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# When a position breaks down — Kelford Labs Daily
- URL: https://kelfordinc.com/when-a-position-breaks-down-kelford-labs-daily/
- Published: 2024-12-06T11:22:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-27T15:14:11.000Z
- Description: Sometimes that’s a good thing.
- Author: Joel Kelly
- Tags: Daily Labs, focus, position, mistake, buffet problem

> “We call this third pathway a decomposition, because you seek to decompose, or break apart, the problem space in a new way that lets you apply the existing opposing models separately, to discrete parts of the problem, without diminishing their impact or compromising between them.”

> — Jennifer Riel & Roger Martin, Creating Great Choices

Your business does this, *and* that.

It serves *these* customers, and *those* customers.

**Sometimes, despite all our efforts to focus—and our sincere belief in its value—we end up doing more than one thing for more than one type of customer.**

Look, I’m right there with you. Our business consults, writes, *and* teaches. In the same ways, about the same topics, following the same process—but these are still three distinct activities. 

The thing of it is, though, we don’t *promote* all three things at once, or ever to one single prospect.

**Each component of our business has its own promotional approach, its own buyer.**

In the words of Riel and Martin, we’ve decomposed—broken apart—the problem space in a way that lets us demonstrate our value at a distance to each buyer about each service without compromising, contradicting, or confusing.

So I offer this as today’s reminder:

**There may be reasons why you do more than one thing for one buyer. That’s fine. The mistake is *talking* about everything all at once.**

Make sure your website has *one* buyer and offering in mind.

Your social posts have *one* prospect its talking to directly, about *one* thing in particular.

Your sales conversations focus on *one* approach and *one* service for *one* prospect at a time.

You’re not a [buffet of options](https://kelfordinc.com/kelford-labs-daily-the-buffet-problem/): You’re a specialized, high-end purveyor of just what the client needs, in just the right way. You just have a couple different types of client.

So don’t compromise. Choose.

Don’t blend. Break down.

**Don’t confuse. Decompose.**

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[***Kelford Inc.***](https://www.kelfordinc.com/) ***shows you the way to always knowing what to say. Demonstrate your value at a distance—the essence of marketing—to the people who value it most.***