Insight certainty 5/5 debate potential 4/5

Dunford: Most legendary businesses did not create their categories

April Dunford · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch) · Oct 22, 2023 · at 48:59

April Dunford, positioning consultant and author, pushes back against the belief that category creation is necessary for startup success.

0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Obviously creating a category is not the only way to create a legendary business because the vast majority of legendary businesses did not create the categories that they're in. So Google did not create search. Facebook did not create social network. Like, I mean, there's so many of them. It's actually more of an exception to the rule that the company is creating a category than the other way around.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from April Dunford

Insight
Dunford: Most category creators are overtaken by fast followers
“In fact, most category creators lose the market. Like what happened to MySpace? What happened to Ask Jeeves? It didn't work out so good for them. Most category creators actually get overtaken by fast followers.”
April Dunford Oct 22, 2023 ▶ 50:50 A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch)
Insight
Dunford: Future trend pitches suit VCs but cause enterprise buyers to delay
“I think that structure, it looks a lot like the structure we use in a VC pitch or an investor pitch, because we're talking about much longer timelines and we can say, look, the world is really changing and 10 years from now, there's going to be chaos and destr…”
April Dunford Oct 22, 2023 ▶ 1:13:48 A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunford: Half of dental procedures fail due to terrible equipment
“Half the stuff that a dentist does in your mouth is very likely to fail because the equipment is terrible and the way they actually do things like cure fillings is actually really terrible.”
April Dunford Jan 22, 2023 ▶ 8:59 How to nail your product positioning | April Dunford (Obviously Awesome)
Insight
Dunford: Marketing personas are a waste of time except for the champion
“I think there's really only one persona that really, really matters in this. Which is the champion in the account, and we should be very thoughtful, and we should really have our arms around that persona. And then, later in the deal cycle, we need to figure ou…”
April Dunford Jan 22, 2023 ▶ 1:01:47 How to nail your product positioning | April Dunford (Obviously Awesome)
Insight
Dunford: Sales teams should disqualify prospects who reject their core worldview
“And so if you've got a point of view on the world, And you're talking to a customer that just fundamentally doesn't agree with that. So like in the case of a help scout, they come in and they say, no, actually it's a cost center for us. Like we're just trying …”
April Dunford Oct 22, 2023 ▶ 16:44 A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch)
Insight
Dunford: B2B deals fail from buyer fear of mistakes, not FOMO
“We still lose deals to status quo, but we lose an awful lot of deals to just plain customer indecision, customers being more afraid of screwing up than missing out.”
April Dunford Oct 22, 2023 ▶ 25:34 A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.