Sometimes, there’s a moment the morning after a launch that almost every team recognises, even if they don’t talk about it.

Inside the company, people are still trying to extend the high from the previous day. Someone is checking traffic in one tab, posting on LinkedIn in another, replying to comments, sharing screenshots in Slack, trying to keep that sense of momentum alive for just a little longer.

It all feels warm and hopeful, the kind of explosion of pent-up energy you get when a team finally ships something that’s been hanging over them for months.

For a short while, it’s easy to convince yourself that the market has finally caught up with what you’ve been building.

But that feeling doesn’t last.

The dashboards level out, the replies quiet down, and prospect conversations don’t magically accelerate.

People outside the company move on so quickly it’s almost disorienting. You start to realise that the outside world absorbed far less than you expected.

What felt momentous internally has barely registered externally. And as frustrating as that is, it’s also the first honest signal about the story you tried to tell.

The weight you feel inside the building

Inside a company, the story of a launch becomes thick and dense and confusing and weighted long before anything goes live.

Teams carry months of accumulated context: early ideas, false starts, sudden CEO-inflicted pivots, painful naming decisions, internal debates over what the feature even is, trade-offs nobody wanted to make but had to, and the thousand tiny decisions that shaped the final result.

All that history sits under the surface. You can feel it when you talk about the product, even if you don’t say it out loud. So it’s no surprise that the launch becomes a symbolic release of that internal weight. It is significant… but only inside the building.

The outside world doesn’t care about your internal story

The problem is your layered context just doesn’t matter. I’m sorry to inform you, but:

• Your audience isn’t tracking your roadmap or checking whether the homepage copy has changed
• They’re not counting down the days until your release hits
• They’re not quietly waiting for your big reveal so they can change how they think about you
• They’re not refreshing your blog to see if the narrative evolved
• They’re not living with the emotional investment you’ve built up from months of being inside the problem

They see the launch with fresh eyes… which often means indifferent eyes.

This is the part that catches people off guard.

They’re projecting months of meaning outward, expecting the world to feel the same significance, but the outside world doesn’t have the mental model required to interpret it.

Inside the team, everything feels loaded. Outside the team, everything is a bit “meh” unless the story gives people a reason to care.

The mismatch is most clear when teams try to explain why a launch “matters.” Internally, the explanation is layered:

• this feature unlocks other features
• it resolves a painful problem the team has been wrestling with for months
• it aligns with a strategy shift people internally have felt happening
• it unblocks sales conversations that have been stuck for too long
• it’s been requested by a certain type of “important” customer

None of that helps anyone outside the team understand the story. Internal logic rarely survives external air.

The gap you’re really trying to measure

One of the harder things to accept is that the launch is rarely the moment the world finally “gets” you; it’s the moment you discover how far the gap really is between how you see the product and how everyone else interprets it. The silence you get after a launch is a signal, not a failure. It tells you the narrative hasn’t crossed the divide yet. You tried to export a story that still needed internal context to make sense.

You learn more in that silence than you do in the entire launch cycle. You learn:

• what didn’t translate at all
• which parts of the story depended on internal knowledge
• where your assumptions and research did or didn’t pay off
• which bits were actually relevant externally
• where the friction is, where things almost clicked

You also learn who genuinely felt resonance: not the people who liked the brand LinkedIn post, but the people who reach out because something clicked in their world, not yours.

The launch is the first honest milestone

It’s really painful when leaders treat a launch like a climax.

Actually, a launch is closer to a checkpoint.

It shouldn’t tell the world you’re ready; it should tell you whether the world is ready to hear what you tried to say.

It tells you whether your positioning is clear enough, whether the value is legible to someone without context, whether you’ve been solving the right pains and problems, and whether your homework has actually translated into something externally obvious.

It shows whether your momentum is visible beyond your own Slack channels, and whether the story has reached a point where it can hold itself up without internal scaffolding. It shows whether you’ve built something that intersects with a real shift happening out in the market, not just inside the team.

And yes, the outside world can be a little cruel… but mostly it’s just uninterested unless your narrative intersects with something already moving in their world.

The morning after a launch, that uncomfortable, anticlimactic, revealing moment, is where your real work begins.

How to close the gap

Prove the story before you promote it.

Don’t take a new narrative straight to the market. Run it through your sales team first. They are your fastest stress-test. If a rep can’t explain the story cleanly on a call, or feels the need to “pad” it, the narrative isn’t ready.

A good narrative should raise confidence in sales, not anxiety.

Test the positioning in real conversations.

It’s easy to fall for your own copy when the only people reading it are on your side.

Take it to prospects who don’t care about your backstory, or customers who will tell you the truth

Listen for:

• where they lean in
• where they hesitate
• where the phrasing feels thin
• where they restate it in better language

You’ll learn more in five real conversations than in five rounds of messaging reviews.

Treat the launch as the beginning of validation, not the conclusion of it.

Most leaders expect the launch to be a “moment”, but you need to reframe it as a checkpoint.

“We can absolutely create a strong moment, but we should treat it as directional rather than definitive. The real signal comes from post-launch conversations, which we’ll use to shape the story once we see how it behaves in the real world.”

Have follow-up plans too: how can you introduce v1.1 to continue building momentum?

Increase your reliance on evidence.

A story held together by optimism falls apart fast. A story held together by proof becomes self-sustaining.

Your evidence can be small — a customer quote, a strong beta, a repeated pattern in sales calls… The size doesn’t matter. Frequency does.

