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. One pattern I have seen that holds companies back from nailing their positioning is what I call “overly pessimistic product thinking.” This is where the team has decided that their product is an undifferentiated loser despite all evidence to the contrary.
I think this is driven in part by shellshocked PMs feeling that they have to overly manage exec and investor expectations about roadmap deliverables. "Underpromise over-deliver" gone to a bad place.
You’re not alone - I’ve seen signs of this too, though perhaps not as extreme as you’ve seen.
Slightly different flavour I saw while working in England was “Fear of over claiming”. I remember one client in particular (at very prestigious premium car brand you would recognise) being so afraid of being accused of over claiming in their marketing that she would water down every superlative, every strength or position we’d take until there was nothing left.
Always seemed so tragic to turn out totally bland marketing for such a great brand and product, but she simply wouldn’t approve anything else.
Great read, April! I believe that most of the time the solution is to niche down to focus first on the section of the market where you can provide most value. You are on spot with involving the sales team in discussions about positioning and true competition.
"It doesn’t matter if there is some other company your prospects have never considered that might be able to do what we do - we are only getting compared to the status quo and the shortlist."
This is why positioning strategy and marketing communications go hand-in-hand for your brand.
Differentiators mean nothing (for you OR your competitors) if not properly communicated.
I see it all the time. It's way more of a symptom for highly-technical products/companies where the team hasn't committed to doing customer interviews or building the feedback loop around "why the hell people actually buy from us / love us." When you don't have that, all you're left with is the facts about your products - and an overwhelming compulsion to compare the details of those facts against what the competition has got. The truth is, in most established categories, the products are more alike than different. So that gives you two choices - (1) You can get into a costly and exhausting arms race on features and details... or (2) you can talk to the people that actually love you, isolate the themes from what THEY say is so great about what you do, and then refuse to shut up about that stuff with other people who look just like them. (I suggest the second option.)
Good piece as usual April. Love your posts. Your observations re narrowing the "ideal" customer and win analysis are bang on in my experience - aka teams need to better work here. What I have seen, is what gets called out as the "ideal" profile changes quickly based on the last 1-2-3 won deals... similarly re competitors... its profile and competitor de jour! :-)
April, your clear thinking and writing here is so good. This definitely resonated with me and I've shared internally. Sometimes we can be too focused on the deals we lose so definitely going to also focus on why we win going ahead. Thank you as always. ♥️
Alignment is always necessary in company scenarios.
And even more so when we have to interact with, help and learn from one of our engines. Our customers.
Lately is easy to see how product and marketing are taking different paths and building silos between them.
But you pointed out one important thing. Sales guys are the ones who spend more time listening and seeing how the customer lives. One thing could be what the customer says in a survey, and the other one is what they do.
I know you say you learn from salespeople and keep your opinions in mind.
Thanks for bringing sales to the customer equation. But don't forget the success guys that ultimately are not being considered as data gathered and the farmers making the flywheel spinning.
And agreed that some fresh air from outside could help change the way we see things, how we operate and how we are accustomed to doing things.
The entire piece is great April. I'm planning to read it again, but #4 resonated with me more so because our product team is focused on outcomes that matter to the business. It's not easy when there are so many competing priorities.
I feel there is a nuance here - a distribution team ( multi product ) sales is a marketing tool where growth and revenue is a speculation exercise - whether product is good or not is irrelevant - if distribution can win at message and speculation there will always be growth - something product usually doesn’t understand because they haven’t seen sales cycles across segments at a Birds Eye view
I think this is driven in part by shellshocked PMs feeling that they have to overly manage exec and investor expectations about roadmap deliverables. "Underpromise over-deliver" gone to a bad place.
You’re not alone - I’ve seen signs of this too, though perhaps not as extreme as you’ve seen.
Slightly different flavour I saw while working in England was “Fear of over claiming”. I remember one client in particular (at very prestigious premium car brand you would recognise) being so afraid of being accused of over claiming in their marketing that she would water down every superlative, every strength or position we’d take until there was nothing left.
Always seemed so tragic to turn out totally bland marketing for such a great brand and product, but she simply wouldn’t approve anything else.
Great read, April! I believe that most of the time the solution is to niche down to focus first on the section of the market where you can provide most value. You are on spot with involving the sales team in discussions about positioning and true competition.
"It doesn’t matter if there is some other company your prospects have never considered that might be able to do what we do - we are only getting compared to the status quo and the shortlist."
This is why positioning strategy and marketing communications go hand-in-hand for your brand.
Differentiators mean nothing (for you OR your competitors) if not properly communicated.
Thanks for the wisdom April. 👏🏽
I see it all the time. It's way more of a symptom for highly-technical products/companies where the team hasn't committed to doing customer interviews or building the feedback loop around "why the hell people actually buy from us / love us." When you don't have that, all you're left with is the facts about your products - and an overwhelming compulsion to compare the details of those facts against what the competition has got. The truth is, in most established categories, the products are more alike than different. So that gives you two choices - (1) You can get into a costly and exhausting arms race on features and details... or (2) you can talk to the people that actually love you, isolate the themes from what THEY say is so great about what you do, and then refuse to shut up about that stuff with other people who look just like them. (I suggest the second option.)
Good piece as usual April. Love your posts. Your observations re narrowing the "ideal" customer and win analysis are bang on in my experience - aka teams need to better work here. What I have seen, is what gets called out as the "ideal" profile changes quickly based on the last 1-2-3 won deals... similarly re competitors... its profile and competitor de jour! :-)
April, your clear thinking and writing here is so good. This definitely resonated with me and I've shared internally. Sometimes we can be too focused on the deals we lose so definitely going to also focus on why we win going ahead. Thank you as always. ♥️
Agreed April.
Alignment is always necessary in company scenarios.
And even more so when we have to interact with, help and learn from one of our engines. Our customers.
Lately is easy to see how product and marketing are taking different paths and building silos between them.
But you pointed out one important thing. Sales guys are the ones who spend more time listening and seeing how the customer lives. One thing could be what the customer says in a survey, and the other one is what they do.
I know you say you learn from salespeople and keep your opinions in mind.
Thanks for bringing sales to the customer equation. But don't forget the success guys that ultimately are not being considered as data gathered and the farmers making the flywheel spinning.
And agreed that some fresh air from outside could help change the way we see things, how we operate and how we are accustomed to doing things.
This is so excellent April. Gets to the root of a lot of things I’ve observed and tried to clarify (far less successfully than this) :)
The entire piece is great April. I'm planning to read it again, but #4 resonated with me more so because our product team is focused on outcomes that matter to the business. It's not easy when there are so many competing priorities.
I feel there is a nuance here - a distribution team ( multi product ) sales is a marketing tool where growth and revenue is a speculation exercise - whether product is good or not is irrelevant - if distribution can win at message and speculation there will always be growth - something product usually doesn’t understand because they haven’t seen sales cycles across segments at a Birds Eye view