The Framework
Move Your Business OUT of Your Red Ocean and Into the Blue
Moving from Red to Blue Oceans Is Possible
First. What the heck is a Red or a Blue Ocean? The term was coined by Roger Wayne and W. Chan Kim in the book Blue Ocean Strategies. They discovered that most businesses operate in hyper-competitive markets they dubbed Red Oceans. They are saturated with competitors and trend towards cut-throat pricing and the inevitable race to the bottom. If you have ever watched Shark Week, you can guess where the red comes from.
Too many businesses are overwhelmed just scraping by. They settle for marginal gains over the competition and repackage the same goods or services everyone else offers. Now, you can break that cycle.
Blue Oceans are undiscovered or untapped markets with little to no competition. They can be discovered or, more often, created by leveraging new opportunities to offer a completely different product or service. Those opportunities are found by looking at what you offer through a new lens and pinpointing the things that your customers want and need but which no one else has noticed. In hindsight, they can be painfully obvious.
When you deeply understand your current market environment and see the gaps, you have the insight needed to create a new, blue ocean. There is a way out of a red ocean if you feel stuck, and the answers are waiting for you to find them.
The HEAVIES Framework gives you 6 integrated tools to create your own Blue Ocean. It is a step-by-step process to pinpoint what makes your current market environment so competitive (red) and craft a new blue ocean solution. Even better, you create new language to communicate that opportunity to your best customers, so they can follow you there.
I built this framework from countless hours with some of the best marketing experts today, master-minds, interviews with industry leaders, and helping businesses like yours gain the clarity and connection they need.
HEAVIES gives you the questions to ask leading to the insight you need to craft your new blue ocean offer and brand message. You get the full spectrum of content you need to offer what the market wants to buy.
You don’t have time to just hope you have something marketable. Now you have the tools to design your offer, to fill the gaps left by the competition, and tailor it for a ready and willing audience. You can create the blue ocean offer that will finally sail you away from the craziness around you today and into an utterly unique blue ocean market where you are the only option.
As a non-neurotypical business owner, I struggled to connect the dots from all the marketing advice I found. Yes, there are great tools to define different chunks of the process, but they all deal with one or two pieces inside a giant puzzle.
I needed something to put it all into a fuller, more integrated context for solo entrepreneurs and for established teams. More than anything, I needed it to make sense to me.
Over time, the connections emerged. What I suspected was always there became a framework and tool set that ties everything together.
Imagine having a single document that you can hand off to any good writer and know that they will understand your business, the products or services you sell, and your ideal customer’s heart and mind.
It could eliminate the traditional back and forth to find the right “voice” for your sales content, endless struggle to define what you do and how you do it. Heck, it could even make the dreaded “elevator pitches” in networking meetings easy and engaging. If you’re an introvert like me, that alone is worth the cost.
After all, businesses are never only B2B or B2C; at heart, every single one is B2P—business to people.
Dive Into HEAVIES
Set up a focused 20-minute discovery call to see how HEAVIES could be the cure for your branding and marketing pains.
Make it EASY to create content yourself or hand it to freelancers. Imagine finally knowing that they have a crystal-clear understanding of you, your product or service, and what you want to say. It’s easier than you think. Contact me today.
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Your Customers’ Heart
TL;DR - Why just sell stuff when you can fulfill dreams?
Far too many entrepreneurs create a product or a service and then look for ways to get it to market. The HEAVIES Framework always starts with H, your customers’ heart and what they want. After all, they’re the reason you’re in business.
Imagine you’re a 20-something man who walks into your local hardware store. (I’m a guy, so please forgive the narrow protagonist’s profile.) The first person you meet is usually a teenager who says, “Hi, what can I help you find today?” You answer, “I need a 3/16" drill bit.”
“Awesome, those are in Aisle 13, halfway down on the left side.” That’s where a lot of marketing stops. It’s a simple equation of connecting you with what you want to purchase. Let’s go deeper.
You head over to Aisle 13 where you run into a woman in a Home Depot vest with some construction experience. “Hey there. What are you looking for today?” Same answer as before, but she goes a bit further. “What are you drilling into? Wood, concrete, steel, brick?” She knows what good marketers understand. You’re not buying a drill bit; you’re buying the hole the drill bit makes. You need the right tool to get that result. So you explain it’s for wood and drywall.