Borrow clarity from customers

Customers will always describe the value in language cleaner, simpler, and more grounded than whatever you wrote on a slide. Use it. Build around it.

If you find yourself writing something clever but no customer has said (or would every say) it, throw it away.

Make sure the momentum you’re claiming is visible from the outside.

Teams often claim internal movement like technical architecture work, new foundations, exciting prototypes… all things that the market cannot see yet.

Launch things the market can see and notice.

Strong stories come from reality

A good launch is the result of a story that has already been proven: in sales calls, in customer conversations, in the patterns you see across your pipeline.

When the story is grounded in evidence, the launch isn’t a dramatic climax. It simply makes the truth visible.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post Why your launch didn’t land appeared first on Building Momentum.

Teams default to obsessing over features because features are tangible. They’re what you can ship, demo, and polish. But customers don’t buy features, they buy meaning. In B2B, that meaning has to resonate with every person in the room:

• The champion who discovers your product
• The manager who will be administering it
• The IT team that scrutinise security and integrations
• The executives who weigh strategy and risks

If you give them all the same pitch, you’ll get a polite nod at best, and blank stares at worst. The result is no momentum.

The fix is building a value proposition system. Not a slogan, not a homepage tagline, but a framework designed to land across your entire buying group.

Here’s what that system looks like.

1. Segment like you mean it

“Know your audience” is a cliché. But what actually works is mapping your stakeholders as rigorously as you map your ICP.

Most teams stop at shallow, surface-level personas that capture demographics but miss motivations, pains, and goals. That’s only half the job. You need to understand all the buyers you’ll meet in your journey, especially the ones you’re marketing and selling to.

Map what value means to them: where they are now, where they want to get to, and what you give them to help them get there.

• Users: time back, reduced headaches, faster workflows.
• Executives: lower costs, reduced risk, revenue impact.
• Managers: clearer oversight, balanced workload, stronger results.
• IT: fewer security risks, smoother integrations, higher reliability.
• Partners: new revenue streams, stickier relationships.

Stop guessing and start validating. Test your messaging through sales conversations, your website, and real reactions. If people don’t nod and say, “yes, that’s me,” you’re not done.

2. Ruthless clarity

If someone has to decode your value prop, you’ve already lost. Clarity wins every time.

The temptation is to dress it up with buzzwords: “next-gen,” “cutting-edge,” “AI-powered.” But clarity isn’t about sounding innovative. It’s about making the benefit obvious. Think about the words your buyers actually use and the concepts they’ll instantly react to. In other writing I’ve called this memeable positioning: clarity should be easy to share and transmit.

I ask teams to write their value prop as a tabloid headline:

• Bad: “Unlock efficiency with our advanced workforce orchestration solution.”
• Good: “Cut onboarding time in half.”

If clarity isn’t baked in, people revert to the path of least resistance. They ignore your pitch entirely. The clearer the language, the harder it is to ignore.

3. Translate features into benefits

Teams fall in love with listing features, assuming the audience will connect the dots on their own. Buyers don’t want to do translation work. Every feature is just a mechanism. The benefit is what actually shifts behavior or outcomes. If you can’t articulate that shift, the feature won’t land.

The fix is forcing every feature through the “so what” test:

• Real-time dashboards → “Spot revenue leaks instantly.”
• Automated payroll compliance → “Never pay a fine again.”
• Role-based access controls → “Keep sensitive data secure without slowing down your team.”

A feature is only useful when it delivers a benefit buyers can repeat. That’s the level where messaging sticks. I’ve described this in my post on value nuggets: value > benefits > features > proof.

This is exactly what Xerox did, to sell more printers to schools.

4. Tell the delta story

The problem isn’t usually a weak product, but a weak contrast. Stakeholders don’t buy the thing, they buy the difference it makes. Without detailing a vivid gap between today and tomorrow, there’s no urgency – and thus, no value.

The clearer you can describe what they’re missing out on, the easier it is for someone to choose change over inertia.

Paint the before-and-after with numbers, not adjectives:

• “Today you spend three hours reconciling invoices manually. With our tool, it’s five minutes. That’s fifteen hours a week back to your team.”
• “Today you’re exposed to compliance risk in 10 countries. With us, it’s zero.”

Differentiation isn’t about piling on features. Differentiation only exists in the mind of the customer – unfortunately, you can’t just declare it, you have to discover it.

5. Show, don’t decorate

Words can describe, but visuals make it real. A crisp story loses its power if the supporting imagery is generic or decorative. Proof visuals give credibility to your claims. Story visuals let your audience feel the improvement. Together, they do the heavy lifting of building trust and connection.

Proof visuals make claims credible: ROI stats, adoption curves, customer logos. Story visuals make the journey tangible: screenshots, workflows, quick clips that show the pain disappearing. You need both.

Visuals don’t just tell a story. They help build the business case. A CFO is more likely to believe a sharp chart than a clever tagline. An IT lead will trust a clear security workflow diagram more than a vague claim. That’s why your visuals need to do real work.

6. Build the loop

Positioning only works if your team believes it. The first version of your value proposition is never the final one. Markets shift, competitors adapt, and customers learn fast.

The only way to stay sharp is to treat your value story like a product. It’s something you test, refine, and release in iterations. Teams that view it as fixed end up recycling the same mistakes. Teams that build a loop get compounding gains every quarter.

The strongest teams run regular GTM retrospectives:

• Which pitches consistently closed?
• Which objections showed up on repeat?
• Where did the story fall flat?

Then they feed those insights back into the system. Clear value propositions help build rep conviction and confidence. When they pitch, they do so with belief – and their consistency in execution drives more trusted signals back into the loop.

Messaging is never done. If you’re not iterating your value story, you’re falling behind. The positioning loop is a cycle: clarity builds belief, belief drives execution, execution sharpens the story.

Most companies think a value proposition is a sentence. They’re wrong.

A real value proposition is a system. It’s a cheat code that lets you convey dozens of things at once: who you serve, what changes for them, and why it matters.

If you treat it like a slogan, your messaging will flop. Treat it like a system, and your story will resonate, your team will believe it, and momentum will follow.

The product doesn’t sell itself. The story of the difference it makes does. And a value proposition system is how you make that story land with every person in the room.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post How to build a value proposition that resonates with every stakeholder appeared first on Building Momentum.

Most customer interviews stay surface-level. Try as you might, you keep getting polite answers about workflows, tooling preferences, and general frustrations.

You nod along, take notes, and push a little to try and extract something meaningful. But more often than not, you walk away with a wishlist of “nice-to-haves”, or the same vague complaints you already knew.

What you don’t get is the stuff that actually drives decisions.

You don’t hear about the internal tensions and the pressure to prove ROI on a new initiative. You don’t hear about the awkward leadership conversation that made them rethink their priorities, or the missed target that quietly tanked morale.

You don’t get the emotion behind the decision-making; the sense of urgency, frustration, or even fear that pushes someone to act. And without that layer of insight, it’s hard to create messaging and positioning that actually lands.

People don’t search, switch, or buy because of abstract pain points or vague value props. They take action only when something hits a nerve, and
when your story mirrors their experience.

But how are you supposed to get there?

That’s where this question comes in:

“When you’ve had a horrible day and want to throw your laptop out the window, what’s happened?”

It’s one of the most useful questions I’ve come across in customer interviews, and I first heard it from my PMM partner, Alicia Carney.

It seems simple, maybe even a bit fluffy, but the emotional weight it carries makes it a goldmine for real insight.

This question doesn’t ask about budgets or roadmaps or specific product needs. It asks about pressure and friction, the moments that tip people over the edge. It’s those emotional spikes that give you something to anchor your messaging and positioning around.

Alicia shared a brilliant example of this from her time at a climate tech startup. She was speaking to a Group Product Manager at a fintech scaleup. On paper, this was a strong buyer profile: commercially minded, accountable for revenue, working in a growth-stage company.

When Alicia asked whether a climate API would ever make it onto her roadmap, the answer was blunt: “No, this isn’t relevant to us. I only prioritise based on incremental revenue.”

She didn’t just say no, but it was the kind of response that says, “Why are we even having this conversation?” The energy shifted, and the door started to close.

But then Alicia asked the laptop-out-the-window question…

The same PM opened up.

“Some days I feel like I’m working my ass off for this company to get richer. I feel lost and under-appreciated. I love my team and want to stay to support them, but I wish I had more of a sense of meaning and purpose here.”

Same person, but a completely different story.

And that’s the point.

There’s often a huge gap between how someone initially responds to a product question and what’s actually going on underneath.

In this case, the product felt irrelevant in isolation. But when framed through the lens of purpose and emotional impact, it became something else entirely. It became a vehicle to help her champion a new initiative. To push a meaningful project internally. To find more alignment between her personal values and her day-to-day work.

That shift didn’t just change Alicia’s understanding of the buyer, it shaped how she positioned the product. It helped her move from describing a feature (a robust API) to telling a more powerful story: this is your chance to pitch something that aligns with both business growth and personal purpose.

From that insight, she built messaging and enablement that reflected both commercial value and human motivation. She reframed the product around helping customers lead new conversations, pitch bold ideas to leadership, and ultimately make change happen from within.

And all of that started with a question that wasn’t about the product at all.

If your interviews keep circling the same abstract pain points, or you’re struggling to uncover what actually drives urgency, try that question.

Don’t just ask what tools they use or what’s missing. Ask what happens on the days that break them, because that’s where the real story begins… and that’s what you build your message around.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post The customer question that cuts through BS appeared first on Building Momentum.

As product marketers, we often don’t hold budget and companies know that. So we don’t get cold emailed, cold-called, actively chased by anyone (except the spammy list sellers using Gmail accounts). 

But it’s a different story for the rest of your colleagues. Message your demand-gen friends, your rev ops team, or your HR reps and find out.

They’re swimming in sales outreaches, ads, and marketing slop every week.

… now ask them how many they actually engaged with.

The reality of modern marketing

The answer will be the same: They’ll archive emails, reject calls, ignore LinkedIn messages.

Now ask them how they react to paid marketing: Google ads for high intent keywords will be the only ads they’ll actually remember engaging with.

Social ads? Mostly wasted unless it’s super relevant, timely, and actually interesting. (Trust me, this is rare).  

Sponsored content? They’ll feel cheated when they realise it’s an advertorial.

They’ll even visit website pages with preconceptions on what they’re looking for, and if they don’t see it, they’ll bounce. 

The average B2B buyer (without speaking down about the general population) is smarter than the average consumer. They’re sharp. They’re critical. They clock the format, skim the tone, and make a snap call on whether it’s worth their time. If it feels low-effort or generic, they’re out.

This is the reality: your work has to earn its way. If you’re not meeting buyers on their terms with sharp positioning, relevant messaging, and an actual point, they won’t give you a second glance.

How this shapes your positioning and messaging

If you’ve read this newsletter before, you’ll have read this before: The definition of positioning is to ‘occupy a space in the mind of your customer’.

