Positioning and messaging

What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? Positioning is the context you give a buyer so that your strengths look obvious. It is the answer to 'what kind of thing is this and who is it for'... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → How do I write a one-line description of what we do that a normal person actually understands? Stop trying to be clever and name the category first. A stranger needs to file you somewhere in their head before they can care, so 'a CRM for fiel... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → Our positioning reads fine on the website but every rep says something different on calls. How do I fix that? That gap is almost always a sign the positioning was written for the website and never translated into a conversation. Fix it by building the pitch... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I build a sales deck that is not just a tour of our features? Open with a change in the buyer's world, not with your company. Name the shift, show that it creates winners and losers, describe the better state ... Doing the work 4 resources → We are changing our positioning. How do I roll it out without breaking the pipeline mid-quarter? Sequence it: sales first, marketing second, brand last. Reps carry the new story to live deals before the website changes, because they can adapt i... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → Do we need to create a new category, or should we position inside one that already exists? Default to an existing category. Categories are expensive: you are paying to teach a market a new word, and you only earn that back if buyers genui... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → How do the best B2B companies get positioning agreed when product, sales and the founders all disagree? They stop arguing about opinions and go find the buyer's view, because the only competitive alternative that matters is the one the prospect would ... How the best do it 4 resources → We are an Indian company selling to global buyers. How do we position so that being from India reads as an asset rather than a question mark? Do not hide it and do not lead with it. Buyers care about outcome, support and trust, so answer those directly: publish your response times, staff ... How the best do it 5 resources → What is the actual difference between positioning, messaging and copy? I keep being asked for all three and they feel like the same job. Positioning is a decision, messaging is a small set of sentences that carry the decision, copy is the words on a specific page. Positioning answers... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → Does our name actually matter? We keep arguing about it and I cannot tell if it is important or a distraction. The name matters much less than the words next to it. Nobody bought Slack because of the word Slack, they bought it because the line underneath sai... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → Everyone we sell to already uses the big incumbent. How do I position against them without trashing them? Never attack the vendor, attack a specific frustration their own customers already voice, in their words, lifted from review sites and your win and... Doing the work 5 resources → Everyone has an opinion on our new messaging and nobody can settle the argument. How do I test it instead? Stop reviewing messaging internally, because the most senior opinion wins and none of you are the buyer. Put the actual page or email in front of t... Doing the work 4 resources → We have three products now. Do we message them separately or tell one platform story? Decide by how they are bought, not by how they are built. If the same buyer, out of the same budget, buys them in one conversation, you need one po... Leading a GTM team 5 resources → We sell in India, the US and the Gulf. How much should the messaging actually change per market? The promise stays the same, the proof and the packaging change. What genuinely differs by market is who holds the budget, what the buyer is afraid ... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → A big share of our losses are to nobody at all. How do the best companies write and sell against doing nothing? First split the two things hiding behind no decision. Some buyers genuinely prefer the status quo and need the cost of staying put made concrete an... How the best do it 4 resources → We pivoted, but the market still knows us for the old thing. How do we reposition without losing the customers we already have? Repositioning is not a rebrand, it is telling people which shelf you are on now, and you will have to say it far more often than feels dignified be... How the best do it 5 resources →