“Perfect, this is the one you need.” She grabs one off the rack, “I use these myself, never had one break on me.” Now you have a highly recommended, tailored solution to your problem and are set to buy it and head home.
An older gentleman, usually wearing suspenders, stops you on the way to check out. “Whatcha got there? Looks like you’re ready for some DIY action.” You explain, again, that you need to drill a few holes. But, since he asked, you share that you and your wife are expecting your first child. She’s working today and you want to surprise her with a set of shelves in the baby’s new room.
“Wow,” he responds with a smile, “your wife’s gonna absolutely love that! Have fun, you’ll do great.”
This third conversation gets to the heart of the matter. Practically, you need a 3/16" drill bit because you need holes to mount shelves. But your HEART wants your wife to come home, see those shelves and say, “OMG, you are the best, husband, EVER! I can’t believe I’m so lucky. Take me, now.”
That level of connection is what the HEAVIES Framework uncovers. When you can reach your customers with that type clarity, no one else can even come close.
“To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.”
Milton Glaser
Your Market Environment
TL;DR - Sometimes you have to admit the baby is ugly.
Next, we will take a hard look at the market environment (E) where your product or service competes. This can be fun. The keys to your blue ocean are usually hidden in the chaos of the red ocean if you know where to look.
My old friend, Ferrell is a successful lawyer. He told me, ”you know what you say when someone asks what you think about an ugly baby? You smile and say, wow, now that’s a baby!” There are times for decorum, and times to call things out. What are the less attractive parts of your market environment that everyone simply accepts as normal? If you ask a school of fish, “how’s the water,” they’ll ask you, ”what’s water?” We become blind to the environment in which we swim. When you know that happens, you can choose to open your eyes and see it again clearly.
HEAVIES helps you see every part of your market. What works? What doesn’t? What’s missing? What isn’t needed? And, (gently), where do your competitors kinda suck? We don’t do it in a mean or libelous way, but to highlight where balls get dropped and where everyone misses chances to make customers happy.
This data forms the raw material for your blue ocean. Congratulations, you’ve called out some of the main reasons your red ocean is, well, red.
“The free man is not he who thinks all opinions equally true or false; that is not freedom but feeble-mindedness. The free man is he who sees the errors as clearly as he sees the truth.”
G. K. Chesterton
Your Anchor Product or Service
TL;DR - Blue oceans come from insight, not invention.
The A in HEAVIES redefines your product or service in light of your market environment. Every blue ocean grows from a new product or service. But, new is a relative term. More often than not, the differences between old and new come from a slight change in perspective which leads to revolutionary new offerings.
Über revolutionized the taxi industry by turning private cars into cabs and drivers into business owners. The core of the business is still getting into someone else’s car and paying a driver to take you from point A to point B when you need to get there.
The red ocean was full of frustration—never finding a taxi when you need it, poor customer service, less than pristine vehicles, and overpriced rides. Now, you can get one almost anywhere, any time, day or night at a reasonable price, in nice cars with friendly drivers. Seeing the big gaps in the market inspired new approaches to solve each one and a new global industry was born.
Now that you understand your market environment, we can evaluate your product or service—your anchor offer. You will determine what you need to cut back, add, improve or expand, or remove completely. These are the 4Ps: Prune, Plant, Promote, and Pull up. Some business make radical changes, while others find that a few tweaks lead to revolutionary new offers and create their new blue oceans.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Solve Vehicle Objections
TL;DR - Doubting customers, like confused customers, don't buy.
The V in HEAVIES will clarify what keeps customers from believing your vehicle (product or service) will get them where they need to go. If you’ve been in business a while, you have probably heard most, if not all of the common questions your customers ask and seen the concerns behind what they ask.
Questions or concerns, if not addressed early, become objections when it’s time to buy. We’ve found most concerns have a story behind them. “My brother-in-law bought something like this, and it turned his cat purple.” Or “I bought something like this years ago, it never worked / it broke after the guarantee expired / I never recouped my investment.” The concerns are as unique as your offer and your customers, and so are the stories behind each one.
