How to fix your positioning (Dave’s Newsletter)

Editor's Note: There are a few books that get highlighted, dog eared, and used again time after time. For me that stack of books has included Positioning, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Influence, Play Bigger, and April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome. So it’s no surprise that anything we’ve done with April becomes an instant hit. This year we also got her to come to Drive to speak to our community in Vermont and she was even better in-person. In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing five lessons from April to help you improve your positioning. Because the more time we spend with AI, the more I keep realizing that positioning might be the only thing that really matters.

The root cause of any sales issue is almost always positioning.

April has seen this play out hundreds of times.

The CEO thinks it's a sales problem. Sales thinks it's a marketing problem. Marketing thinks it's a product problem.

Something is broken. Deals are stalling. Customers are confused. The pipeline isn't converting like it should.

It's almost always a positioning problem. And it shows up everywhere.

Below I'll share five lessons from April to help you fix your positioning.

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WHAT WE'RE HEARING

5 Positioning Lessons I Learned From April Dunford (And How To Use Them For Your Business)

1. Your Competitors Are Lying (And You're Letting Them)

Almost every company April works with tells her their competitors are lying.

Not stretching the truth. Lying.

But most marketers are scared to call it out. They worry that highlighting what makes them different will just get copied.

Here's what they miss: you can do the thing. Your competitor can't. That's the difference.

Example: A company came to April with a 5-step process they could automate end-to-end. Their competitor claimed the same thing on their website.

The reality? The competitor had 5 separate tools with 5 logins that required 6 months of professional services to connect. ZERO customers had done it.

Technically possible? Sure. Practically? No.

So what did they do?

They got tight on their differentiated value: "We automate this end-to-end process and shave four weeks off your timeline."

Then they taught customers how to spot the lie. Built buyer's guides. Armed their sales team with questions: "How many logins? Will it take professional services? How much does that cost?"

They started winning every single deal.

If you have something legitimately different, teach people why it matters. Don't let competitors get away with it.

2. Even Technical Buyers Don't Understand Your Best Feature

Here's the problem: the thing that makes you different might be confusing the hell out of buyers.

April worked with a company that had the only fuzzy logic algorithm in the world. Huge deal. Game-changing technology.

But when customers came in, they had a checklist: "Do you have rollup functions? Cube functions?"

The company would say no. Immediately eliminated from consideration.

But here's what they didn't understand: they didn't need those features. Their product solved the problem a completely different way.

But nobody knew what a fuzzy logic algorithm was or why it mattered.

This is the gap most companies fall into.

You either talk in features nobody understands. Or you say vague things like "we help you make money" that everyone else says too.

You need the middle ground. The sweet spot.

Take your feature and ask "so what?" twice:

"We have a fuzzy logic algorithm"

• So what? "We can run fast queries on mountains of data"
• So what? "You can answer customer questions while they're on the phone instead of calling them back two days later"

Now customers get it. And they can connect it to business value themselves.

Stop assuming technical buyers understand your technical features. Translate it into the outcome they care about.

3. Creating a New Market Category Will Probably Kill You

A few years ago, everyone lost their minds about creating new market categories. The thinking: you can't win unless you're the category leader.

April looked at tech companies that went public on the Nasdaq.

How many invented a new market category? 8%.

92% played in existing categories. Snowflake? Data warehouse for the cloud. Existing category. Fastest-growing tech company in history.

April worked with a tiny sales enablement company that raised $1 million. Their competitors? Seismic raised almost $1 billion. Highspot $600 million. Mindtickle $400 million.

But this small company was the only sales enablement platform built on Salesforce. One login. Common data platform. You could tie enablement data directly to sales performance.

They stayed in "sales enablement" because that's how buyers search. Their differentiated value let them win against companies 100x their size.

The lesson: Don't pick your category first. Start with what makes you different. Then decide if the category helps buyers find you.

4. You Can't Do Positioning Until You Figure Out Your Go-To-Market

If you have multiple products, big decisions have to happen before you can tackle positioning.

Single product? Easy. Product and company positioning are the same.

Multiple products? You have options:

• Lead product + add-ons: Old Salesforce - World's #1 CRM on the homepage. Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud existed, but they didn't confuse you. Once you're in, everything else is a cross-sell.
• Platform/suite: Bundle everything and sell it as one thing. Harder positioning. (Current Salesforce with Customer 360 - does anyone understand it?)
• Company umbrella: IBM style. Company positioning, then division positioning, then product positioning.

The CEO, sales, and you need to align on this before positioning work starts.

5. Bad Positioning Shows Up in Sales First

On a sales call, bad positioning can look like this:

• Problem 1: Customer is confused. "Wait, what? Go back to the beginning. What are you again?" You lose them to no decision.
• Problem 2: Customer gets it but compares you wrong. "Oh, you're just like Salesforce." You spend the whole call correcting them instead of selling.
• Problem 3: Customer doesn't see the value. "I get what you do, I just don't get why we'd pay for that."

If you're seeing this in sales calls, that's your opening.

Go to lunch with the VP of Sales. Say: "I'm hearing this in calls. Is this killing us in pipeline?"

Nine times out of ten, they'll say: "Oh yeah, it's terrible. Takes us three calls to get the light bulb to go on."

Now you can explain what positioning is and how to fix it. Sales will back you because it's their problem too.

How To Make Your Positioning Better This Week

Most companies never nail positioning because they think it's a marketing problem.

It's not.

It has to be the whole company strategy. CEO, sales, product, marketing - everyone needs to be aligned.

Here's the right order: Company Strategy → Positioning → Messaging.

Tough to have good positioning without a clear company strategy. Tough to have relevant messaging without clear positioning.

This week, you can:

• Audit your competitor's claims: Are they lying about something you do better? Stop being shy about it. Teach customers how to spot the difference
• Find your sweet spot: Pick your best differentiator. Answer "so what?" twice. Land on something customers can translate to value without it sounding like everyone else.
• Listen to sales calls: Where are prospects getting confused? That confusion is your positioning problem showing up in revenue.

If you're seeing any of these patterns in your own work, you're not alone. April's seen it 300+ times. The good news? Now you know what to fix.

– Dave

P.S.  How important is positioning right now at your company? Do you think you have your positioning nailed? Is it working? Also who owns positioning at your company? Reply back and LMK, let’s trade some notes. I want to hear…

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