Businesses come to us with all kinds of problems. Some call it a branding problem. Others say their positioning needs work. We usually begin with a few questions.

“What does your product do?”

Founders and business leaders can usually explain their product, its capabilities, and the problems it solves in considerable detail.

“What makes you different?”

More often than not, we get another list of features.

“Which of these matter most to your customers?”

“All of them,” comes the answer. Or a rather long pause. That’s when we bring up cars.

When we ask people what they associate with these car brands - Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo, the answers come fairly quickly.

Mercedes for luxury. BMW for performance. Volvo for safety.

Of course, these are broad associations. Mercedes makes high-performance cars. BMW makes luxurious cars. Volvo offers plenty beyond safety. Yet, each has a distinctive place in people’s minds. Then we ask our clients a simple question.

“Which car have you built?”

They begin to see their product from the customer’s perspective. The discussion moves away from everything the product can do towards what they want people to remember it for.

Then the objections start.

“Are we narrowing our market unnecessarily? If we position ourselves around reliability, what happens to customers who care about innovation? What about customers who are looking for affordability?”

Choosing what to stand for feels like closing doors, especially when you’ve spent months and years building a product with strengths that appeal to different customers. Some of those concerns are justified. Positioning around premium quality may discourage price-sensitive buyers. Emphasizing simplicity may make customers looking for sophisticated capabilities look elsewhere.

There are real trade-offs, sometimes painful ones. But consider Volvo again. Its reputation for safety hasn’t stopped people from buying one for its comfort, its design or its performance. Customers who care about other things still find their way to it.

Some of the fear also comes from a quieter hope: that by standing for everything, you’ll never have to turn anyone away.

So what happens when you refuse to choose?

Imagine meeting someone at a conference who claims their product is the most innovative, reliable, affordable, flexible and easy to use in the market.

What would you remember about it a week later? Probably very little. And how would you distinguish it from a dozen others making similar claims? By trying to appeal to everyone, the company makes itself harder to remember.

You also can’t simply choose an attractive word and declare it yours. What you stand for must matter to customers, be credible, and give them a reason to choose you. Otherwise, you risk making a very clear promise that nobody particularly cares about.

The next time you’re struggling to explain what makes your business different, try the car exercise. Ask yourself what you want customers to associate with your name, even when you’re not around to explain it.

Follow it up with the harder question. “What are you afraid of losing by making that choice?”

Seth Godin in this Ted Talk argues that when people have too many options, they ignore anything ordinary, and that playing it safe is the riskier choice. His examples are from 2003, but his case for being the purple cow in a field of brown ones is the conference pitch from this edition, seen from the other side.

Finnish people have a word that’s difficult to translate: sisu.

It’s a combination of courage, determination and perseverance, especially when the odds are against you. It’s deeply embedded in Finnish culture, from surviving harsh winters to facing adversity in everyday life.

What’s interesting is that sisu doesn’t require certainty of success. It asks for the resolve to continue despite uncertainty. Read more about sisu on BBC.