#59: Story is Strategy - The Power of Product Positioning
The Dave Gerhardt Show
Is There a Framework for Positioning?
If you don't read one book on positioning, which you can answer those four or five questions in a way. Who is your product for? How is your product different than other alternatives out there? Give me some use cases. And then as you're creating those things, take those bullets and write them down. So that would be like the very basic is please do not obsess over a particular framework.
Dave is interviewed by Superside VP Marketing Amrita Mathur during a live session focused on positioning and company storytelling. When it comes to driving revenue we obsess over tactics when so often the root cause is actually positioning. When sales and marketing efforts are stuck or slowing down, it's rarely because you need to unlock a new channel, or because you are not using the latest martech tool. It is most often a positioning problem. But it is much easier to toss the blame on sales + marketing efforts and ask those teams to do more - because positioning is a whole company issue. Changing the product roadmap, ideal customer profile, pricing/packaging, and how you talk about what you do -- well shoot that is a ton of work, and there's a lot of feelings and opinions, and there's this team who we already committed to doing X for, and investing Y in this, and it goes on for ever. But it's most often positioning that needs to be changed because the context for your market/customers has changed. And the solution is not buying intent data from a new vendor, doing new field events, or hammering on outbound. Those things wont work without the right company story + positioning. With the reality of budget cuts, less headcount, and mounting pressure to hit targets right now there is no better time to take a hard look at positioning. Strong positioning is knowing the value you deliver that no other product on the market can for your ideal customer. Best of all, you can make these improvements without additional budget or new hires (there's something that will make the CFO happy). If you want to brush up positioning and find 1-2 new ideas to help your business, I think you'll get a lot from this episode.
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Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
- They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
- Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
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