 Hey everyone, I'm Carlos and the founder and CEO of Product School and today I'm here with April Danfort Who's the author of obviously awesome. Hey, April. Hey, it's good to be here. How are you? I'm so excited to have you after seeing you in other interviews can't wait to talk about positioning You know with an over a hundred interviews in the podcast. We've never touched on this topic. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy How do you position yourself what's the story behind the book? Well, you know what I got interested in positioning in my my very first job Like right after university job and a startup and I got assigned I was a product marketer and I got assigned to a product that was failing and In the end we we considered end of life thing the product But in the end we repositioned it and this thing that was failing took off and it was wildly successful We ended up getting acquired by a big big company I took over the marketing department for this group in the big company and We repositioned a couple other things that that unlocked a bunch of growth there, too So early in my career. I I got my eyes opened to The power of really good positioning to take something that doesn't look very extraordinary and make it extraordinary So I thought this is really important thing And then I spent a lot of time after that in my career trying to figure out how to optimize the process for actually doing it because it seemed like a thing that I was gonna have to do over and over again and so For 25 years. I was kind of a repeat vice president of marketing at a series of successful startups I think I did seven six of those got acquired four or five years ago I made the switch to consulting and now I just do positioning work and I just work at tech companies and here we are now I'm on your podcast Well, I'm honored to have you here because in the product world It's not clear who owns Positioning you mentioned you've been as a product marketer and a marketing leader at multiple organizations So in your experience this typically who was in charge of positioning? Yeah, so I was we were talking before we started it I get this question so much particularly from product managers And if I do a talk at a product management conference first question like if I say there's any question There's a hand up and someone says who owns it. We need to know who's the owner who's gonna own this thing And I think a lot of bad positioning comes from Individual teams trying to own it which is so I think that's a mistake So typically when we think about ownership, it's generally Marketing or product the reason that is is because marketing and product Generally feel the pain of weak positioning before other teams too So so in marketing you'll notice that your campaigns aren't working so good You'll notice that your marketing doesn't really hit the way you think it's going to hit Sales will feel it in that people don't really understand what you are the pitches are landing kind of flat on the product They'll be all this angst over what are we building and who's it for and we do because we don't have clarity on the positioning But here's the deal positioning actually Forms the underpinning of everything we do in marketing and sales Everything like I can't do a campaign until I understand who is the campaign for and I got a bill messaging So what's our value proposition? So how are we differentiated from our competitors who are our competitors? Same thing with everything we do in sales like who are we going to target here? All of these things are defined by positioning on the product side. It really has an impact on our product roadmap What is it? We want to be where are we going? What are the customers? We're trying to get so here's the thing Because it underpins so much of the company We can't actually perform at our best if we aren't all in alignment on positioning So that means if we really want to do an adjustment on positioning or tighten up the positioning This is actually going to be a team sport So we actually marketing and product and sales and if you have customer success We need that if you have professional services, we need that and importantly I need to see you and the executive team all in alignment on this because we can't all be telling different stories out of the market so if we really want to execute on positioning in terms of Getting the job done and figuring out what the positioning should be that is actually a job for the executive team Now once we've figured out what the positioning should be Then you know you might ask the question. Well, who's the steward of positioning? Like so who's responsible for making sure that we are actually Executing on that position and in my opinion that is product marketing's role So if you have product marketer product marketing as a function in your company Then it's product marketing that should own that otherwise. I think it's a toss-up It's either it's whoever's doing the product marketing function, which is either marketing or product You know, what's interesting like I remember when I started my my current company product school as a founder I still know a lot about the competitive landscape and about my own product and I have access to users but as the business grew realized that it was in my head and What I understood by positioning or like how I position my product was different from what maybe what my marketing leader or my safety They would understand so those type of situations What would be some good practice for all of those teams to align and really have a clear definition No matter who's asked that question Yeah, so there's a few things that I think are really important So, you know the first one is I gotta get the teams on alignment if we want really good positioning We got to have marketing sales product executive team. Everybody's got to be an agreement and alignment on around positioning So we need to get the gang together. We need to work on it together But here's the thing if I get the group together and say, okay, we want to define who's our competitor How are we different? What's our differentiated value? Who's our best fit customer? What market do we intend to win? These are the components that make up positioning. So