So your job as a product marketer is to know exactly what’s in your customer’s head to identify the gap that exists.

You can’t build positioning based solely on how your customer uses your product and the first-order outcomes: you have to consider your product is a tiny part of their overall lives.

One of the most common things I try to help PMMs understand when reviewing their messaging is that unless you’ve found something that catches the prospect’s attention, your positioning, even if the core message is great, is going to be ignored.

It’s like one of those ‘hook a duck’ games at a funfair. If you don’t make your positioning (the duck, in this stupid metaphor) eye-catching, attractive, persuasive, and unique with a huge hook, it’s just going to float on by and get lost amongst all the other ducks (in this case, the millions of other messages your prospect is subjected to each year).

So when you’re assessing your messaging, think: why would the buyer pay attention to your duck?

• What exactly does your buyer believe about this category? Not just what they say on sales calls — what do they really think? What baggage are they carrying from past tools, broken promises, or overhyped solutions?
• What assumptions are they carrying? What do they think they already know about your product type or approach? What are they wrong about — and how will you change that?
• What have they tried before? And why didn’t it work? If you’re not speaking to that pain, your value won’t feel urgent.
• What makes them ignore things? What words, phrases, formats, or ideas are they numb to? What do they associate with BS?
• What would make them stop scrolling? What hits hard enough that it disrupts the mental autopilot and makes them say: “Wait, that’s me.”

If your messaging doesn’t tap into that, it’s not differentiated… it’s invisible.

How this changes your sales narrative

Another oft-used concept on this newsletter: Focus + Confidence = Momentum.

A common error is thinking that ‘prioritisation’ is the sole definition of focus. Focus also means clarity. You need to know a niche, specific type of customer with extreme empathy and context.

Only then will you not just understand the customer, but be able to pre-empt their reaction. You need to embody their spirit, perception, and thought process.

Maybe it’s just how my brain works, but when I’m writing positioning or building anything, I’m running simulations in my head to imagine the conversations, figure out what happens next, and how my work influences the customer when you’re not in the room.

Being able to think in the customer’s shoes means your sales narratives aren’t reactive — they’re already anticipating what happens next.

• Can your narrative confidently explain why now? What’s the compelling moment or shift that makes this the right time to act — and how clearly does that come through in your deck, your one-pager, your demo flow?
• Does it paint the risk of doing nothing? Not just what your product enables, but what the buyer stands to lose by staying stuck in the status quo?
• Does it show you understand what already lives in the buyer’s head? Their internal blockers, priorities, pressure from leadership — and how your solution meets them where they are, without needing it spelled out?

If not, your narrative’s going to miss the mark.

How this should change your marketing

Your marketing isn’t fighting for attention in a vacuum. It’s scrapping for attention in a market that’s oversaturated with teams firing off campaigns, chasing MQLs, and clinging to whatever worked last quarter: SEO hacks, influencer collabs, and 12 variations of the same whitepaper.

So what wins?

Clarity. Relevance. Proof. Urgency. Distinctiveness. 

It’s not just about running ads or publishing content. Your marketing has to answer the right unspoken question in the buyer’s mind. Not just “Why should I care?”, but “Is this actually for me, right now?”

And not in 400 words or a 12-slide carousel either; in the first glance, the first line, the first moment. Because that’s where most marketing dies.

Most marketing teams are under pressure to churn out deliverables. But connection is what earns attention. And attention is what earns action.

Too many teams start with the format, then work backwards. It’s not about how polished the carousel is. It’s about whether it says something the buyer already half-knows but hasn’t quite heard phrased like that before.

When you get that right, when you reflect their reality back at them in a way that feels fresh, specific, and grounded, the format almost doesn’t matter.

Great marketing starts with the buyer. Their context. Their problem. Their frustration. Their moment.

Start there. Because the buyer doesn’t care — not until your message stands out like the only duck with a hook worth grabbing. 

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post Your buyer doesn’t care (but it’s your job is to change that) appeared first on Building Momentum.

Before we get into it, please know this isn’t about one specific situation, but it’s a recurring pattern I’ve seen firsthand, heard from other PMMs, and watched unfold repeatedly. And it’s definitely not true of every org.

In my first official PMM role at a midmarket, ‘old-school’ SaaS company, we worked with two types of product managers: a technical PM and a commercial PM.

The technical PM owned product delivery: engineering, integrations, and ensuring the product experience aligned with back-office operations and processes. They weren’t just focused on execution, they were thinking about how to build a scalable, reliable foundation that could support growth and long-term success.

The commercial PM was responsible for commercial success: pricing, the feature roadmap, sales feedback, competitive positioning, and aligning product decisions with broader market needs. They weren’t just thinking about what to build, they were thinking about why it mattered and how it would drive growth.

And then there was us, in product marketing, driving product launches, positioning and messaging, sales enablement, marketing campaigns, and making sure everything connected back to the business impact.

The shift from specialization to survival

But over the last 10 years, both PMs and PMMs have been stretched thin, forced into becoming jacks-of-all-trades. Especially in startups, where companies prioritize agility and speed over clear specialization.

PMs were told to be the ‘CEO of the product,’ PMMs were handed the lofty title of ‘CMO of the product.’

But what actually happened? The ‘CEO of the product’ role was left vacant.

Sales leadership stepped into the gap, not because they were best suited for it, but because someone had to own the business outcomes. When short-term revenue wins became the priority, long-term commercial strategy fell by the wayside.

