Archive - Positioning with April Dunford

Value vs. Objection Handling

In my positioning work, it is not unusual for teams to confuse value for customers with what I would call “objection handling.”

Feb 6 •

January 2025

What to do When a Competitor Lies

Copying features isn't as easy as the marketers think it is. But why bother to do that when you can simply say you have capabilities you don't? Are you…

Jan 16 •

December 2024

How to Turn a Competitor's Strength into a Weakness

We all operate in competitive markets, and often, it feels like our competitors’ strengths are impossible to overcome. In this post we examine how to…

Dec 19, 2024 •

September 2024

The "No Differentiation" Illusion

How do we position a product that doesn't have any advantages over the alternatives? Let's start by entertaining the idea that maybe we're wrong about…

Sep 19, 2024 •

When To Revisit Your Positioning

You shouldn't wait until disaster strikes to adjust your positioning, but when it does, that's a great time to revisit it.

Sep 5, 2024 •

May 2024

Positioning and Acquisitions

An acquisition – for both the acquiring company and the company that has been acquired – is a golden opportunity to revisit and tighten up positioning.

May 16, 2024 •

April 2024

Dolly, Beyoncé and Differentiated Value

My favorite positioning quote is from Dolly Parton, who said, “Find out what you are and do it on purpose.” I think about this quote a lot (I used it in…

Apr 12, 2024 •

March 2024

Shifting Positioning - Why B2B Tech is Different

Consumer products rarely shift positioning, where positioning shifts are expected and normal for B2B products. As a result, some of the key concepts…

Mar 28, 2024 •

Positioning and Pessimistic Product Thinking

One of the neat things about being a consultant is that I get to see patterns across dozens of companies that I didn’t see when I was an in-house exec.

Mar 14, 2024 •

February 2024

Why Positioning Fails to Make the Jump from Marketing to Sales (and what to do about it)

Great B2B positioning will die inside the company if it doesn’t successfully make the jump from marketing to sales.

Feb 7, 2024 •

January 2024

Understanding the Job of a Market Category

Market Category is important, but it is not the core of our positioning. Many companies think that positioning starts with choosing a market category…

Jan 11, 2024 •

November 2023

Sales-First Storytelling

Storytelling is a popular topic among marketers. But you know what rarely comes up? Sales. Or selling, for that matter. We might admit that we aim to…

Nov 29, 2023 •

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts