Leading a GTM team

We have three products now. Do we message them separately or tell one platform story?

The short answer

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 positioning with the products as capabilities underneath it. If different buyers with different budgets buy them independently, each product needs its own positioning and the company name sits above as an umbrella. Almost everyone errs the same way, inventing a platform story for a suite the market still buys one product at a time, after which the sales team quietly goes back to selling product one. A suite pitch is only honest when the products are genuinely better together, and that is a product commitment before it is a slide.

Go deeper, your way

4 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📰 Newsletter
✓ Link checked Freemium Advanced

Why we picked it Deals with the four things that actually stall positioning work in a grown-up company: nobody agrees on who the competition is, teams talk their own product down, differentiation is fuzzy, and nobody knows whether you are positioning a product or a portfolio. Part of it sits behind a paywall.

A guide to advanced B2B positioning

From Lenny's Newsletter by April Dunford 20 min read

Open lennysnewsletter.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Beginner

Why we picked it Zoho bundling dozens of apps into one subscription, priced at Rs 1,000 per employee per month in India, is the opposite bet to per-product positioning. A useful counter-example when you are deciding whether your suite story is real.

Zoho unveils bundled business app suite Zoho One

From CIOL by CIOL Writers 5 min read

Open ciol.com →

The same ground, at another level

How positioning and messaging reads from a different seat.

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 → 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 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 →

People also ask

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 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? Stop pitching and start interrogating their past. Ask about what they actually did last time the problem hit, what it cost them, and what they trie... 24 resources → What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? An ICP is a precise description of the customer who gets the most value from you and gives you the most back, by firmographics, situation, and the ... 2 resources →
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