Product managers became backlog managers, caught in the cycle of delivering features without owning their impact. They do discovery, they ensure good UX, but they rarely drive the commercial outcomes that define a product’s success.

And on the product marketing side, the ‘CMO of the product’ title never really materialized. PMMs got spread even thinner, expected to cover enablement, demand gen, launches, and GTM without real influence over product strategy. We bring market insights, positioning, and messaging, yet too often, we’re left applying a coat of polish to decisions made without us.

The problem: execution without strategy

So instead of a true “CEO-CMO” partnership driving the product, we have two roles drowning in execution.

Reacting instead of leading.

Shipping instead of shaping.

Disconnected from what actually makes products successful: a sharp vision, disciplined execution, and a clear path to commercial impact.

It’s time to demand more

PMs need to do more than deliver features, they need to own the business outcomes.

Every roadmap decision should be taken with revenue impact, competitive differentiation, and market positioning in mind.

If they’re not thinking that way, they’re not doing their jobs.

PMMs: take back your influence

Stop waiting for a seat at the strategy table. Take it.

Force commercial thinking into roadmap discussions. Challenge feature priorities that don’t drive growth, and ensure the product isn’t just built, but built to win.

Otherwise, we’re just putting lipstick on a backlog. The best PM-PMM partnerships don’t just ship features. Together, they shape products that win.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post Your PMs need to step up: demand more from them appeared first on Building Momentum.

The relationship between product marketing and sales is weird. On paper, we’re on the same side. In reality? We speak different languages, operate on different timelines, and have entirely different incentives.

That’s why so many PMMs struggle to get sales to use their messaging. They create positioning that sounds great in a slide deck but doesn’t hold up in a real sales conversation. Sales reps ignore it, not because they don’t care, but because it doesn’t help them win.

If your messaging doesn’t align with how they actually sell; how they engage with prospects, handle objections, and close deals… then it’s useless. A tagline alone won’t move pipeline. A clever framework won’t make quota. Messaging only matters if it helps sales reps do their job better, faster, and with more confidence.

The core issue? Most product marketers don’t think like sales reps. They don’t fully understand how reps make decisions, how they prioritize deals, or what actually happens on a sales call. And if you don’t get that, you’re not going to build messaging and GTM strategies that actually work in the real world.

Sales is a game of incentives and priorities

Here’s what I’ve learned about sales after years of working closely with reps. It’s not a one-size-fits-all playbook, but these patterns have held true for me more often than not.

Sales isn’t just about pitching a product. It’s about constantly weighing tradeoffs.

Incentives shape prioritization

Reps are coin-operated. As Charlie Munger famously said, “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.” Sales compensation is usually tied to quotas, commissions, and short-term sales performance incentives. A rep’s income often depends on hitting or exceeding their target, so every deal they pursue is a calculated risk.

If a prospect looks like a long shot or has a complex buying process, the rep might deprioritize them in favor of lower-effort, higher-certainty deals. If your messaging and GTM strategy doesn’t clearly help them close more deals faster, they won’t use it. Reps don’t just chase leads; they calculate the potential commission impact of every deal, constantly evaluating pipeline conversion rates, and adjusting their focus accordingly to maximize earnings.

Not every prospect is equal. A good rep is always calculating: Is this deal worth my time? Some buyers will close fast with little effort. Others will drag on for months. Reps prioritize accordingly because time is their most valuable resource. 

Time-to-close often outweighs deal size. Depending on your ICP, a quick-win $50K deal is often more attractive than a $200K deal that takes six months to land. Every minute spent on a dead-end deal is time taken away from a more promising opportunity.

Reps don’t have the luxury of chasing bad fits. If your messaging doesn’t help them quickly qualify and disqualify leads, they won’t use it. This is why I recommend being contentious and niche: messaging should make it obvious who is and isn’t a fit.

A sales rep is going to evaluate whether a prospect is a good fit, what their budget looks like, and how long the sales cycle is expected to take. They think about how each deal will impact their commission, factoring in quota attainment and whether the effort required to close a deal is worth the potential payout. If the numbers don’t add up, they’ll deprioritize and move on.

Confidence and credibility win deals

Quota pressure shapes behavior. If end-of-quarter is near and a deal isn’t progressing fast enough, reps will pivot to lower-hanging fruit. This often means shifting focus to existing customers, leaning on discounting, or prioritizing prospects who have shown the most urgency.

Confidence is everything. If a rep doesn’t believe in a pitch, they won’t use it. They need to walk into every call knowing they can win. This belief doesn’t come from blind optimism, but from real, tangible proof that the product delivers results. If they don’t feel equipped, they’ll revert to what feels safe: sticking to familiar talking points or avoiding the pitch altogether.

Confidence is also tied to knowing how to handle objections in real-time. Sales is 30% delivering a perfect pitch and 70% about adapting under pressure to convince and persuade. A rep who feels equipped to answer tough questions, counter competitor claims, and steer the conversation toward the right outcome will sell more effectively. PMMs need to arm them with these insights. It’s not just about the product’s strengths; it’s about how to communicate them persuasively when challenged.

They care about relationships. The best reps see themselves as trusted advisors, not just deal-closers. That means they need messaging that enables valuable conversations. If they feel like their pitch is too transactional or doesn’t align with how they build trust with prospects, they won’t use it. Great messaging helps reps guide buyers, solve their problems, and position themselves as credible experts—not just people trying to hit quota.

Most PMMs don’t account for this. They focus on what to say, but not how a sales rep will actually use it—under pressure, in a live conversation where credibility, confidence, and adaptability matter just as much as the message itself.

