Strong positioning is essential to an organization's ability to attract and keep customers. Inside Out Positioning enables organizations to use employee beliefs to distinguish their brands. This truthful way of marketing and delivering the business creates sustainable competitive advantage. In this paper, we share six-steps to engage employees in the positioning process.

1. By Lawrence McGlown
Using Employee Beliefs
to Define the Brand

2. {Inside} Out
Positioning
Purpose
Goal: Define employees’
shared picture of success.
How can your brand
more favorably affect
people’s lives? Look
not to customers, but
employees for these
insights. Use these beliefs
to define a limitless goal
employees can support,
and find new ways to
achieve. Purpose, defined
in this manner keeps
employees motivated
to innovate because
everyone understands
how to keep improving the
organization’s affect on
people’s lives.
Why
Goal: Define employees’
motivation to serve the
organization’s Purpose.
Organize employees’
willingness to support
the business purpose by
common themes. A story
about the character of the
organization will blossom.
Some leaves can foster
organization-wide alignment
because employees
appreciate their beliefs
being marketed to their
colleagues. Other leaves will
be newsworthy outside of
the organization because
customers appreciate
knowing what types of
people stand behind the
brands they buy.
How
Goal: Define how
employees’ make the
organization’s Purpose real.
Each competing
organization has a unique
approach. From airline
flights to data management
systems, customer choice
is driven by how the buyer
wants things done. In
today’s transparent world,
customers SHARE stories
about how brands work.
By anchoring this area of
the positioning strategy
with employees’ unique
executional approach,
customers are more likely
to receive the experience
promised.
Phase 1
Phase 1 clarifies how to:
• Drive organization-wide alignment.
• Market & deliver the brand truthfully.
• Stay true to the organization’s core.

3. The McGlown Group { 3 }
Category
Goal: Define what
customers should expect
from the category.
Healthy brands, like
Southwest, Whole Foods,
and IBM boldly manage
the category. By creating
innovative ways for
customers to benefit from
the category, each brand
has claimed a leadership
position. Have fun flying.
Be healthy. Build a smarter
planet. These clear
category expectations
position each offer as the
ideal solution. The task is to
elevate the value people
expect from the category.
Attributes
Goal: Define how
customers describe your
unique value.
Like a great meal, the
ingredients used to
describe an offer are
essential. Some ingredients
are nice delighters during
the customer experience.
Other ingredients are
best used to describe the
one-of-a-kind value that
your brand is designed
to deliver. Thus the task
is to appropriately use
each ingredient. Place the
most attractive ingredients
curtain forward, and inspire
employees to consistently
deliver them as promised.
Benefit
Goal: Define the net value
customers will enjoy.
Benefit summarizes a
brand’s customer value.
Avoid explaining why the
brand is better than its
alternatives. That power
belongs to customers.
Instead, respect how and
why people make decisions
and use that knowledge to
create a tangible outcome
that is right for people of
like minds. Some people
don’t want to have fun
flying. But Southwest has
proved that many do.
Phase 2 clarifies how to:
• Own customers’ category expectations.
• Emphasize the right ingredients.
• Get to the point – memorably.
Phase 2
In this video, Lawrence McGlown
discusses some of the challenges
that Inside Out Positioning can solve.

4. The McGlown Group helps organizations translate
business strategy into messaging tools that clarify
what to do as an employee, and what to expect as a
customer. The deliverables drive alignment between
employee and customer beliefs, while pinpointing
when the customer promise is, or is not, made real –
and what to do about it.
To contact The McGlown Group,
email info@themcglowngroup.com
or call {317}800-8319.
Execute as Promised
Lawrence’s approach, shaping brands with beliefs shared by employees and
customers, has driven growth across numerous brands. His leadership strengthens
workplace culture, employee brand management competencies and the cross-
functional team’s ability to market and deliver the brand truthfully.
Why is Alignment necessary?
“To keep employees, who all affect what customers experience,
informed on how to execute as promised.”
Lawrence
McGlown
Managing Director
About the Author
©2013 The McGlown Group
All Rights Reserved
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