10 things you need to know about positioning: a conversation with April Dunford
“It's true we might have 90% feature parity with the other things in the market, but trust me, there's a slice there and customers are making decisions based on that slice.”
But what is that slice? How do you make it stand out? And how do you convince your prospects that it’s the right slice for them?
Author and positioning extraordinaire April Dunford recently joined Dreamdata CMO Steffen Hedebrandt for a LinkedIn Live to discuss all things positioning and her highly anticipated book, ‘Sales Pitch.’
April delivered a masterclass on positioning and its interplay with sales pitches, highlighting how positioning is a critical but often misunderstood aspect of marketing and sales strategies.
In this blog post, we’ll take you through the 10 hottest insights from a conversation with the world’s most renowned expert on positioning!
Understand what positioning is
You’re probably suffering from disjointed positioning definitions
Why Marketing suffers most from poor positioning
Solving the Positioning Puzzle
Bring everyone together - including the CEO
Know your differentiated value
Find your best-fit customers
Use win analysis (not lost analysis)
Use a messaging framework!
Understand the interplay of positioning and sales pitches.
You can catch the full conversation here →
1. Understanding positioning in the B2B space
Positioning is the art of defining how your product uniquely meets the needs of your customers in comparison to your competitors. It's about carving a distinct space in the market and in the minds of customers.
Positioning goes beyond just marketing; it forms the foundation upon which products are built, marketed, and sold.
“Positioning is the foundation from which we as a company define ourselves. And to define it we need to ask ourselves a range of questions.
Questions like, who's our competition? How are we different? what is the value we can deliver that no one else can? What is our definition of a really good fit customer? And ultimately, what is the market that we intend to win?”
Without clear answers to these questions, companies will struggle to become winners in evermore crowded markets.
The good thing is that most teams in most companies do ask and answer these questions.
However, as April highlights, the problem is that the answers vary depending on who is asked. It is rare that positioning is done as a singular, cohesive exercise.
And the downstream effect of this is what separates a product that grows and one that doesn’t.
2. You’re probably suffering from disjointed positioning definitions
A major challenge many organisations face is the lack of a unified understanding of positioning.
Different departments have different interpretations, leading to inconsistencies across marketing, sales, and product development efforts.
For Sales, it might not be that big of a deal, initially at least. Because, as April outlines, they’re situated in an environment where they can just dance around things.
And, while this doesn’t necessarily produce a problem at first instance, eventually, the different definitions, will end up confusing customers, especially when they start to compare you to products that you don’t even compete with.
For Product, it’s usually all about the future. They’re asking questions about where is this product going to go next and what are they going to be building. What does the roadmap look like right now? Meaning that their definition is misplaced in the temporal sense.
This lack of a universally accepted methodology for positioning, as April highlights, adds to the already nuanced and complex concept that is positioning.
The Complexity of Grasping Positioning
Positioning’s multidimensional nature, encompassing competition, differentiation, and customer perception, makes it challenging to grasp and implement.
“Positioning is a weird concept. Like even marketers don't fully understand positioning a lot of times and it's kind of an advanced marketing concept, which is terrifying really because it's so foundational.”
These challenges combined are what result in poor positioning, and with it, poor performance.
3. Why Marketing suffers most from poor positioning
It’s marketing teams that are most affected by inadequate and disjointed positioning, as it’s marketing teams that sit in the middle of it all.
Without a clear and cohesive positioning definition, marketing efforts become scattered and less effective. Campaigns fail to resonate, messaging becomes unclear, and the overall brand narrative loses its impact.
“We suffer the most when it sucks because none of our stuff works. If we are trying to build campaigns on mushy positioning, we will fail as a marketing department. I can't build campaigns… I can't write messaging, I can't do anything.”
And that’s why it is up to marketing to carry the positioning mantle and introduce a cohesive, pan-company definition.
4. Solving the Positioning Puzzle
It’s the sum of these issues - disjointed, misunderstood, underperforming positioning - experienced at first-hand, that spurred April to devote her professional life to solving.
The culmination of which has been her book, ‘Obviously Awesome’, which offers an exhaustive step-by-step framework for identifying and expressing a product’s positioning.
Including: understanding your competitive alternatives, knowing your key differentiators, articulating the value these provide, identifying the customers who care most about this value, and knowing the market context you operate in and ultimately want to win.
So make sure to order a copy if you haven’t already done so!
In her conversation with Dreamdata, April offered some unique nuggets of wisdom on the most salient of these - so read on 👇
5. Bring everyone together - and get the CEO on board.
The first thing April does when working on a positioning project, is start getting all the relevant stakeholders together.
“And then what we get is that we all bring what we know about the customer to the table together. We all get to have a discussion about it and we all get to get an agreement in alignment on the component pieces, so that when we come out in the end, we're all singing the same song.”
Getting everyone into the same room, enables you to 1) collect the entire organisation’s knowledge, 2) neatly tie all of these into a cohesive positioning statement, 3) ensure buy-in and prevent future deviation from this positioning.
This is how April goes about aligning all stakeholders 👇
6. Differentiated value
But it’s not just a question of bringing everyone together and having everyone ramble about their perspectives.
For April it’s simple, above everything else, you need to nail your differentiation!
A lot of times a company’s main differentiating value comes down to a process of triangulating between the things that make you truly stand out.
Recall the 10% slice of product where you don’t have parity with the rest of the competition? (see intro 👆) Well that’s where you differentiate.
But it’s not always the case that you have a single differentiating factor. You might have one differentiating factor with one company, and another differentiating factor with another company.
“And so, the reason companies are buying you is not because of this one thing which technically isn't differentiating or this other thing which isn't technically totally different, but it’s the actual combination of them both.”