we want to do that I need to do this in a structured way Because if I don't have a methodology to do this then what'll happen is we'll get the gang together and People will say well, okay. So, um, why does everyone love our product? And this is a this is going to be a bad conversation because what'll happen is Everybody will have an opinion about that and that's all it is is an opinion and this year We'll say well, I think people love our product because of this and sales will say well, that's not what I think I sell this every day and I think they love it because of this a product will say no, no, they love this Mario say no, no, they love this and so there'll be a lot of opinions and Usually what happens if it's a battle of opinions the CEO wins sometimes sales wins marketing never wins Product never wins the battle of opinions. So if we're going to have that conversation We need to have a methodology to do it Which has been a lot of what my focus has been on is how I actually build a methodology So if I get this group together Can we walk through and build the positioning in a structured way? That takes the that takes as much as we can the opinions out of it So that we can build on reality Now an important piece of this methodology is kind of the starting point. So in in the work that I do the starting point is Being able to answer the question Who do we got to beat in order to win a deal? Now for a lot of people That's that's like who's our competition But if you think about it, um You know the word competition can mean a lot of different things like if i'm talking to product managers And I say who's your competition? Generally a good product manager comes to me and they got a list and there's like 80 companies on this list, right? There's like and they'll be like here's my competitive document. Here's all the companies. I'm tracking There's 80 of them. Oh my gosh, and this is who we compete with But if you walk over to sales and said who do we compete with sales will say Oracle That's it Just And they're thinking about who do I see in deals? Who do I lose deals to? Um, the reality is for positioning work We need to be able to position the product to beat Whatever the customer would do if you didn't exist And so that consists of kind of two types of competitors. The first competitor is do nothing So the first competitor is what's status quo in the account? And if you're a b2b software status quo in the account is often I'll do it with a spreadsheet or I'll hire an intern or we'll just do manual processes And if we look at the data on this in b2b 40 of purchase processes ends in no decision Which means you lost to the intern you lost to the spreadsheet you lost the manual process So we need to understand that because we need to position our product in such a way that we win against excel We win against joey the intern But we also have to win against the company decides they're going to go into a purchase process if it's business to business They don't just look at your product. They'll make a short list of products And you got to beat everybody else that's on the short list too Now typically if I talk to sales, they won't be thinking about status quo as a competitor So they don't count that if I talk to product They're tracking every single potential competitor that we that might come out of the woodwork in the next 10 years Because they're thinking about product roadmap and that's fine for product roadmap But in positioning I do not have to worry In marketing and sales about positioning against phantom competitors I only have to worry about positioning against What is actually a competitor in the minds of customers today If some other new competitor pops out of the woodwork 10 years from now No problem. We'll adjust the positioning then. It's not like we're going to carve positioning in stone and never look at it again But the positioning the best positioning I can do right now Clearly positions your product against the alternatives, which is status quo and anybody who commonly lands on A short list against you and that's it So we don't have to position against all 90 competitors It's usually a quite a short list actually when we get down to it Love that because I think it's also this misconception around just shipping features for the sake of it and beating the competitor Well, sometimes it's it's it's just different Yeah, so let's say we get alignment between product marketing sales CEO We all follow methodology and you know feel good about it Then what how do you go from paper to reality? Yeah, so there's a handful of things When I started doing positioning work You know marketers if marketers are doing positioning work the first thing they want to do after we get all in agreement Like so we'll get the gang together. We'll all agree on. Okay. Here's who we compete with here's how we're different This is our differentiated value. These are the customers that are really good fit for our stuff This is the market we intend to win. Okay. Good. We've got the positioning Let's go and what marketers want to do is they want to do messaging next, right? So, okay, great So let's change the headline on the web page and let's redo all the copy and let's go nuts on on messaging um I honestly think there's a good step to do before that which is We kind of want to validate the positioning first Now most people will think that we'll validate the positioning with messaging, right? Like we'll we'll you know Maybe we'll a b test the headlines or the homepage or whatever And that's actually a test of messaging and you know and a lot of other things a test of web page design and a bunch of other things But it's not actually a pure test of positioning like you don't know if the positioning was bad Or you just did a bad job writing copy around it So I actually think if you're selling b2b and you have a sales team The best thing to do with positioning once you have it is to take that positioning and craft A sales pitch deck out of it So I call this a sales narrative. So we'll craft a sales narrative And then we'll build a pitch from that which is usually a deck a demo or a script And then sales and marketing together or in this gig product marketing if you have it together take that Pitch and