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.
A few months back, I broke my hand. To be more specific, I broke the fourth metatarsal on my left hand. Typing was impossible (I’ve never been more aware of how much I type the letter “A” under my pinkie finger). I realize speech-to-text technology exists (please don’t send me an email to inform me of this!), but I decided the universe was giving me a sign to step away from the keyboard for a minute, so I did. Days turned into a few weeks, then a few months. The newsletter got quiet. My posts on LinkedIn and other social media platforms slowed to a trickle.
My break turned into an experiment. What would happen if I stopped doing that stuff? Now, to be fair - I was still publishing regular podcast episodes for my own podcast, guesting on other people’s podcasts, and speaking at conferences. But I paused the regular daily grind of publicly sharing my thoughts. Interestingly, this had little impact on revenue or pipeline (which wasn’t terribly surprising). However, there were surprising headspace shifts that came with the communication vacation.
A change can open up space to think about the big things.
What DID happen was that the part of my brain normally preoccupied with writing and posting was suddenly freed up to think about other things. My broken hand excuse to pause some tactical work made space for me to do some big-picture thinking about my business. What do I love about this work, and what do I dislike about it? Are there things I might stop or start doing? I don’t have perfect answers, but I have clarity on a few big things. I love doing this work, but I want the space to go deeper with fewer clients. I love teaching positioning, but I have little interest in virtual and asynchronous classes. I sharpened my definition of what a great client looks like and the value I bring. In short, I tightened up my own positioning.
We often don’t look at our positioning until something big happens.
In the companies I work with, I’ve seen a pattern around moments where the CEO or exec team pauses to do some bigger-picture thinking about their businesses. It tends to happen around significant events. Sometimes, those big events are positive - like an acquisition, a new round of funding, or new senior executive hires. Other times, the big event is less positive - a bad quarter, a set of painful lost deals, a security breach, an outage, a regulatory fine, an unexpected change in the CEO or other senior folks. Like my broken hand, the universe serves up an unexpected speed bump in the latter cases, and the company needs to decide how to respond.
Wait, are you saying better positioning will fix all our problems?
Not all problems are positioning problems. Tighter positioning isn’t going to improve your security protocols, for example. However, I think that a company encountering a surprisingly rough patch has the potential to use the unexpected change in the business as an opportunity to get the executive team together and re-align itself with the business fundamentals. Who do we REALLY compete with today in the market? What value can we deliver to clients that they simply cannot get anywhere else? Are we laser-focused on marketing and selling to the type of accounts where we are most likely to win? Sometimes, when the chips are down, it is exactly the right moment to get the team together, align everyone, and come back swinging.
It’s September, but we should be thinking about January.
If your company is like most B2B businesses, you have a sales kick-off meeting coming up in January. That probably seems far away, and September is one of the busiest months for tech companies. But if your company is thinking about shifting or strengthening your message to the market in 2025, the time to start working on it is now. If you get to December without getting the key stakeholders aligned on a new pitch, don’t be surprised if it ends up looking like a warmed-over version of last year’s pitch. A week of planning in October/November can have a massive impact on the business for 2025.
It’s conference season, and I will be in San Francisco (for two different events), Palm Springs, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Berlin, and London in the next couple of months. Come say hi to me in person!
I had great conversations with Product Marketing expert Tamara Grominsky, and Messaging expert Emma Stratton on the podcast. These are two of my favorite episodes ever, so check them out.
My hand is back in action so you will likely see more writing from me in the next few months. Thanks as always for being a subscriber - I appreciate you!
April
April, back in the Spring, I was short on work to do and the weather was pretty good. In the afternoon, when I would get frustrated (and already needing to walk), I would go the park and get some steps in. Got in more than maybe I had in years. Of course, as I walked, it opened up my brain to ponder and think. Helps you see a new perspective. The mundane work can be good for that I think.
We live in a constant consistency and momentum that we often don't pause to think about the strategy. These things are great for re-positioning our efforts. Well said!
When behaviors change from within (like a broken finger) or from the outside(the market), our situations shift. Just as you did, it's a great time to reflect and refine; even experiment!