This part of HEAVIES gives you a framework to craft a new story to overwrite the old. As you uncover your customers’ concerns and questions, and begin to see their stories and the f-word (feelings) behind them, you may begin to see the person as well. That is an especially rare advantage in marketing. You begin to develop empathy for your customers and, before you know it, begin to align your business more towards serving than simply selling. You're on your way to winning raving fans and die-hard customers for life.
“Confused customers never buy.”
Russell Brunson
Solve Internal Objections
TL;DR - Sometimes you need a little woo-woo in even the techiest sales message.
Next, we dive into your customers’ internal (I) concerns and objections. Dealing with what’s going on below the surface can be tricky. Therapists make a good living uncovering the hidden motivations for all sorts of actions or lack of actions and how internal issues affect their client’s behavior. We’re not going that deep, but we will focus on what is below the surface and what might drive your customers’ buying decisions.
Once you identify the key internal concerns your customers may be afraid to discuss, you can proactively offer solutions and dismantle their objections before they even arise. It will give you a clear advantage in building a lasting connection and establishing trust with your customers.
Your challenge is to know your ideal customer inside and out. This requires more research and imagination than most “customer avatar” profiles. The information is more psychographic than demographic. While it’s still valuable to know their age, income, sex, and geographic location. What’s going on in their hearts and minds is where the true gold resides.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Anaïs Nin
Solve External Objections
TL;DR - Spouses, budgets, and bosses are real concerns and peer-pressure doesn’t end after high school.
External objections (E) are often the easiest to address. They tend to focus on time, cost, accessibility, and buy-in from stakeholders, whether they be a doubting spouse, peers, team members, or a boss.
If you have had conversations with previous customers, you’ve probably heard objections like, “How do I explain this to my boss, team, or spouse?,” “We may not have room in the budget for this at the moment,” or “We’re pressed for time, I’m not sure we can squeeze this into the calendar.” Creating answers to these questions could be as simple as offering an FAQ sheet or link on your site to provide answers, scheduling a follow-up call with other stakeholders, offering financing or payment options to accommodate any budget, and a range of options to work with a challenging timelines. The key ingredient for each is to proactively identify and solve the most common issues while removing barriers to getting a “Yes.”
“Everything is figureoutable.”
Marie Forleo
Now, Create Your Unified Sales Message
TL;DR - Bring it together in one unified message then get it to market.
The last phase of the HEAVIES Framework is to convert all of the work we’ve done into a clear and compelling sales message that you can use on ANY platform.
First, we looked at what lies behind what motivates your customers to make a purchase—the heart. Looking beyond transactional and even functional purchases can reveal your product delivers a result that scratches a need deep inside. Maybe the service does something more for the people around them than the actual purchaser. Whatever it is, speaking to that heart need (in addition to the basics) can drive exceptional results.
Next, we took the time to research your competition and market environment to identify gaps, areas where it misses the mark or fails to deliver by throwing rocks and pointing out holes. The goal is not to become a schoolyard bully; identifying gaps helps us discover the insights you need to build your Blue Ocean. Instead of competing with everyone else, “the way it’s always been done,” Blue Oceans create new territories. They evolve through visionaries who see what “should be” or “needs to be” and build products or services to deliver what’s missing. That becomes the Blue Ocean offer that leaves the competition behind.
Then we got crystal clear on defining your anchor (product or service) in language that customers understand. We talk about with words they use (not the way you talk about it.) Confused minds don’t buy anything. We make it simple and easy to understand for everyone.
Next, we dove into the questions that are sure to come up regarding the vehicle (your product or service), internal doubts or fears (insecurities, past failures, and self-assessed weaknesses), and external issues (usually time, money, or other people.) Those questions are bound to come up; the more quickly and easily you answer each, the faster you remove any obstacles to them saying “YES.”
The final step is to combine it all together into a unified sales message that invites customers into your Blue Ocean offer and makes it easy for them to understand and respond. The same building blocks can be used across all media platforms from email, to social, to video. And each element can be used time and again throughout presentations, classes, sales webinars, even one-to-one conversations.
“The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.”
Frank Zappa