It’s time to drop "low hanging fruit" & apply what you learned about positioning
"Yeah, but if a lead came to us with 100,000 staff, we'd totally sell to them," this director told me.
"But is that who your ideal market is?" I said… knowing 100% what the answer was.
"Of course, if they have the budget. Anyone with a budget is the customer, really".
"Right, but would you be able to service them properly? Deliver what they need with the tools, processes, and people you have right now?"
“...Well, no. But we would muddle through; we need to follow the low-hanging fruit”.
And there it was.
I was chatting with a team about the positioning of their product. They’d told me they’d worked with a consultant to work through this, and 2 years later, it was time to action it.
In that moment, it dawned on me that, perhaps the reason why this utterly bonkers conversation was happening was that there was a disconnect.
A disconnect with this shiny document and knowing how to implement it.
And a massive misunderstanding of what positioning really means.
What positioning means for your sales and marketing
Some how positioning has infiltrated every business conversation lately - perhaps because everyone's finally cottoned on to the fact it's rather crucial for, you know, making sales.
April Dunford describes it brilliantly:
Positioning is simply answering "Why us, why right now?"
It defines how your product is the best in the world at providing some value that your best-fit customers care deeply about. Read more about positioning for startups.
The “Why us, why right now?” question is your most important sales tool in my opinion.
It’s the question that will unlock the short-term sales.
It’s the version of your product that doesn’t need to be all signing and dancing.
And it’s the hook that helps to secure those “low-hanging fruit” everyone keeps going on about.
Unlike strategy (the plan to get there) or vision (the long-game futuristic version), positioning helps you work out who'll resonate with your offer in the state it's in at this very moment.
Those customers who'll pay the most to get the Job done properly.
That means not looking at customers as a homogenous group, but instead, working out the nuance in who they are and the nuance in what they say to get into those who are willing to part with cash today.
You've heard the cliché - “if you launched and it's perfect, you're too late”.
It's annoyingly true.
If you're trying to build early traction for a service, you want paying customers. And to snag those early customers, you need to work out what niche you're solving and the easiest version of your product to meet them with.
Using the beachhead strategy to work out which market and customer type to approach.
Ah, the beachhead strategy.
In marketing terms, this involves focusing your efforts on a small, specific segment to build a foothold before expanding. Think of it as your business equivalent of not trying to conquer Rome in a day.
(Apologies, but my metaphors are on fire today).
Let's say you reckon financial services would be brilliant to sell to.
If your product is early-stage, it's highly unlikely you'll waltz into Nationwide or Monzo and close a deal.
I mean, it's theoretically possible, but you'd be better off focusing somewhere more realistic—somewhere you can land, work out the niggles, and understand the quirks of selling to this market.
I learned this the hard way when I first started out at a startup. We spent months - if not years - chasing BIIIIGGGGG deals that looked impressive on paper but were completely unrealistic given where the product actually was.
Meanwhile, smaller clients who were perfect fits were getting ignored because they didn't have enough zeros in their employee count.
Using the beachhead strategy is really effective in not just focus, but you’ll also discover a load of info that you can plug directly into your sales, marketing and product.
For example, who you're competing against, the questions prospects are likely to ask, and it'll help test your messaging and sales techniques in the real world rather than in theoretical workshop land.
Check out an article I wrote on choosing the right market where it digs into beachhead a little more.
Use positioning to work out if you’re going against a direct or indirect competitor (it’ll influence what features to talk about)
This process also reveals who you're genuinely competing against. Recently, I chatted with someone about going upmarket to larger organisations. When I asked about their competitor set, they confidently said “it'd be the same brands”.
But here's the rub: even if the competitor brands remain the same, the customer's progress they want from your solution will be completely different. I saw this firsthand when I worked for a recruitment tech company.
As we moved upmarket, the competitors stayed roughly the same, but the need states? These completely changed and required a different conversation.
How to develop and test your positioning (the bit most people skip)
If you've got existing customers, I’d start with the obvious.
I’d look at your CRM or inbox and start by examining who you're losing deals to. That's your first proper indication of the competitive landscape, or rather, the category your customers are putting you in.
You may also want to see where you sit earlier on in the sales process - when people are researching potential brands, and how you show up in their consciousness. I’d look at your lead magnets and landing pages as places to collect this info.
In a signup form for your lead magnet, add an additional question. Ask which other brands your prospects are considering. The answers might surprise you - and they'll definitely inform your positioning.
The key to all this is testing this positioning with real prospects, not just nodding along in internal meetings and keeping it locked up in a slide deck.
I've seen founders fall in love with positioning and everything that’s discussed in a sales meeting, but when they try pitching it, they don’t listen to whether it resonates or not.
Your positioning influences every aspect of your sales and marketing—from the features you highlight to the objections you anticipate. Get it wrong, and you'll find yourself explaining why you're different to people who don't actually care.
Get it right, and sales conversations become significantly less like pulling teeth. And that’s always a good thing, right?
Can’t bear to look at your website? Think it’s missing out on crucial conversions because it just doesn’t resonate? I work with teams on their website messaging strategy. You should check it out.
Alternatively, if you want to know things you don’t know, check out why the one-stop-shop approach to positioning makes me want to throw things.