How to build for the sales mindset

If you want your messaging to actually drive revenue, you need to build it through the lens of a sales conversation.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to mentally run sales conversations in your head. I do this constantly—predicting how a rep will position the product, anticipating objections, and thinking through how a buyer will react. If you can’t visualize how your messaging plays out in a real conversation, it’s not ready.

Sit in on sales calls. If you’re not regularly listening to how prospects respond to your messaging, you’re working off theory, not reality.

Ask reps what’s working. Forget formal surveys… have real conversations. What messaging do they naturally lean on? Where do they get stuck? Their behavior will tell you what’s useful and what’s fluff.

Build messaging that solves real sales problems. Sales doesn’t need another tagline; they need messaging that tackles real objections, positions your product against competitors, and gives them confidence in every call.

Make it frictionless to use. If your messaging requires reps to memorize a new framework or shift their entire pitch structure, they won’t adopt it. Instead, integrate it into what they already use through battlecards, talk tracks, pitch decks, and discovery call scripts.

Test and iterate. Your messaging is never “done.” Just like sales reps refine their pitch over time, your positioning should evolve based on real-world feedback.

Build like a seller

If you don’t know how a sales call plays out; if you’ve never watched a deal unfold in real time; if you don’t understand how reps think about prioritizing deals, you’re not building messaging that moves pipeline.

So before you finalize your next positioning doc, ask yourself – Would this actually help close a deal? Would a rep want to use this? If the answer isn’t a clear yes, go back and make it stronger.

Great PMMs don’t just create messaging. They engineer it to be so practical, so relevant, and so deeply tied to how sales works that reps can’t afford to ignore it.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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One of the toughest lessons I’ve learned in product marketing is that customer research doesn’t matter if no one uses it.

Product marketers love doing research. We geek out over customer interviews, win/loss reports, usage data, surveys, you name it. We spend hours synthesizing insights, finding patterns, and integrating it into our work.

And then?

It sits in a Notion doc. A slide deck. A beautifully crafted report that no one reads. It feels awful, knowing the effort that went into the research execution and detailed analysis… only for the business to just keep making decisions based on gut feel.

Research without action is wasted effort. The research we do as product marketers only drives impact when it’s impossible to ignore. So, here’s how you do that.

Make customer research essential by design

If you want customer research to matter, you need to connect it to real business needs from day one. Here’s how:

Tie every research project to a business decision

Customer insights aren’t useful in isolation. Before you do any research, ask:

• What decision does this research need to influence?
• Who will use this insight, and how?
• What’s the business outcome if we act on this?

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Weak research goal: “Let’s run interviews to learn more about our ICP.”
Strong research goal: “We’re seeing slower sales cycles in mid-market deals. Let’s interview prospects to uncover specific objections and refine our messaging.”

Weak research goal: “Let’s validate our persona assumptions.”
Strong research goal: “Sales is struggling to close deals with finance leaders. Let’s talk to buyers in that role and identify what they need to justify purchasing.”

Research should be a means to an end, not an academic exercise. If you can’t map your research to a critical business challenge, reconsider whether it’s worth doing.

Create demand for your insights

If your research isn’t used, it’s usually because it wasn’t designed to be useful, necessary, and aligned with advancing key business initiatives.

The easiest way to guarantee your work gets ignored is to spring it on stakeholders after the fact.

Instead, make your research process collaborative from the start:

• Talk to your colleagues in sales, product, and success teams before kicking off research. Get specific: What patterns are they seeing? Where do deals get stuck? What objections come up most often?
• Engage product early. Go beyond just asking what behaviors are blocking adoption,work together to identify what research could help inform roadmap decisions, improve retention, or eliminate friction.
• Align with leadership. Don’t just ask what they wish they knew. Identify the strategic decisions they’re struggling with, and structure your research to give them the clarity they need.

This isn’t just about gathering input, it’s about making your research indispensable by directly influencing critical business decisions. When stakeholders help shape the questions, they’re far more likely to use the answers.

Validate assumptions, don’t just explore

Research focused on pure discovery is a distraction. You already have internal assumptions, use those to focus on research that validates what you believe to be true while uncovering what you don’t yet know. This ensures your findings are not only actionable but also drive real decisions that help you move faster and with confidence.

Instead of starting from a blank slate, begin by outlining key hypotheses based on existing data, customer conversations, and team insights. Then structure your research to confirm, refine, or challenge those assumptions, leading to clear next steps.

Discovery and validation shouldn’t be separate; they should work together in every research initiative. Don’t just ask open-ended questions; use the end of an interview to test different messaging options, show a mockup of a webpage, or present alternative value propositions. Ask customers how they perceive them, what resonates, and what feels off. This approach ensures that every insight isn’t just theoretical: it’s immediately tested, refined, and ready to drive action.

Translate research into decisions, not just insights

The fastest way to kill momentum? Deliver a 20-slide research report that no one has time to read.

Instead, make it stupidly easy for decision-makers to take action.

Try structuring your research deliverables like this:

• One-pager format: Summarize key insights, clear takeaways, and the action items that matter.
• Make insights instantly usable: Don’t just document customer pain points, turn them into real, testable assets. Convert research into ready-to-go sales decks, refined pitch scripts, or A/B testable website copy that teams can implement immediately.
• Decision-based recommendations: Clearly outline what should change based on your research, and why. Example:

“Many customers say they are confused by pricing.”
“50% of lost deals cite pricing complexity. We should simplify our structure by moving from per-seat to usage-based pricing.”

