Table of Contents
Why Most Businesses Fail at Positioning: The One Lesson from Better Call Saul That Could Transform Your Revenue
The difference between a dying business and market domination often isn't what you're selling, it's who you think you're selling to.
Picture this: It's 2:30 PM on a Tuesday, and you're sitting in your store or office with the best product you've ever created. High quality. Fair price. Perfect location.
Zero customers.
Your mind races through the usual suspects. Maybe the marketing needs work. Maybe the price point is off. Maybe people just don't understand what you're offering yet. So you double down, better features, flashier ads, more aggressive pricing.
But what if I told you the problem isn't your product at all? What if the real issue is that you're trying to sell the right thing to the wrong people? And here's the kicker, I learned this from watching a fictional lawyer sell burner phones.
The 3-Step Market Creation Formula (That Hollywood Accidentally Taught Us)
There's a scene in Better Call Saul where Jimmy McGill is stuck with a store full of phones nobody wants. Sound familiar? But instead of improving the phones or cutting prices, he does something brilliant. He completely reimagines who his customer is.
The first step in what I call the Market Creation Formula is problem agitation, not product selling. Instead of hawking "communication devices," Jimmy puts up signs asking "Is the man listening?" He's not selling phones anymore. He's teaching people about a privacy problem they didn't know they had.
Think about this for a second: Same product. Same features. Completely different problem.
The second piece of the puzzle? Customer creation, not customer finding. Jimmy takes those same phones and repositions them for people doing cash business who need privacy protection. He didn't change a single component. He just found people who had an urgent version of the problem his product could solve.
But here's where most people would stop, and miss the magic. Jimmy knew that matching the presentation to the market is everything. He ditched the lawyer suit for a tracksuit. Why? Because if you don't look like your customers, they won't trust you. Period.
Within hours, phones were "flying out of the trunk."
From Fiction to Fortune (And Why This Works in Reality)
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Great story, but this is TV, not real business." Fair point. Except I've seen this exact formula work in the real world.
A guy I know spent years making commercials as the industry was dying around him. Instead of accepting defeat or trying to make better commercials, he repositioned his skills. Same creative abilities, different problem, different customer. He started offering brand strategy to companies who needed strategic thinking, not just pretty videos. Today? He's booked six months out.
The pattern repeats everywhere once you start looking. That software you built for accounting firms? It might be perfect for law offices with a completely different pain point. Those handmade candles gathering dust at the local market? They could be flying off the shelves at wellness retreats where people pay premium for "intentional living products."
Same product. New problem. New customer. New business.
Your Next Move (Because Theory Without Action Is Just Entertainment)
So here's the practical part. If I were to give you one piece of advice, it would be to start with what I call a "problem audit." List every problem your current product can solve, not just the obvious one you built it for. Most products are Swiss Army knives, but we market them as screwdrivers.
Next, do some customer archaeology. Who else has these problems but isn't in your current market? The key insight here is that new customer segments often have urgent problems your current market treats as nice-to-have.
Then comes the message-market match. This is where most businesses fail. They try to use the same language for the new audience. Wrong move. You need to completely reframe your marketing to speak their specific pain points using their exact terminology.
Finally, and this is crucial, go where they are. Don't wait for your repositioned customers to find you in your traditional channels. Take the solution directly to where your new audience gathers.
The biggest mistake? Trying to serve both your old and new markets simultaneously. Pick one. Commit fully. The riches are in the niches.
The Bottom Line
Most businesses die slow deaths fighting in red oceans when they could be creating blue ones overnight. Not by building something new, by positioning what they already have for people who desperately need it.
Your product might not be the problem. Your positioning probably is.
The question isn't whether you have something valuable to offer. You do. The question is whether you're offering it to the right people, for the right problem, in the right way.
What's one thing you're selling that could solve a completely different problem for completely different people? Because that might be the difference between Tuesday afternoon silence and phones flying out of the trunk.
