April Dunford

Effective positioning requires cross-functional collaboration rather than being siloed within a single department.

"if we're going to fix this thing, we can't just have the marketing department or just the product managers sit down and cook up new positioning and then heave it over the wall to everybody else, it ac..."

Successful positioning implementation depends on achieving executive and cross-functional consensus through shared workshops.

"if we're going to do a positioning exercise, ideally we've got marketing, product, sales, customer success, and anybody else we need from the executive team, particularly the CEO, together in a room w..."

Positioning and sales pitches are most effective when they are co-created by product, marketing, and sales to ensure technical accuracy and market relevance.

"If I've got product, marketing, and sales together in the room working on defining what our differentiated value is, then I'm going to get all the good juice out of the product team that deeply unders..."

Weak positioning creates friction throughout the entire sales funnel, from initial marketing response to sales cycle length.

"Weak positioning hurts you in the early stages of pipeline in that people don't really get what you are, so they're not responding to your marketing the way they should. And you'll get this sluggishne..."

Positioning is the strategic definition of a product's unique value within a specific market context against specific alternatives.

"positioning defines how your product is the best in the world, delivering some value that a well-defined set of companies care a lot about. So put another way, it encompasses a lot of things, it defin..."

Early-stage startups should maintain flexible positioning to allow for market discovery and unexpected use cases.

"I actually think it's better in the early days of a product to keep the positioning a little bit loose and allow the market to pull you maybe in a direction that you didn't think it was going to."

Deep market segmentation based on product value is the foundation for all outbound and account-based marketing efforts.

"I need to understand that deeply in order to build my whole go-to market strategy, in order to have marketing campaigns that resonate with those kinds of companies, in order to make a list, if my sale..."

An effective sales pitch should be structured as a narrative that first aligns the customer with a specific market worldview before introducing the product's unique value.

"The pitch structure has two big pieces. So the first is the setup. The setup piece is not about us, it's about the market, our point of view on the market. The second bit is all about our differentiat..."

Differentiated value is derived by identifying what a customer would do if your product didn't exist and then determining the unique capabilities you offer that provide specific value.

"Differentiated value is the answer to the question why pick us over the other alternatives? And so the way we get at that in positioning is we start with putting a stake in the ground of who do we act..."

Positioning must be translated into a structured sales narrative to be actionable for the field and consistent across the company.

"what we want to do then is, okay, we've got this positioning, now let's put it together into a sales narrative that we can then take and test with qualified prospects and make sure it works, but we've..."

A 'bowling pin' strategy—dominating a specific niche before expanding—is often more effective for long-term growth than attempting to create a new category from scratch.

"The easiest way to take over a great big market is to define a segment of the market that is underserved by the market leader... knocking over that pin enables us to get to the three pins right beside..."

Positioning must begin by identifying the 'competitive alternatives'—what the customer would do if your product didn't exist.

"the first step in a good positioning exercise is to really understand, what do we have to position against? So put another way, it's like saying, what do I have to beat in order to win a deal? So in p..."

The status quo (spreadsheets, manual processes) is often the most significant competitor in B2B sales.

"Most folks will discount the status quo, but they shouldn't because in B2B we lose about 40% of our deals to quote-unquote, 'no decision,' which actually means we lost to the spreadsheet, we lost to p..."

Competitive analysis should be used to categorize the market into 'approaches' rather than just listing competitors, helping the buyer simplify their decision-making process.

"What we should be doing is giving them a way to think about the whole market and say, in the case of Help Scout, 'Look, there's shared inbox and then there's help desk software and then there's us.' A..."

The primary competitor in B2B sales is often customer indecision and the fear of making a high-stakes mistake rather than other software vendors.

"40 to 60% of B2B purchase processes end in no decision. If you scratch on that data, the majority of those aren't saying, 'Well, I'm not making a decision to buy something new because the old thing we..."

Using fear of missing out (FOMO) can backfire with indecisive buyers by increasing their paralysis; instead, focus on de-risking the decision.

"If a customer is indecisive, throwing FOMO into the mix makes it worse. So they're less likely to close the deal if you throw that in. And the idea is that they're already stressed out and you're just..."

In complex B2B deals, the primary goal is identifying and arming a 'champion' who can navigate the internal buying committee.

"typically we have between five and seven people are involved in what we call making the decision for what gets bought. ... So by far the most important persona that matters is that one. We call this t..."

In complex sales, your primary job is to equip your internal champion with the specific information needed to overcome objections from other stakeholders like IT, legal, or finance.

"In B2B, typical purchase process, we have five to seven people involved in making the deal happen... it is on you to arm that champion to handle all the objections potentially of all the other groups."