Almost 50 years ago, fish wholesaler Lee Lantz took notice of a grey and rather ugly deep-sea fish.
It was sold as bycatch.
The flesh was white and rich in fat.
But the name was hopeless:
Patagonian toothfish.
Lantz started calling it Chilean sea bass.
The fish was the same.
But now it suddenly sounded like something you could order in a restaurant.
In 1994, Chilean sea bass was approved as an alternative market name in the US. A few years later, the fish had become a fixture on upmarket restaurant menus.
The fish was the same.
The word was new.
In B2B, I see the same thing happen, only with problems.
When a customer starts to put a need into words, it gets a name.
Rarely by conscious choice.
The word might come from the colleague who first raised the issue, from an industry report or, increasingly, from an AI tool.
Then the customer starts searching for suppliers using exactly that word.
Those who describe themselves the same way make the list.
Those who solve the same problem, but use different words, risk never becoming relevant in that search.
The problem gets a name.
The name steers the search.
The search decides which suppliers become relevant.
That is one of the reasons we look at language when we analyse position in Upstream Selling.
Because if customers don’t use your terms when they talk about their problem, your arguments will struggle to gain traction.
Lantz didn’t sell a better fish.
He changed what the fish was called.
And sometimes a better position starts with exactly the same thing.
What word does your customer use for their problem?
And who taught them to use that word?
Click here to read more about the Upstream Selling analysis.