go test it out on some customers and see how it does and so What you're looking for is does it work better than the old pitch? So are there places where people are getting really excited or are there places where people are getting confused? Um typically in the work I do with companies that I work with we'll do the positioning We'll craft a sales narrative sales and marketing will work together on a sales narrative They'll train someone on the sales team to deliver it and marketing and sales Will then go and do a bunch of these pitches and they'll be tuning the narrative as they go along depending on how the competitor how the uh prospects react to it Once you've done a handful of those And you know my pass fail criteria on this is if we do a bunch of pitches And we tune it a little bit that we'll get to a point at some point where the sales person will say, you know what? This is good. I like this better than the old one I'm not going back to the old pitch and you can stop sitting in on online calls April we're good at that point. I would consider that a pass I would then take that sales rep let them train the rest of the sales team on the pitch And then we're ready to go start working on messaging I think we actually need to validate with customers first before we get into copy Because we might learn something in those pitches with actual live customers about You know particular terminology or particulars in the way we tell the story So we want to validate with customers first then we go to message you And I know there are multiple tools out there that Enable that at scale and can literally identify what are some of the things that resonate as part of sales pitch And um, eventually, you know, just get those good practices across the board because in large organizations with multiple sales reps at a time I can imagine someone saying, you know, that's great. April, but I know how to sell I tell my story I take my notes on the spreadsheet No sales people hate a new pitch They just hate it. It doesn't matter. Your pitch could be Like golden it could be perfect, but it is not the old pitch and everybody's used to the old pitch So when you come with a new pitch nobody wants your new pitch ever So usually what I would do if I come with the new pitch The first thing I would do is I'm not going to try to roll it out to everybody all at once But forget it right because it would be a mute need in sales. They would just say no get lost We're met, you know, we're comfortable with the old one. So usually what I would do is I would pick one I would pick my best sales rep Sometimes it actually be the vp sales if the vp sales does a lot of sales calls I do it with the vp sales But if the vp sales is more of a manager and not an actual sales person then I would take the best rep And I've trained them. So we'd spend a bunch of hours. Here's how you pitch it This is the way he's do it. This is the way this demo is going to work So we train for a while right we'd hang out before we go unleash it on customers And then we do this iterative thing on customers like pitch it and then me and the rep would go back Okay, what worked and what didn't work? Okay, let's let's pitch this because a rep knows like especially if you've got a good rep They know what's working and what's not in a pitch While they're in it. So if you catch them right after and say, okay, what worked and what didn't let's tune it Let's tune it. Let's tune it and my whole goal is to get to a point where the best rep I've got says this is a better pitch than the old one because that's a moment And then if I can convince the best rep on the team that this is a better pitch than the old one Then I make that rep go sell the rest of the team. I don't do it. You do it Like your job is to get all these people To use this new pitch and generally that's better Because the sales team will believe the best rep more than they're going to believe me Right, the best rep is going to come and say look, I've done seven pitches This works way better than the old one You guys got to try this out and then we'll train the team and stuff But yeah, it nobody likes the new pitch. Everyone hates the new pitch. You got to work your way into it So how can product empower and help and marketing and sales teams Position the product because I assume that okay, we tested this it seems like it has an X We have a sales champion who's convincing the sales the sales mix to use the pitch and now really for prime time We need to do this at the scale Well, so there's a bunch of things where it's super important for products So first of all what I'm saying marketing in this a lot of the times is product marketing If you're big enough to have product marketing function This is in my opinion the cornerstone of what a good product manager is doing good product manager is Working with the sales team making the sales team making sure the sales team position stuff correctly Making sure that everybody understands now on the product side We typically think about a shift in positioning Um, the immediate impact is there's an impact on marketing and sales There's an impact in the pitch and there's an impact in the way we talk about the product So messaging this is the immediate impact the later impact comes from How does this actually impact the way we prioritize features and what we're actually going to build So if you think about it like um, I'll give you an example I worked at a company where um, we sold the thing and we thought it was a database like it was a database The founders were database guys. They built this sci-fi database There was a bunch of patents and it could do a certain kind of Analytic query really really fast. So that was their whole thing super high performance on analytic queries and at some point we repositioned it to A data warehouse for machine generated data, that's what we were and so in that shift Now you can think about it at the beginning It just changed our pitch the product was the same But it changed the way we contextualized it But if you went back to then we went back to product It's like well hang on If we're not a database anymore and what we are is a data warehouse for machine generated data Like our old product roadmap was all about Making