People are overwhelmed with information. Your job is to simplify and operationalize it so it actually drives decisions.

Keep insights relevant and embedded in every day use

Customer insights aren’t static,they should evolve with real changes in market dynamics, competitive shifts, or strategic priorities. If research becomes disconnected from business needs, it loses value.

To ensure research remains impactful:

• Create a centralized, living research hub (Notion, Confluence, etc.) where insights are easy to find and updated as needed.
• Refresh research only when necessary. Don’t update just for the sake of it. Refresh when something has materially changed that impacts your understanding of customers.
• Share insights in context. Make them a natural part of sales enablement, product roadmap discussions, and strategy meetings so they directly inform key decisions.
• Use the right research type for the right job. Qualitative research is ideal for discovering new patterns and exploring the customer landscape, while quantitative research helps validate those patterns, segment audiences, and measure impact at scale. Knowing when to use each ensures that insights are both rich and actionable.

Customer research isn’t just a box to check… but only if it’s plugged directly into your company’s biggest challenges and priorities.

Because the best research is the research that gets used.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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Hello – it’s been a while, but I’m getting back into regular writing on Building Momentum. It’s been a crazy few years in my day job! At some point I’ll write about what I’ve learnt about scaling product marketing through obscene revenue growth, moving from single-product to multi-product, and the business change management required to support that.

But for now, I hope to get back into weekly posts. If you have any topics you’d like me to cover, drop me a message.

Get my new free positioning course

Over the holidays, I created Stand Out in 7 Days – my new free positioning course to help you go from drab to fab.

In just 7 days, you’ll learn how to:

Clarify your unique value
Build messaging that grabs attention
Attract the right customers (and close more deals)

It’s packed with actionable insights, templates, and tips from my 15+ years of product marketing and positioning experience.

Sign up today and your first lesson will land in your inbox immediately.

The Fat Duck. Dinner. Sublimotion. Oaxen Krog. Geranium. The Jane. Momofuko Ko.

Believe it or not, they’re not made up words. They’re the names of some of the world’s hottest, most acclaimed restaurants in the world.

If you’ve ever been to a Michelin-starred restaurant, you’ll be familiar with one particular feeling. You’ll get there, look at the menu, and you consciously plan to get a McDonald’s on the way home.

The portion sizes are tiny. The menu is limited. Adaptations are rare; off-menu requests are often not allowed.

And yet… these restaurants are consistently booked out. You have more luck getting into Harvard than getting a booking at French Laundry. Diners willingly pay premium prices for what might feel, at first glance, like a constrained and rigid experience.

Why? Because those constraints are what make them extraordinary. The way the chef has designed the menu, the dishes, the entire experience transmits and embodies the positioning of the restaurant.

If the definition of positioning is to “occupy a space in the mind of your customer”, these restaurants are renowned for crafting an identify that’s impossible to overlook.

Unlike your casual fast-food takeouts, chain eateries, or gastropubs, these restaurants don’t deign to cater to everyone. They don’t serve spaghetti alongside sushi, or offer endless variations.

Instead, they focus on a few curated dishes. They refine each one until it’s unforgettable (and therefore, occupies a space in the mind of the customer). The scarcity of a limited menu, refined portion sizes, and the year-long waiting list, create value.

How is this relevant to B2B SaaS product marketing? Well, the same principles apply in competitive positioning.

Be more Fat Duck, less Cheesecake Factory

The Cheesecake Factory is a marvel of indecision. It’s 20 pages of options, with everything from Tex-Mex to Italian, burgers to brunch. It caters to everyone because their target customer is, well, everyone.

Let’s compare this to The Fat Duck: a three-Michelin-starred restaurant known for its experimental, multi-sensory approach to dining that’s designed to evoke nostalgia, surprise, and delight.

From the playful “Sound of the Sea,” where seafood is served alongside an iPod playing ocean sounds, to the whimsical meat fruit designed to look like a mandarin, every dish is a masterclass in storytelling, precision, and refinement.

Every detail from the ingredients to the presentation is deliberate, reinforces a distinct identity (a position) that lingers in the customer’s mind long before they arrive, and long after they leave.

In SaaS, trying to cater to everyone with every feature or use case often leads to diluted messaging and unclear value propositions. Just like The Cheesecake Factory’s sprawling menu, this approach makes it hard for customers to see what makes you special and why they should choose you.

What this can teach us about B2B product marketing

The magic of Michelin-starred restaurants lies in their clarity. What they do not do is as important, if not more important, than what they do.

To stand out, you can’t be everything to everyone

It’s so tempting to spray-and-pray multiple use-cases in the early days to get traction and try to see what lands. I’ve known CROs who pitch ten different versions of the same product each day – just don’t tell the product team.

This is a disservice not just to your product, but to your entire business strategy. You don’t learn anything.

Instead (and let’s be honest, this is so basic but everyone needs a reminder), you need to:

1. Understand the market (and by market, we mean a group of customers with similar needs)
2. Identify their underserved needs
3. Craft a solution that meets their needs better than anyone else

Simple, right?

The more clear you can be on what you do, for whom, and what they get from it, the faster you’ll learn and the more effective you’ll become.

Refine like your business depends on it (well, it does)

It’s important to test your strategy, not just whether you can build, market, or sell something.

My friend, PMM life partner, and fellow GTM Playbook course instructor Alicia is one of the most holistic, iterative product marketers I know when it comes to GTM strategy. At multiple companies, she’s helped them learn the right go-to-market mix of customers, product, pricing and positioning they need to grow successfully.

