Albert Einstein said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”

I was approached by a prospective client last week who was keen to use our firms services to help drive new sales – leads.

They were referred to us by someone we worked with a few years back and kindly passed us on after the prospect had knocked on countless agency doors only to get proposals that varied on price and look and feel.

None of the proposals dealt with the prospects challenge or pain.

Even though he was in a crowded market, The prospect was ambitious and wanted to be the number one – he even had a sizeable budget.

He wanted social media like his competition. He wanted to appear on the top of Google for his brand, service and product. He knew, and I believed him, that they were the best.

I asked him to define what made him different to the rest of his competitors.

Without fail, he said what all of his competitors were saying. But to him and his team they were the best.

He was adamant that a marketing campaign would drives sales.

Sound familiar? It should do. It’s what 80% of companies are doing day in day out. They have yet to really define who they were or what makes them different, let alone stand out.

If they can’t what do their future customers think? Easy, they go to the other 20%.