Last week I wrote how Robin Williams “allowed us to consider a “whole new way of thinking” about ideas”. As business mentors, we feed off his absurdities to encourage people to change.

I have just returned from sessions in Jerusalem with two different clients; a high-tech start-up and a family retail business. Both have solid core positions, yet I contended that neither were asking a basic fundamental question. “What is it that I need to do in order to enable my potential customers – angel investors or consumers – to change their minds and thus buy into what I am selling?”

Yochi Slonim recently gave an excellent presentation on this subject to the annual conference of the Jerusalem Business Networking Forum. No stranger to JBNF meetings, Slonim challenged the large audience to answer whether we should be selling products and services or ideas. Let me elaborate.

The art is to understand how products have been turned into a commercial success. The company often plays on an idea that conflicts with established understandings and is then lodged in the mind of the intended target. Remember the highly provocative adverts of Benetton, which placed beautiful jumpers over dead bodies in former Yugoslavia? Slonim invoked the advert of Volkswagen in the 1950s, which asked people to think small – just when large cars were the order of the day. In both cases, sales boomed.

Slonim argued that Jack Trout came up with the concept of “Positioning – The Battle for your Mind” over thirty years ago. A more recent adaptation of the same theme can be read in “Made to Stick“, authored by the Heath brothers. The trick is to find an emotional link or idea between your target audience and what you  are selling.

Slonim was scathing of the much-used phrases such as innovative, unique, qualitative, platform, etc etc. They are repeated so often as to be near meaningless. Just find that golden idea, promote it and your product will began to stand out from the crowd.