April Dunford on Positioning
April Dunford is the world’s leading expert on product positioning. She works with fast-growing tech companies helping them clearly articulate the value they alone can deliver to customers. She is the author of the bestselling positioning book Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get it, Buy it, Love it.
April had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“My calling is more as a teacher than anything else” (8:00).
“In the work I’m doing right now as a consultant, really my job is to be a teacher” (8:18).
“As a teacher and a facilitator, I’m teaching the team and I’m facilitating the team to come up with the answers themselves” (14:25).
“When we’re doing positioning work, we’re very focused on customers, problems, solutions… how do we actually tell the story of this product in a way that really helps customers make a good purchase decision?” (15:24).
“When you’re inside a big company, you have to fight really hard to get a promotion, to move your way up” (17:00).
“You need to influence people that don’t work for you and don’t have to do what you say” (22:40).
“In the work I do with positioning, we always have sales executives in the room because if they don’t understand the positioning, it won’t be reflected in the way they talk to customers” (34:14).
“How do we take positioning and translate it into a sales pitch that really works for the sales team?” (35:55)
“We need to be ruthless about asking if this is a good fit for us or not? And if it’s not, we shouldn’t try to sell to those people” (37:55).
“We need to arm sales reps so they have the confidence to be able to say this one wasn’t a good fit. They didn’t care about these 3 things, which are the 3 things we focus on and care about”. (41:20).
“The goal of positioning is to make it really clear what I do and what I’m awesome at in a way that attracts a pipeline full of these best-fit people” (45:19).
“Just because you’re doing something doesn’t mean you’re doing it with any sort of repeatability” (51:50).
“We’re positioning whether we’re doing it consciously or not” (53:30).
“The first thing we have to answer in the minds of customers is what is this thing? The second question is is it important to me?” (55:00).
Make sure to check out April on Twitter, as well as her website here!
Thank you so much to April for coming on the podcast!
Lastly, if you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.
Thanks for listening.
-Brian
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