If you had a very crisp metaphor to explain your business' superiority, you and your sales team would be using it consistently to convince your target market and annihilate your competition, right? This simple idea from a Fast Company article on breakthrough ideas continues to challenge my description of my own business.

Crisp metaphors are very powerful. They help us and our business partners make sense of things that long explanations and power points can’t. Metaphors help us understand, remember, and jump to action.

I tell my friends that IKEA stores are like "Disney World for furniture", and they get it. So do millions in 20+ countries who buy over $30 billion of home furnishings there every year.

I told a client the business he wanted built was not what he described, but something closer to a metaphor I developed which he and I got instantly--this led us to products, factories, a business model and value proposition that resulted in incredible 8-digit success.

I developed (re)ALIGN to be about "building your business"--not about services filled with buzz words and power points but business building that helps clients build profitable revenue. Business building is a powerful metaphor and people understand its intrinsic value. 

What metaphor describes your business?

While you think about that consider these breakthrough ideas:

1. If you reversed the question you have been asking for the past few weeks, what question would you end up with?
2. What metaphor is your competitor using and what alternative metaphor could you battle them with?
3. What can you reuse from your current (or past) business to create something new?
4. What quick and dirty test can you perform to test the viability of the idea you created through steps 1-3?