Impero had won 5 “Agency of the Year” awards by the time we finished the two years 2Y3X Programme. This Proposition lasted for three and a half years. Good “Propositions” last a long time.

Fish in a Bottle is an agency that works with companies like the BBC and doing ground-breaking futuristic AI type Digital. It’s amazing. And what they are saying is not that we do AI. They say that you will trust us if you are a visionary because all other visionaries like you trust us. It’s an utterly resilient brand Proposition.

Alpha Century – The Creative agency for Entrepreneurs. This one we did five years ago, and this is their current website. They are still using it. If you are an Entrepreneur looking for a Creative Agency, this company will definitely go on your Pitch List.

I love this one. White Bear is a Creative Agency for Tech startups. And if you are a tech startup, you think you are going to be the next unicorn. And again, it does not really say that half the work they do is packaging and the other half is creative. It talks to the client, not to the owner of the company.

This is our Proposition. It does exactly what it says on the tin. If you want to grow your company and do so at speed, here we are. If you don’t, don’t.

A Proposition allows the audience to identify their needs; it is not about you talking about yourself. A clear Proposition offers your brand and business pre-eminence in your market.

If you are interested in having a conversation about how we can help you craft your Proposition? Reach out to me at jihad.houwayek@linkadvisory.com

My next piece will tackle the relationship between positioning and pricing. Stay tuned!