Product Positioning
topic on 2 shows · 12 statements across 3 episodes
the Knowledge Project 
Lenny's Podcast
12 statements about Product Positioning, every show
Dunford: Market category selection sets automatic customer assumptions about products
“That market category has set off a set of assumptions in the customer's mind about that product. If I do this well, it sets off a set of assumptions about that product that are true, and that's great. Now I've saved marketing and sales a whole lot of time, ene…”
Dunford: The biggest positioning mistake is evaluating products in isolation
“I think a lot of times if you look at the positioning that the company has, the biggest mistake is not deliberately positioning. I think a lot of companies start looking at their product in isolation almost. Like there are no competitors.”
Dunford: Marketing cannot own positioning alone without cross-functional alignment
“I don't think that marketing should be able to change positioning or look at positioning or do it on their own. They could try, but it won't stick because sales won't believe in it. The CEO won't believe in it. What we actually need is a cross-functional team …”
Dunford: Closing every meeting means your problem is lead generation, not positioning
“Sometimes companies will come to me, and they'll say, you know what, every company we talk to loves us. If we can get them in a meeting, We close all that business. That tells me the positioning's good. You're just not getting enough meetings. You're just doin…”
Dunford: Weak product positioning degrades metrics across the entire sales pipeline
“Weak positioning kind of gets you all the way across the pipeline. You know, it's weak positioning hurts you in the early stages of the pipeline and that, you know, people don't really get what you are, so they're not responding to your marketing the way They …”
Dunford: Initial sales calls reveal weak positioning when prospects get confused
“In sales calls, like particularly in an initial sales call with a client. And what you'll hear is things like the customer comes on, your sales rep comes on and your sales reps like doing a great job pitching the product. Like, oh, we got this thing and it doe…”
Dunford defines positioning: differentiated value for a well-defined target audience
“Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering some value that a well-defined set of companies care a lot about.”
Dunford: Really great product positioning feels obvious to customers
“When it's working really well, it feels like magic and really great positioning feels obvious. You know, you pitch to people and they're like, well, of course that's it. Like what else can it be?”
Dunford: The only valid test of B2B positioning is pitching qualified prospects
“The true test of whether the positioning is working or not is if I'm sitting across from a qualified prospect and I tell the story, does the prospect get excited and want to buy something? That's the real test of it.”
Dunford: Marketing and sales activities flow downstream from positioning
“So I need to have positioning figured out first, and then practically everything I do in marketing and sales flows downstream from that.”
Dunford: Early startups should keep positioning loose to find unexpected demand
“And so in these 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.”