Leadership often dismisses positioning as a "marketing thing." To get buy-in, connect it directly to sales failures. When prospects are confused on calls ("What are you again?") or miscategorize you, it’s a positioning problem that kills pipeline. Highlighting this revenue impact gets executive attention and resources.
When competitors falsely claim your unique features, don't abandon the message. Instead, teach prospects specific questions (e.g., "How many logins are there?") to expose the lie. Customers are delighted to call out vendors on their false claims, which solidifies your position and accelerates the sales cycle.
Obsessing over creating a new market category is often a mistake. Data shows the vast majority of successful public tech companies compete within established categories. It's more effective to get "invited to the party" by using a known category label and then winning with a sharp, differentiated value proposition.
Don't assume even sophisticated buyers understand your unique technical advantage, like a "fuzzy logic algorithm." Your marketing must translate that unique feature into a tangible business value they comprehend. Your job is not to be an order-taker for their feature checklist, but to educate them on why your unique approach is superior.
For companies with multiple products, positioning cannot begin until the go-to-market strategy is set. You must first decide if you have a lead "wedge" product with add-ons (like early Salesforce) or if you're selling an integrated platform. This foundational business decision precedes any messaging work.
If your narrative is about a broad market problem (e.g., "data is growing") that isn't uniquely solved by your product, you're creating demand for the entire category, including your competitors. A powerful story must be built around your specific differentiator, making it a narrative only you can convincingly tell.
Unlike sales-led companies that get feedback from sales calls, PLG companies are blind to their competitive positioning without formal research. You must conduct jobs-to-be-done interviews to uncover why customers chose you over alternatives, as relying on internal assumptions or simple "what do you love" surveys is misleading.