The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 33 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Dunford: Fabricating new categories confuses buyers and leads to commercial failure
“So I've seen a lot of companies have come to me that have attempted to do category creation or pretend that they're doing this new category of things, and then it's Been a disaster. Customers are just very confused. They don't understand why this is different …”
Dunford: Product positioning fails without cross-functional alignment across executives
“But 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. CEO won't believe in it. What we actually need is a cross-functional team …”
Dunford: The hero's journey framework fails for B2B sales storytelling
“The problem with that storytelling arc is there's kind of no competitor in there, and if we think about what a buyer is actually trying to figure out is, why pick you over the other guys? A hero's journey doesn't really give us an arc To do that.”
Dunford: Postman was the first company to conceptualize an API platform
“Postman does essentially a platform for developing APIs. This is a new concept. Nobody had this idea of a platform for APIs before Postman came up with it.”
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: Up to 70% of B2B software deals end in no decision
“The thing we have in B to B that's actually a real problem is it's so scary to purchase something in B to B that 50 to 70% of the time a deal that gets started actually ends in no decision.”
Dunford: Customer discovery is highly unreliable because prospective buyers frequently lie
“Even if you do do customer discovery, it's really hard. It's really difficult. Customers will sometimes tell you things that aren't true or they'll say, yes, yes, we would buy that, and we would buy it for this much, but by the time you've actually built the t…”
Dunford: Dumbing down B2B product messaging for general audiences is a mistake
“Some people will say, well, we need to dumb this down and we need to have it so that anybody understands it. I super disagree with that in B to B. If I'm selling a specialized thing to specialized buyers, it just needs to resonate with them. It's okay if it do…”
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: The 'Hero's Journey' framework is useless for B2B sales storytelling
“The problem with that storytelling arc is there's kind of no competitor in there, and if we think about what a buyer is actually trying to figure out is, why pick you over the other guys? A hero's journey doesn't really give us an arc To do that.”
Dunford: Systems integrators like Deloitte will not recommend products without financial compensation
“In which case, maybe I need a partnership with Deloitte because they're not going to recommend my stuff if they don't get some kind of money off of that.”
Dunford: Believing tech companies cannot differentiate on product is nonsense
“And often you'll get these marketers say, look, can we really differentiate on product? Because people can just copy our product. Eventually everyone will just catch up to us, and all the products will be exactly the same. And if you're in tech, that is nonsen…”
Dunford: Indecision is by far the biggest competitor in B2B sales
“This is the most fearsome competitor we have in B to B by far is no decision.”
Dunford: Half of B2B software buyers are purchasing for the first time
“Half the people doing a purchase in B to B have never purchased a product like yours before. So they're doing this for the first time.”
Dunford: Positioning is the foundational input for sales and marketing, separate from branding
“There is positioning and there's branding. Those two things are actually really separate. So most of the things that we confuse with positioning are actually things we do with positioning once we're done with it, but positioning is an input. So if you think ab…”
Dunford: Most companies never deliberately think about product positioning
“I would say that most companies just don't think about positioning at all. In the vast majority of cases, the companies that I work with, the positioning feels obvious. It feels like you couldn't possibly position it as anything else.”
Dunford: Successful tech companies begin by dominating an underserved market niche
“The most common way that tech companies successfully position is they find an underserved sub-segment of the market, and then they attempt to dominate that sub-segment and then push out from there.”
Dunford: Siebel Was the Fastest Silicon Valley Company to $1B Revenue
“The gorilla in that space at the time was a big, big company in Silicon Valley called Siebel, and so they were a fantastic company, two billion revenue, fastest company to ever get to a billion revenue in the history of Silicon Valley, amazing success story.”
Dunford: Average B2B deal involves 5 to 11 stakeholders
“The average B to B deal, there's five to 11 stakeholders in the deal.”
Dunford: B2B buying decisions are driven primarily by the fear of failure
“In B to B, the granddaddy of emotions is fear. Fear of making a poor choice. Fear of looking bad in front of my boss. Fear of getting fired. Like, fear of making a mistake drives a lot of decisions in B to B. This is why incumbents, like whoever's the leader i…”
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: Sales pitches must answer 'why pick us over the competitors'
“And so we walk into these situations as vendors in general, thinking that the answer, the question we're trying to answer is, why pick us? But the real question we have to answer is, Why pick us over the other guys? And I think most companies don't really wres…”
April Dunford: B2B Buyers Choose Vertical-Specific Tools Over General-Purpose Products
“Like, you don't want the world's greatest general purpose CRM. You want the world's greatest CRM for people like you. That's how we win in this thing. If I walk in and say, we're just CRM, we're CRM for everybody, and we're just the greatest CRM ever, nobody w…”
Dunford: Misunderstanding category or competitors signals weak positioning
“That's the most common sign you see is the customer's looking at it, and they're like, I just can't figure out what this thing is. The second common sign you'll see with weak positioning is the customer thinks they've got it figured out but they're actually co…”
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: Half of B2B buyers are first-time category purchasers
“Half the people doing a purchase in B to B have never purchased a product like yours before. So they're doing this for the first time.”
Dunford: B2B sales storytelling must map market-wide trade-offs
“What we need to do in good sales storytelling and B to B is help customers understand how to confidently make a decision. In order to do that, I have to paint a picture of the whole market so they feel good that they understand, ah, if I choose this, I'm choos…”
Dunford: Only 10% of successful startups actually create new market categories
“Most of the time, if you look at the way most successful companies do this, they're going into an existing market category, and they're serving an underserved corner of that, and they're expanding from that. About 10% of the time, that's not true. 10% of the t…”
Dunford: Emerging market categories require making customers problem-aware first
“In emerging markets, we're often addressing a problem that customer doesn't even define it as a problem. They don't even know this is a problem. It's just, this is just the way the world works. There's no way to solve this problem. If we can help them become p…”
Dunford: Large enterprises do not buy databases without consulting Gartner
“No large enterprise buys a database without talking to Gartner Group first.”
Dunford: Academic marketing research overwhelmingly focuses on consumer packaged goods
“Most of the research that's been done in marketing, like when I went to marketing school, it was so disappointing. All of the research is done on consumer packaged goods. All of it.”
Dunford: Shifting a product's market category completely alters its perceived value
“So I can choose to position it as a muffin. It's the same product, but the assumptions about that, the competitors are different. Your value is different. The assumptions that customers have about that product are different because I've placed it in a differen…”
Dunford: Salesforce initially avoided enterprise incumbents by exclusively targeting SMBs
“Salesforce is actually a great example. When they started out, the enterprise part of CRM was absolutely dominated by a big competitor. So it didn't make sense for them to enter that market there. Instead, they entered the market at the very bottom. So they we…”