us a better database like what are the features we need to get you to be you know Feature parity with things like Oracle like the other big databases out there Whereas if you look at um a data warehouse, there's a bunch of other things that matter there So in the data warehouse like what were we like we didn't even have reporting Which is kind of a key data warehouse thing So the first thing the product team did was they're like look We're going to have to fill this reporting gap in the short term Which we did through some api stuff and some strategic partnerships with reporting vendors And then we started working on some in-house dashboarding and reporting so that we had some capability internally So this shift in the way you think about the product Is absolutely going to have an impact on your product roadmap and that's where I think product management Needs to really understand the positioning and understand the longer-term impacts of okay So if this is the market we intend to win What does our product need to look like in order to stay ahead of that market next year and the year after in the year after And how do we work with development to make sure we're building the right stuff to really deliver on this positioning Not just today, but the next release of the one after You know in dick at least in silicon, but I've heard so many found they're saying We are the amazon for x or the uber or if uber and pinterest had a challenge We will be and and they in their mind it's super clear right, but in reality What is going on? What's your table this type of definitions when the product is is complicated or too technical you're using A more mainstream product All right, so here's here's where this stuff comes from This whole uber we're uber for whatever or we're you know facebook for whatever rb and b for whatever This the only place where this is even remotely interesting is in a vc pitch So if i'm pitching to raise money It makes a lot of sense for me to compare myself to some high girls unicorn thing whatever Because your pitch your positioning For an investor is really really different than your positioning for a customer So you're positioning for an investor is all about look, you know Great changes are at work here and the world is changing and there's going to be winners and losers Because the market is turning itself upside down. There's going to be fire and explosions And after the smoke clears, we're winning and everybody else is losing That's what we're going to be and this actually works pretty good in an investor pitch because you're pitching the vision You're pitching the future Typically the product that you have right now is not the reason people are investing in you They're investing in you for the thing that you're going to be able to do with five years 10 years whereas Our pitch for customers Is not that at all So our pitch for customers if we might talk a little bit about the vision but in general The customer is giving you their cold hard cash right now For the thing you can do right now you have to prove that there is value today Because if all you got is value a year from now Maybe i'll just wait i'll buy your stuff a year from now when you got that cool stuff call me back And i'll buy it a year from now. So if i need to have urgency and sales right now I need to pitch this in a way that that is clear for the customer. Here's the value you get right now Now here's the problem When you say to a customer a not tech person Imagine maybe even a person who doesn't live in silicon valley and you say, you know I'm uber for cats What does it mean? Does it mean the cats drive the car? Does it mean you know like and and do do people think the thing because if you say you're uber for cats to a vc I think a vc might think about, you know You know the way the business model of uber But if you just talk to a person a buyer that isn't in this vc bubble And say you're uber for cats, it's going to be what does it have to do with cars? What does this have to do with taxis nothing? And so it comes with all of this baggage So you might you might think uber means xyz, but your buyers might say well uber means, you know uber means Nobody makes any money uber means whatever Like there's a bunch of baggage that comes with that So I think you're better to be clear And and if you're going to position yourself you need to position yourself in a market Which means I need to position myself so that the customer understands A comparable that is very much like me. So what are you? Are you crm? Are you database? Are you chat? Are you email? What are you uber is not a market uber is a company? And it's you know and lots of people have lots of different associations with that And unless you happen to be in the rideshare market, why would you compare yourself to that? You're just going to confuse people you're going to say what you're in the you're in the ride hailing market What are you talking about? So I I really hate this uber for whatever comparison. I don't know why people do it and I think it's bad positioning Um, I mean I'm sure that a lot of product people are listening to you right now getting excited thinking. Oh my god I need to bring this to my CEO, right? Or like we need to reposition Certain products. How can someone who doesn't really have all the decision-making power in the world can escalate that so hopefully somebody else can hear can listen Yeah, so I know a lot about this because this used to be this used to be the thing that I did all the time So if we back it up back when I was a VP marketing, so you would hire me as the vice president marketing I had product marketing underneath me. I'm the new vice president marketing I come in and I know a lot about positioning and after a few weeks new on the job You'd start to get this inkling like you know what I think the positioning here is bad And I can see it and I can see it at the results of what's going on in marketing And I'm hearing one story from sales and another one from product and another one from the CEO and I'm like Oh, yeah, the positioning here is not so great. And so There's two things I could do if I'm a rookie, what do I do if I'm a rookie I go I go walk into the CEO's office and say your positioning is