We pivoted, but the market still knows us for the old thing. How do we reposition without losing the customers we already have?

A founder writing up her own repositioning in detail, including naming Intercom and Customer.io directly and landing on a smaller pond. Honest about how many attempts it took, which most positioning writing hides.

How We Used April Dunford's 10-Step Method to Overhaul Positioning at Userlist

From Userlist by Jane Portman 16 min read

• Userlist's own tell was that the elevator pitch did not work: prospects could not say what the product did.
• Moving the category from email automation to customer messaging made prospects grasp it instantly.
• Their statement names competitors outright: more efficient than building it yourself, less complex than Intercom or Customer.io.
• Positioning was not a one-time exercise: it changed four times between 2017 and 2022.

The clearest Indian example of a company outgrowing its own product name and building an umbrella brand over Freshservice, Freshsales and Freshcaller. Read it as a case in timing: they renamed before shipping more products, not after.

Freshdesk rebrands as Freshworks to reflect bigger business management software ambition

From Forbes India by Harichandan Arakali 7 min read

• Freshdesk became Freshworks in June 2017 to stop being read as a customer support company only.
• At the rebrand it had over 100,000 customers, more than 150 million dollars raised, and seven acquisitions.
• The umbrella covered Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales and Freshcaller under one brand.
• A Google and Accel study projected Indian SaaS at 10 billion dollars of revenue by 2025, about 8 percent of global demand.

A short, practical take on changing the business case you lead with (close more deals becomes reduce operating cost) without changing the product, which is most of what repositioning actually is.

How B2B SaaS startups can reposition now to win

From Dawn Capital by Henry Mason 9 min read

• Repositioning is shown as fast and concrete: AccuRx built video calling in a weekend and it hit 35,000 uses a day within a month.
• Showpad moved from making sales collateral available to coaching sellers on how to sell from home.
• Karma flipped from transactional B2B2C to B2C subscription veg boxes, changing the revenue model, not just the message.
• Cheetah went from wholesale supply for restaurants to selling direct to consumers, then closed a 36 million dollar Series B.

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.

Repositioning is really a category decision, and this is Dunford on picking the category that makes your strengths obvious rather than the one that sounds biggest. She also covers what confuses buyers when you land in the wrong one, which is your current problem.

New Thinking on Market Categories

On April Dunford by April Dunford 24 min