What do I actually change when we reposition? Website, deck, pricing, all of it?

Kramer's four product types (vertical solution, new way, 10x better, buy versus build) tell you what you are positioning against before you write a word. She is also blunt that most positioning docs are research with no answer at the end.

The MKT1 Guide to Positioning

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer 20 min read

• Most teams overdo the research and never produce the actual answer, the positioning statement itself.
• Positioning fills three blanks: who is it for, what is it, why is it better.
• Nearly every B2B product fits one of four positioning types: 10x better, new way, vertical solution, or buy vs build.
• If you are selling a new way, early competitors usually help you grow the category rather than steal from you.

Deals with the four places positioning work actually stalls, including teams that cannot agree on their competitive alternatives. Useful once you have tried positioning and it went nowhere.

A guide to advanced B2B positioning

From Lenny's Newsletter by April Dunford 18 min read

• B2B vendors typically lose about half of all opportunities to whatever the prospect uses today, sometimes over 80 percent.
• There are only two pure points of value in B2B: help a business make money or save money.
• Watch for whale bias, where the team positions against one big lost deal to a competitor they rarely meet.
• About half of status quo losses are customer indecision, not a real vote for the incumbent.

Covers how the No Software logo and button became a repeated physical act rather than a tagline. The lesson is that a category claim only sticks when the whole company performs it daily.

Marc Benioff on How and Why Salesforce.com Succeeded: My Favorite Plays

From OpenView by Scott Maxwell 10 min read

• Benioff's rule of thumb: 25 to 50 percent of headcount should be salespeople (at Salesforce it was half the company).
• Nine times out of ten companies miss plan because the sales force was never big enough, not because reps were unproductive.
• Salesforce targeted companies under 30 employees first for higher close rates and lower cost of sale.
• Position yourself as the leader or explicitly against the leader, and give everyone a two sided laminated card so the answer never varies.

Pierri has done this on hundreds of early stage homepages, so the advice is unusually concrete: say when someone would use the product, not just the outcome. Good antidote to abstract category language.

How to Master B2B Positioning with Anthony Pierri (Fletch PMM)

On Exit Five by Dave Gerhardt with Anthony Pierri 53 min