You can’t trumpet something you’re not. Or, rather, you can, but good luck. You won’t have much of it. There’s no befuddling your potential clients.

According to Harry Beckwith, author of, among others, Selling the Invisible, and You, Inc the positioning of your organization demands authenticity. CZ President Dave Goetz interviewed Beckwith on why consumers buy into “true stories” and how to position yours:

CZ: What does positioning entail?

Harry Beckwith: To establish your position successfully, you must consider two things—how you are seen and how you want to be seen. From there, you measure the gap between the two. Then you can determine how to get to your end goal. Positioning is about moving that perception.

How do you obtain the best position?

There’s no such thing as an inherently superior position. The tendency is to reach to be “the best.” The superior product. The superior service. You can’t because “the best” doesn’t exist. However, each position has strengths and weaknesses. Part of positioning is being mindful of your inherent weaknesses.

Take cell phones, for example. What’s a superior cell phone? To some people, it’s the iPhone, because it’s colorful and does a lot of stuff; it’s even prestigious. To others, the iPhone’s features represent a whole lot of things that can screw up their work. They don’t even want a camera in their cell phone.

So it’s about staking a desirable niche, in which people will catch something really positive—and giving up on this notion of superiority.

Can you change an established position?

Yes, but you can’t position yourself as something you’re not or cannot be perceived as. It’s a waste of energy.

The most vivid example is when Gerber tried to market adult food. The mind didn’t allow it. Frito Lay tried to do lemonade. They produce salty and crispy snacks, so your mind won’t allow you to drink Frito lemonade.

The stronger your identity and the stronger you’re identified with something, the less able you are to be perceived in any way different than that. So it really depends of how flexible your brand is. How far does it stretch?

How does branding relate to positioning?

Positioning is about your message being perceived in a consistent way—like “sexy,” “fast,” “reliable,” or “safe.” Branding reinforces that single message as well as the nuances and subtle sub-messages that come within that.

I always use branding to describe all of the activities you engage in to reinforce your message. And an enormous part of this is your internal activities. Your staff activities create a sense of authenticity. For instance, if you’re a wealth management firm and the assistants are cold and ruthless, then chances are a warm, friendly service message will hurt you rather than help. It will raise expectations, and you won’t meet them. You have to deliver that position—you have to do what you promised.

How often should you change your position?

Re-positioning yourself demands real changes, not just cosmetic ones. You need confidence in your investment so that you will stay with it for a long period of time. When that position succeeds, you continue to build on your investment.

Take, for example, a University with a well-established School of Optometry: “Okay, we are known for optometry, how might we grow from that? You start to consider adding specialties closely related to optometry—audiology, for example, or other subspecialties in health care. You might offer health care administration in the general university—in short, growing from your strength into closely related areas that expand your offering. Whatever you do, you must begin your strategy by asking, “For what are we known?” And then ask how you can build on that, add to it, and grow.

Good marketing is rooted in good communication: It is concrete, not general. If you’re general—a little of this, a little of that—you’re not strategic. You don’t have a bona-fide, authentic position—and people will perceive it that way.

Have you sold yourself lately?

According to Harry and Christine Beckwith, you are the most important product of all. In their new book, You, Inc., the Beckwiths provide invaluable lessons on improving yourself, making a good impression, and relating to people.

B&S: How does even the structure of your book—the short chapters with the summary points at the end—communicate your message about marketing one’s self?

Harry Beckwith: The way we wrote the book is how I discipline myself to not just write for the sake of writing, but to deliver a message. In this book, we’re trying to teach a lesson, so we need to deliver it clearly or not say anything at all.

Limiting yourself to two paragraphs or 50 words in a section forces you to say what you need in the most powerful way possible. If you give people unlimited time and space, their point gets lost in all the verbiage.

Why do we often resist selling ourselves?

Christine Beckwith: People don’t verbally sell themselves because they don’t want to brag or appear that they’re patting themselves on the back. Or they might not have the confidence to toot their own horn.

