Does product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership?

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There are divergent views about whether product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership.

I don’t think they do.  That said, there is no doubt that you are at a massive advantage if you own any of these spaces in your market.  If you do it sets you up perfectly to take a thought leadership position to market.

In a paper by the Content Factor entitled ‘Is Anybody Following your Thought Leadership?’, Richard Currier is quoted describing the three stages of corporate leadership as:

1.       Product leadership

2.       Sales leadership

3.       Marketing leadership

But I have bad news, none of these on their own or even combined equate to thought leadership.

Why?  Because being a thought leader means sharing your ideas, your IP, your insights with the market so that you become the go to company in that market.  It is one thing to lead in terms of product, pricing, service and delivery but quite another to lead the market in terms of ideas, thoughts and insights.  In fact to many companies sharing this sort of information is an anathema to them.

I agree with Currier that market leadership is the only long lasting advantage.  Thought leadership should be viewed as a way to turbo-charge this advantage thus further embedding the company at the top of its sector and owning an even stronger share mind among its publics.

Implemented well, good thought leadership can add enormous value to helping build a brand.  It cements trust and loyalty in your brand by adding something of value to your clients or broader publics that goes well beyond selling them a product or service.  It shows them that you have a deep understanding of the issues or challenges facing their business and their everyday lives and that you have the people and the expertise to deliver not only the insights but the solutions to address these.

Seth Godin talks about 'shipping' your ideas. That's what thought leaders do.

There is a very strong parallel between what Godin says and thought leadership and also a very nice play on the words if you look carefully.  Thought leaders ‘ship’ – they ‘ship’ their ideas for all to see and in the process they become indispensible to their publics.

Building pre-eminence in your niche and being viewed as indispensible is the ultimate accolade for a thought leader.  It  should also be the ultimate thought leadership objective for your brand and its position in the market.

What do you think?

5 Responses to “Does product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership?”

1. Craig Pearce says:

   March 27, 2010 at 08:57

   You are going to have to help me here, Craig: if a company is a leader in product, marketing and, the bottom line for most companies, sales – what does it care if it is not a thought leader too?

   You infer that you need to be a thought leader to be a leading brand. Well, if you are raking it in and still not a thought leader, are your shareholders really going to care?

   I know you have more rationale up your sleeve here – give it up!
2. Sean Williams says:

   March 28, 2010 at 21:17

   Craig – I’ll pile on to Craig P’s comment here — we could ask, “whither thought leadership?” I’ve tended to think of thought leadership as something that helps a company attain product, market and/or fiscal leadership, much as improved reputation overall leads to quicker inclusion in a customer’s consideration set and a more favorable disposition thereof.

   As your main theme is thought leadership, I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s unimportant — not at all, but surely it’s in service to the hard business truths, no?

   Secondly, the concept of freely sharing one’s ideas negates the concept of intellectual property and competitive advantage resulting from it. In our “free” world, it seems to be an expectation that we’ll give it all away. Being known as a thought leader, however, should lead to profitable business.

   Maybe we’re in violent agreement and I’m just being dense after an extended period with my head down in ceaseless toil…
   Sean
3. craig says:

   March 28, 2010 at 23:06

   Craig, most companies who lead the market don’t care about being a thought leader and that’s fine. The issue comes down to the fact that leadership in most forms is temporary – there are always going to be better products around the corner, new and improved ways of doing things and hungry competitors snapping at your heels. Ultimately it comes down to how loyal your customers are and what sort of stickability you have built into your brand over time. This is where thought leadership should and can play an important role.
   By the way you don’t need to be a leading brand to be a thought leader. In fact it is often the challenger brands who are better at thought leadership because they need a differentiator and they are always looking at other ways of breaking the market leaders’ dominance. Thought leadership is just one of the ways of doing so.
4. craig says:

   March 28, 2010 at 23:15

   Sean both you and Craig have very valid points and I agree 100% with most of what you say. Absolutely thought leadership should service hard business truths but thought leadership is very difficult if you’re not sharing information. How much you share is a moot point and dependent on a number of factors. It ultimately comes down to a judgement call but be warned – too little and it may be oversanitised and not carry enought weight to mean anything to your publics and therefore won’t achieve the cut through you want for your brand.
   I have a blog post coming out on Tuesday in which I explore further the relationship between sales and thought leadership.
5. uberVU - social comments says:

   April 22, 2010 at 12:44

   Social comments and analytics for this post…

   This post was mentioned on Twitter by trevoryoung: What does Seth Godin’s ‘Shipping’ theory have in common with thought leadership? (via @thoughtstrategy) http://bit.ly/bvQitY…