When Clients Don’t Listen: Lessons in Positioning Your Business

In 1999, I worked with a team to develop a new niche and positioning for Rice University Graduate School of Business. They were essentially without a niche or positioning at that point. They were indistinguishable from other business schools. 

Before we proceed, let’s define positioning: Positioning is where your business, product, or service stands in the marketplace relative to your competition.

And what is a niche? A niche is the specific area of the marketplace in which you do business. It’s what you do in the field and whom you do it for. 

So, back to Rice. They were an excellent business school, but they weren’t being recognized as such. They had a goal of being in the Top 25 business schools in U.S. News and World Report, where Harvard Business School consistently hovers around number 1. Up to that point, Rice was hovering in the 50s.

The team came up “entrepreneurial spirit.” This was not at all a hot topic in 1999. The essence of entrepreneurial spirit is: Innovative, problem-solving, independence, risk-taking, and bravery. What company wouldn’t want that in their executives—positions that business-school grads are applying for?

We loved this positioning because (1) it was a highly unique niche and positioning, one that you just didn’t see in other business schools at that time. It would really set apart Rice. And (2) the essence of entrepreneurial spirit makes executives highly valuable employees. You want your executives to be innovative problem-solvers. You want them to tackle problems independently without waiting for other people to tell them what to do. You want them to face problems bravely and take risks to find solutions. You want them to innovate in the company to keep the company nimble and moving forward.

So, I pitched the idea to the faculty, to the Board of Trustees, and to the administration. The faculty loved it. Most of them realized that this was already an undercurrent in what and how they were teaching their students.

The Board loved it and wanted to move forward with this positioning. They saw the value that this niche and positioning would bring in attracting more students and in attracting more recruiters.

However, the administration wasn’t convinced. They believed that companies would stop recruiting at Rice. They believed that recruiters would think that the students would take jobs, get the training, then go off and start their own businesses.

But the vast majority of students at that time had no intention of ever starting their own businesses. They agreed with wanting to be innovative problem-solvers and risk-takers. But they wanted to employ these skills within a large corporation. The students also liked our proposed positioning of entrepreneurial spirit.

The positioning was rejected. In sprite of the overwhelming support of the Board, the faculty, and the students, the administration had the final word and made no changes to their positioning.

And they stayed stuck, outside the coveted Top 25 business schools in U.S. News and World Report.

Several years later, seemingly magically, Rice ended up in the Top 25 list. What happened?

Current ranking on U.S. News and World Report

Well, it turns out they adopted our recommendation of entrepreneurial spirit. I don’t know what happened to change their minds. But their website and supporting marketing materials had been changed to explicitly reflect entrepreneurial spirit as their positioning. They used those exact words on the website and in other marketing materials. 

I suspect they had involved a marketing agency that made the same recommendation. I’m glad they accepted it that time! And they saw clear, measurable results by employing this positioning.

Their results have been long-lasting. Their website indicates that they are the number 1-ranked business school for entrepreneurship by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. 

Today, their website is using the tagline “you belong here.” They seem to be focusing on being “intentionally small, verifiably great.” Though they do use “entrepreneurial mindset” on the website.

Rice Business Homepage

Rice Business lower down on homepage

Rice Business “The Rice MBA” main page

Positioning needs to evolve as a business/organization evolves and as the competition evolves. When Rice adopted entrepreneurial spirit, there were some other business schools using a similar positioning. Rice came in a bit late, it turns out. When even more school adopted that positioning, Rice needed to reposition themselves to establish themselves as being unique in other ways. 

However, they still clearly lead in entrepreneurship. They must have discovered that a new generation of students is interested in entrepreneurship—either in starting their own businesses or in using that spirit within larger corporations.

What are the lessons here?

1. Take risks in claiming your unique positioning early.

When you have a strong sense of what your unique niche and positioning are, go ahead and claim it. If you wait too long, the position may already be filled by the competition. Get in early enough, and you become the authority in that area.

Fortunately, Rice finally adopted the entrepreneurial spirit positioning before it was too late. But they could have really owned it if they had accepted it when they had the opportunity several years earlier. 

In your small business and with things moving much faster today than they were between 1999 and the early 2000s, you really won’t have time to wait a few years. So, claim your unique positioning now.

2. Reposition yourself when the competition inches in on your positioning.

Once you have established yourself in your positioning, you may become a secure, dominant authority that can outlast the competition. But, if you find your position of authority waning, if you never make it to page 1 of Google, or if you find yourself dropping in your Google ranking, then it’s time to reposition yourself.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a major repositioning. Rice is still number 1 in entrepreneurship. They’ve just tweaked their positioning to focus on “small and great.” 

To reposition yourself, you can keep your main position and niche and work on tightening them. Home in on a more specific niche. Refine your positioning to include something that’s really unique about you. 

For me, my large positioning is within website design and marketing. My message is business and life on your own terms. Specifically, I help executive women make a midlife career change from unfulfilling jobs to entrepreneurship. This is a positioning I rarely see: Helping midlife women make a career change from executive jobs to starting their own businesses. Most website-design and marketing authorities I see are geared more toward younger women or to small-businesses in general. So, I claimed this very specific niche of underserved women.

What positioning have you been considering?

Have you been considering a positioning at all?

Niching and positioning are essential to any successful business. You can learn more about niching in my podcast called “How to Pick a Niche for Your Business.”

And you can get my help in picking a niche in a free “Let’s Pick a Niche!” session. Schedule here.