terrible. We should fix it You know and what's likely to happen there is the CEO is going to go Who the heck are you? You've been here for five minutes. Like you don't know he like the problem is you You don't understand it. You just need to understand It's sometimes the CEO might be right. Maybe maybe I don't understand. Maybe there is something I don't get Here's a better way to do it. Um, and this works every time because I've done it a bunch of times So here's what you do first thing you do is you go hang out with marketing or sales and You see if they see the same thing you see So I used to always go and sit in I'm brand new, right? So I have an excuse to do whatever I want So I go over to sales and say hey, I'm stupid. I'm brand new. I don't know anything I'm just here to listen in on some sales calls So I would listen in on some sales calls and then I would start pointing stuff out. I'd say Hey, did you hear on that last call where the customer said? Hey, are you guys like sales force and we're not anything like sales force like that's bad Why do you think customers compare us to sales force? He's not good Did you notice that you got all the way through the pitch and right near the end the guy the guy thought We were this instead of this. Did you notice that? Hey, did you notice when you got to that this part that people were still asking questions about Stuff you were doing at the very beginning and if I to ask this question enough Eventually, I'd be having lunch with the c or at the VP sales and say You know, you ever notice that people compare us to competitor that we don't compare to or they don't really understand What we do and and generally the VP sales if the positioning is weak the VP sales knows this they've seen this right So VP sales say yeah, it happens all the time like I don't know what it is But it's it's bad, you know our marketing's bad and I'll say well, I got theory I think we got kind of weak positioning I have we ever looked at the positioning. Did we ever do a formal positioning exercise? No, it's always the answer to that No, we haven't and I say all right. Well, let me you know, let me do something about that And then I would go to product and I do the same thing. I mean like hey I'm hanging out with sales And I keep seeing there's this confusion between whether or not we're a crm or whether or not we're an email You ever see that out in the field like when you're out and about and like what are we doing about that? And so it same thing eventually I'd be having lunch with the head of product and I'd be like I suspect That we got sort of loose positioning here and we need to tighten it up What do you think right and so eventually I get that I get the head of product in if Sometimes I go do the same thing over and customer success because they're responsible for account expansion So I go in hey when you're pitching expand the center accounts like don't you ever hear this you ever notice this And so now everybody's a little conscious of it Then I go to the ceo and I say look I'm not saying the positioning is bad because I'm new here. I don't know nothing but I don't you know Have we ever done a formal positioning exercise to validate the positioning we've got Because I suspect I'm not saying it's bad, but I suspect we can tighten it up And I'll tell you I hear something a little bit different from sales versus product versus marketing versus customer success And the CEO generally you know the CEO always responds when you go in and have that call they say What's john and sales say That's always what they say and I'll say I don't know man. We should call him. Let's let's call him Call him so then we call him And he like hey job. Yeah, I got april do marketing lady in my office here and she's talking about this positioning thing And what do you think? Guy in sales. Well, I just I've already worked him over He says he's a little yeah, I've been thinking, you know, maybe we should look at this a good idea Then he might make a couple more calls and that's how I get him in but I gotta work everybody else before I get to the CEO And then the key is now I've got agreement. Let's come together and look at it. I'm not saying it's wrong I'm saying let's just look at it and it is what it is Maybe we'll get exactly the positioning that we thought we had but let's just validate it So all right now I got the game together, but but this is perilous now I got the game together I can't just get them all together and say, okay, so let's just you know Why does everybody love our stuff and have this battle of opinions if we get everybody together We've got to work through a structured positioning exercise if we don't we're dead So once it's step one work the team step two get the CEO on board step three get the gang together But then you got to make sure we got a process. Okay. Here's how it's going to go. I'm going to facilitate Here's the steps. We're going to walk through the steps and we're going to validate what we've got And that's how you get it done in my opinion Love it. Um, this has been fantastic. April and I would love to continue chatting with you and unfortunately we are up But um, how can we learn more about your book and your working journal? Yeah, so I so I wrote a book that kind of describes this positioning exercise And when I talk about bringing the gang together we got a methodology My book Is is essentially my attempt at writing that process down Like so if you wanted to do this yourself internally and get the gang together and do an exercise My book can give you a guide book for you know one way to do that The work I do as a consultant is I work directly with companies that want to do that process But they want to have somebody from outside the company be the facilitator and ideally someone who's you know An expert on this stuff and it's done it a couple hundred times Um, so I do that so my book is on amazon It's you know, it costs like eight bucks or something you can buy it there And then otherwise my website is april dunford.com and you can you like follow me on twitter I don't really do anything on social media, but occasionally i'm on twitter and i'm at april dunford on twitter You follow me there. Thank you so much Thanks for joining me. Thanks