And once you know this, you can now ask yourself what does the customer need to understand in order to see how valuable this is to them?
This is your differentiated value.
Now you can address the unique pain points of your audience and offer an actual solution for these as opposed to just being noise in a sea of vague solutions.
7. Find your best-fit customers
Ok, BUT, not every prospective customer cares about your differentiated value equally.
“And so the question then is what are the characteristics of a target account that make them really, really, really care a lot about the value that only you can deliver? … those we wish we had a pipeline full of.”
Answering this means you can identify those accounts who will not just appreciate the unique value proposition, but for whom this value is paramount, and therefore the easiest to win, and most likely to retain for the long term.
And once you know this you can zero in on this, you can get a better understanding of your category and who you’re competing with, and avoid pursuing sales by brute force and the long-term problems these bring.
April underlined how often she hears: “we've been chasing a lot of accounts where we're just not going to win or we might get lucky and we win. And then they're a terrible account... we’ve now closed a bad fit account and they're going to cause us pain forever.”
8. Use a messaging framework!
April strongly advocates for the creation of a messaging document with your company’s core message, including taglines, key value points, and the corresponding features rooted in your differentiated value.
This approach serves as a reference point for all go-to-market materials, ensuring consistency and preventing the dilution of the core message over time.
“So generally our messaging is really oriented around a differentiated value... that generally forms the base of our messaging.” This foundational approach ensures coherence across all company messaging.
She further elaborates on the importance of a messaging document in maintaining message consistency. By creating and approving a central messaging document, all future campaigns and content can align with the core messaging, preventing “message drift” and ending up with “six degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
9. Use from win analyses (not loss analyses)
“A lot of companies get really hung up on the deals they lose, and so they want to do loss analysis, like, why do we lose this deal? We're going to lose all kinds of deals for all kinds of reasons, but nobody's doing win analysis.”
April reminds us that there are lots of reasons people don’t pick you, many of which are things that are outside of your control. A lot of times you don’t even get the competitor insights you’re looking for.
Win analysis on the other hand tells you why they chose you and why they did so above the competition. Handing you unparalleled insights into your differentiated value and all the benefits that brings with it (point 6 above).
April lists a host of questions you can get answers to with win analyses:
“What was the trigger that made you think you had to do something different? Once you did decide you had to do something different, How did you make a shortlist of solutions? What did you look at? What places did you go? How did you do your research?And then who’s on the short list? And then why do you pick us? And then another question I like to ask is why not the other guys?”
10. The Interplay of Positioning and Sales Pitches
After releasing ‘Obviously Awesome’ there was a lingering question April kept getting asked “‘how do you test the positioning?’”
To which she kept on replying, “Well, you just take the positioning, turn it into a sales pitch, get your reps to test it out with qualified prospects, tune it, and that'll validate that the positioning is working. And then if it works in sales, then we can translate it to messaging and then, you know, we can all run with it.”
So much so that she ended up packaging it in her new, and much anticipated book, ‘Sales Pitch’.
Which, April helpfully summarised of in her conversation with us (see below).
She also emphasised how without understanding what our differentiated value is we can’t build a pitch - no matter the steps you follow.
Only once we understand what our differentiated value is and who our best-fit customers are (points 6 and 7 above) we can do the sales pitch that stands out and wins.
The 8 steps for crafting a sales pitch that stands out and wins
Market Insight Setup: Initiate the sales pitch by sharing unique market insights to engage the customer, establishing yourself as an expert and setting the stage for the conversation.
Alternative Approaches Setup: Educate the customer about different solutions, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each to demonstrate the superiority of your approach.
Market POV Alignment Setup: Seek agreement on an ideal solution by discussing what it should entail, using the customer's response to gauge their readiness for the pitch.
Follow-Through Introduction: After agreeing on a solution, introduce your product and its market category briefly to lay the groundwork for detailed discussion.
Differentiated Value Follow-Through: Show how your product uniquely meets the agreed-upon ideal solution, emphasizing its specific value and benefits to the customer.
Proof Follow-Through: Use customer case studies and third-party validations to substantiate your claims, ensuring the proof aligns with your product's positioning.
Objections Follow-Through (Optional): Anticipate and prepare for potential objections, crafting responses that reinforce your solution's value without negating concerns.
Next Steps Follow-Through: Conclude with a clear call to action, guiding the conversation towards the next phase in the sales process, whether it's a follow-up meeting or finalizing a deal.
Conclusion
From our conversation with April, one thing is certain, positioning is a critical element of B2B go-to-market, with profound implications for marketing, sales and product success.
She emphasised how positioning is not just a marketing buzzword; it's a necessity for survival and success in the competitive B2B tech landscape. Effective positioning helps companies stand out, communicate value, and connect with their ideal customers.
Yet it’s a typically misunderstood concept.
In the conversation, April addressed some of the common pitfalls B2Bs face with positioning, such as disjointed positioning definitions and poor implementation.
And then gave us a roadmap for avoiding these pitfalls.
Her advice focused on:
Unifying organisational perspectives (including the CEO’s),
Identifying differentiated value,
Targeting best-fit customers, and
The interplay of positioning with sales pitches.
April’s insights and methodologies on each of these points, which she tackles head-on in her books ‘Obviously Awesome’ and ‘Sales Pitch’, offers a valuable roadmap for companies seeking to refine their positioning strategies and carve out a distinct, successful niche in their market.
Ultimately, by understanding and effectively implementing positioning, businesses can ensure coherent messaging, stronger marketing campaigns, and more effective sales pitches, ultimately leading to greater market success!
