Obviously Awesome

02Warning Signs Your Current Positioning is Broken

We tend to look for highly complex, deeply analytical reasons when our sales numbers start to dip or when our new product launch falls completely flat. We immediately blame our sales team for not closing hard enough, we blame our marketing department for running the wrong digital ads, or we even blame our product engineers for not building enough fancy features. But what if the problem is not your team, your budget, or your product? What if the root cause of all your business pain is simply that your positioning is fundamentally broken? Recognizing the symptoms of bad positioning is the very first step toward fixing it, and April Dunford outlines a series of glaring warning signs that indicate your product is suffering from an identity crisis. These symptoms are incredibly common, yet they are almost always misdiagnosed by company leadership. The first and most painful symptom of broken positioning is what we can call the "I love it, but I don't need it" customer reaction. Have you ever pitched your product to a prospect who nods along enthusiastically, smiles at all your carefully designed slides, and tells you how amazing your technology is, only to completely ghost you when it comes time to sign the contract? This happens when a customer can intellectually see that your product is well-made, but they cannot figure out how it fits into their daily life or their specific business processes. They are impressed, but they are not compelled to buy. They do not see your product as a solution to a burning problem they currently have; instead, they see it as a neat novelty. When your positioning is sharp, customers do not just admire your product; they feel a deep, urgent need to acquire it because they understand exactly how it will make their lives easier or more profitable. Another massive red flag is a sales cycle that drags on for an agonizingly long time. If your sales representatives are forced to have five, six, or seven meetings with a prospect just to explain what your product actually does, your positioning is failing you. Customers should not require a Ph.D. in your specific industry to understand your value proposition. In a well-positioned company, the initial pitch acts as a lightning rod. The prospect immediately grasps the concept, recognizes their own pain points in your presentation, and moves quickly toward a purchasing decision. When positioning is weak, the customer is trapped in a state of perpetual confusion. They have to keep bringing in different stakeholders, endlessly debating which department's budget the purchase should come from, and constantly asking for more clarifying information. A long, painful sales cycle is rarely a sign of a cautious buyer; it is almost always a sign of a confused buyer. You might also be suffering from broken positioning if you find yourself constantly losing deals to competitors who offer fundamentally different products. If you are selling a highly sophisticated project management software, and you keep losing potential clients to companies that sell basic spreadsheet applications, something is deeply wrong with how you are framing your value. This means your customers have completely misunderstood what category you belong in. They are comparing your apples to their oranges, and because oranges happen to be cheaper, you lose the deal. When your product is properly positioned, your unique value is so obvious that comparing you to a lesser, unrelated tool feels ridiculous to the buyer. You should only be losing deals to direct competitors in your specific lane, not to entirely different categories of solutions. Furthermore, pay close attention to the features your customers actually use versus the features you heavily promote. Are your users completely ignoring your flagship, cutting-edge features and instead exclusively using a minor, secondary tool buried deep in your software? This is a massive neon sign pointing to a positioning mismatch. Dunford shares incredible stories of companies that built massive, comprehensive software suites, only to discover that their customers solely cared about one tiny reporting feature. The companies were trying to position themselves as all-in-one platforms, while the market clearly viewed them as specialized reporting tools. Fighting this reality is a fool's errand. If your customers are telling you through their behavior that your product is something else entirely, you need to listen to them and adjust your positioning accordingly. Do any of these frustrating scenarios sound familiar to you? Are your sales reps exhausted from having to educate the market from scratch on every single call? Are your marketing metrics showing plenty of website traffic but absolutely terrible conversion rates? It is time to stop blaming your hard-working staff and start looking at the foundation of your narrative. Broken positioning creates a massive, invisible headwind that slows down every single aspect of your business. Your marketing dollars are wasted because the messaging is confusing, your sales team is demoralized because they are constantly fighting objections that shouldn't exist, and your product team is lost because they don't know who they are truly building for. Recognizing these painful symptoms is the necessary wake-up call. Once you admit that your current context is holding you back, you are finally ready to systematically rebuild your positioning from the ground up.

Continue reading with LeapAhead app

Full summary is waiting for you in the app

Continue reading