People might not grow themselves because they fear achieving too much success—or the work and risk that comes with it. They don’t want to invest the extra time, effort, and resources it requires. And they don’t want to risk changing everything they’ve ever known.

Harry Beckwith: The phrase “beware of what you wish for” applies. It’s not entirely irrational to have some fear of success—sometimes it isn’t what you hoped it would be.

How can we sabotage our own success?

Christine Beckwith: I once lost a client because I didn’t invest in myself. The entire marketing department of Bristol-Squibb was anxious to meet me and see all of my products, but I decided to save $115 on a cab fare, and consequently I missed my appointment. I learned that, if you believe in yourself, you should invest in yourself. If you don’t, no one is going to get excited and jump on the bandwagon with you.

You write about the importance of working on our weaknesses. Aren’t we supposed to focus more on our strengths?

Harry Beckwith: It’s important to discover the one weakness that is hampering your career and find people who will help you improve. It’s key to maximize your strengths, but be sure you’re not undermined by your greatest weaknesses.

Often, we don’t have enough friends who give us “tough love,” who tell us what to work on. In the book, we write about a man who has the courage to talk to people about his one disabling weakness. I really admire him for that.

Your book is extremely relevant to someone just getting out of college. But it also has a great message for those in mid-life. What would you recommend to a 45- or 55-year-old leader who needs to “re-brand” him or herself?

Christine Beckwith: I would tell both groups of people not to ask, “What do I want to do for the rest of my life?” Instead, ask, “What do I want to do at this time in my life?” How on earth do young people just out of college know what they’ll be doing 20-30 years from now? They don’t!

Harry Beckwith: Their chosen profession might not even exist today. Imagine someone 50 years ago saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a web designer.” Impossible, of course.

Whatever direction you take in your career, move in the direction of your genuine passion. It has to be authentic—if you’re not passionate about your work, that will ultimately come through.

A college or university education may be the ultimate service to market. In this exclusive CZ interview with Harry Beckwith, best-selling business author of Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, he addresses the core issue of positioning and marketing the service of Higher Education.

B&S: How is a university education akin to a service?

Harry Beckwith: An education is a service—a classic one. It’s intangible and amorphous; in fact, if it’s a great education, it’s lifelong because a great education teaches you how to think and to continue to educate yourself for your life. You can’t see, touch, taste or feel an education. You can only sense its benefits, the real value of which defy estimation.

It’s hard to tell the differences among many colleges, at least based on their marketing. For example, all view books and web sites appear the same. Design seems like a commodity.

Harry Beckwith: If you’re showing the same photos everyone else is showing, you are all but shouting that you’re not special.

But it’s not accurate to say that design is a commodity. The design of school facilities may be, but that’s only because schools continue to insist on looking like other schools, and architects insist on building “a college building,” instead of something special and distinctive. They fall into a perceptual trap.

The design of everything you do, including and especially your collateral, need not appear commoditized. Design happens on a blank sheet of paper. Anything can happen there, if you let it. The iPod is just an MP3 player—and yet it isn’t. Its design breaks it from its pack.

How does a university discover its message?

Harry Beckwith: Through a disciplined look at its peer schools, and a deeper look at how each of those schools is perceived. You then ask, “How are we different?” and “How might we be perceived differently?”

I worked with the University of Oregon last year. We found a clear point of distinction by examining what prospects—students and donors—thought of Oregon’s peer schools and how they tended to perceive the University of Oregon. We didn’t try to create something utterly new, to plant a brand new idea in people’s minds. Instead, we took what already was in their minds, and leveraged it to the school’s advantage. It wasn’t unlike doing Oregon tourism ads that actually stress the rain rather than trying to avoid that subject. It rains there. You take what people know and point out the advantages they may have overlooked.

You also need to know what positions are most meaningful to a prospect. There are eight and no, I’m not telling. It’s a trade secret, at least until my book in 2009.

Then ask, Which of those positions can we hold? When you decide to take that position, stay on message. Very few schools, and too few marketers, do that.