David Krauskopf: Hello, my name is David Krauskopf, a SCORE volunteer and we are counselors to America's small business. This video clip is part of our series on how to start a business and this one in particular is on the subject of marketing positioning and writing a positioning statement. Host: What is a positioning statement and why do I need one to start a business?

David Krauskopf: When I meet with new entrepreneurs that are offering fast start, I often observe that they have more ideas and products that they can sell, that are really humanly possible. This is really a classic problem with focus. In order to be successful in sales and with a business, you need to be more focussed on specifically, what you want to sell and who you want to sell to. If you are too general, you will likely have problem selling anything at all or those different things you tried to sell, all of them will not be profitable or very successful where if you focus you can build on that area, get it going strongly and then expand from there. So positioning statement can be written to help you to determine this and you can then utilize it in all of your communications and marketing to people outside of your business and customers that you want to sell to because a good concise positioning statement is really like the hook that when people just read a few sentences about you, your product and your company, they know that hey, this is a company that provides something that is very interesting and important to me as the customer. 1