The Overview #25 - Building Momentum

Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You’ll find interesting thoughts, articles, and more from around the internet.

In this post:

Positioning can’t happen in a silo

Positioning w/ a group of stakeholders, rather than in a silo, is painful & will take much more time. You'll have many critical conversations and disagreements. You'll feel like you're not making progress.

But it's worth it. These are the conversations you need to be having.
— Anand Patel (@anandp29) October 22, 2021

TOO REAL.

I’ve been part of marketing teams (earlier in my career, and never again!) that decided positioning based on a small group of marketers and nothing else. Did not work well.

You need to embrace the diversity that multiple, competing viewpoints, and even full-on arguments that can occur when you ask people with different priorities to find some high-risk consensus

However, these conversations need to be productive. He-said-she-said is not helpful. You need patterns and evidence to be confident in a particular direction. We cannot position on assumptions.

Start with the customer empathy map challenge to understand everyone’s unique starting point and perspective of who your customer is and what’s going on in their lives. Then measure your confidence, then go fill in the gaps.

User outcome-led growth?

Thesis statement:

Our industry is significantly over-indexing on "product" and significantly under-indexing on user outcomes.
— 🎆 🌸 Samuel Hulick 🌸 🌄 (@SamuelHulick) October 22, 2021

Not quite as catchy as PLG, but I there’s almost enough evidence to suggest that Samuel is right.

Just because you can build a product feature doesn’t mean that it will make your customer successful and happy, or is an outcome they care enough about to achieve.

Sometimes we’re overestimating how mature our customers are, sometimes we just don’t really understand the jobs our customers want to achieve and the steps they take to get there.

What if, when thinking about product-led growth, we made a conscious decision on the outcomes we actually hope desire, and build specifically for those?

In any B2B company, you are never building only a product

The challenge in GTM strategies for SaaS B2B companies crossing the chasm is that success is no longer about exclusively creating the best product of the category but about gaining trust in bureaucratic and complex business ecosystems.
Go-To-Market & Tech Adoption Curve, Kamil Rextin, 42

The quote speaks specifically to moving upmarket, and how you must build the best product AND gain trust AND navigate the buying process.

What else are you building core competencies in (consciously… and unconsciously)?

Converting free trials to paid accounts
Increasing post-sale adoption
Expanding accounts
Slick, smooth finance processes
Frictionless billing
Innovation-as-a-service
A blog-turned-media publication

So long as you’re making those decisions consciously, lean in to what’s driving success.

And if you’re not sure, start with your customer. What’s the value they hope to gain, with or without your product? Then figure out how you can help make that happen.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought – find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

P.S. If you’ve found value in Building Momentum, could you buy me a coffee? Here’s my tip jar – any support is gratefully appreciated!

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