Check out the interview below to find Alicia’s tips on defining and validating your ideal customer profile.

This is probably my favorite point from the interview: In customer development interviews, you need to ask open-ended questions about the customer’s challenges, priorities, and decision-making processes, not just what they think of your product.

Why? You need to solve a customer need, but you need to make sure someone has the capabilities and motivations to solve them in the first place. For example, in the climate tech space, Alicia validated that fintech companies were interested in sustainability, but couldn’t move fast enough – so tested a different industry and saw just as much engagement with a faster sales cycle.

Positioning is strategy, and everything is your product

Whether it’s the iPod experience at Fat Duck, the luxury at Geranium, or the choreographed movement of the waiters at Eleven Madison Park, your positioning shows up in every detail.

It’s not just your website or your sales deck you need to think about. Your positioning influences how your sales reps talk to customers, the attitude they use on the phones. It changes the way your partners represent you to their customers, how your website agency design your site, and how recruiters hire new colleagues into your business.

So you’d better work hard on it and make sure it’s optimized around your best-fit customer.

And from your customer’s perspective, they don’t just buy your product. Especially if it’s SaaS, they’re not buying access to some code. They’re buying the entire experience around it. They’re buying into your sales process, constantly evaluating whether it’s worth their time in a thousand microdecisions every conversation. They’re buying your customer service, with trust as their currency of choice. They’re buying status, and whether deploying your software is going to earn them a promotion.

So when it comes to refinement, make like an obsessed executive chef.

Be proud of what you do (and spin your tiny menu)

In tough competitive evaluations and RFIs, not having certain products or features can cost you marks. But that’s not a reason to give in.

Say, for example, there’s a prospect looking for 10 different features. You only have 7 of their key needs, while a competitor can deliver on all 10. Does that mean you should give up, decry your product a failure, and reduce your ambitions?

Absolutely not.

Your business chose to focus on those 7 features for a reason. As a product marketer, sales rep, or product manager it’s your job to make sure that reason is clear, known, and can be communicated with confidence.

Remember: Michelin-starred restaurants have tiny menus for a reason. When you focus on what you do best and communicate it with confidence, you’ll leave a lasting impression… just like a perfectly curated dining experience.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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Just like your value proposition, you’re going to find most success when you tailor the differentiators you use to two things: the primary stakeholder, and the buyer journey stage.

I learnt the value proposition lesson the hard way, when we launched a new product but had messaged towards executive-level concerns on the homepage – without realising that the folks coming to our website were mostly managers. They didn’t care about the aspirational messaging, and instead needed more tangible content.

It’s exactly the same with the differentiators that you’ll want to call out.

Showcase the wrong differentiators to the wrong person at the wrong time, and you’ll be missing out on impact, momentum, and revenue.

But first, what’s a differentiator?

Your competitive differentiators are just that… what makes you different from your competitors. It’s not your pricing, your product features, or your branding.

I like using the Bain Elements of B2B Value Pyramid to illustrate value and differentiators.

The pyramid starts at the base with “table stakes,” which are the basic requirements and functional elements of value that customers expect from any product. As we move up the pyramid, the elements of value become less tangible and more about the implications of using the product – first within the organization, then what matters to the individual buyer.

The next level is “functional value,” which includes things like product performance and reliability. Above that is “ease of doing business value,” which includes things like responsive customer service and streamlined ordering processes.

Moving further up the pyramid, we come to “individual value,” which includes things like reputation assurance and reduced anxiety. At the top of the pyramid is “inspirational value,” which includes hope, vision, and social responsibility. Here, differentiators aim to align the vendor with the buyer’s cultural and ethical worldview.

The pyramid is a useful tool for understanding your competitive differentiators because it shows that not all differentiators are created equal. The most tangible and functional elements of value may be important, but they may not be what ultimately sets you apart from the competition. By understanding the different levels of value in the pyramid, you can more effectively communicate the unique benefits of your product to each stakeholder at each stage of the buyer journey.

You can read more about the pyramid here.

Take a minute to read through and understand the different groupings: tablestakes, functional value, ease of doing business value, individual value, and inspirational value.

You can’t really create differentiators, only discover them. What is it about your product that draws buyers to you, and not to others?

Aligning value differentiators

My experience suggests that there are two main ways to segment and combine differentiators: by the stakeholder, and the funnel stage. It looks something a bit like this:

Let’s take a look at the two axes.

Differentiators by stakeholder

Just like my failed product launch example above, the type of stakeholder you’re communicating to changes the starting point.

Generally:

• Users are concerned with the day-to-day. They want information features, they want to build a functional understanding of your product.
• Managers want functional information, but they’re looking for benefits too. They want to understand what the product is going to help them achieve over a medium timeframe.
• Execs are more interested in the aspirational direction that your product can support them to achieve in the long-term.

This will definitely vary, but generally I’ve seen these patterns repeated many times over the last ~12 years.

Differentiators by buyer journey

Your buyer journey is not the sales funnel. Hopefully you’ve got a good understanding of the expedition they go on to solve problems and buy solutions.

• At the awareness stage, your differentiators should focus on grabbing attention and building interest. You want to differentiate your product from the competition and highlight its unique value with what matters most to the stakeholder. You’re answering the ‘why’ at this stage.
• At the consideration stage, your differentiators should focus on providing more detailed information about how it addresses the buyer’s specific needs. You want to demonstrate how your product solves their problems better than the competition, and provide evidence of its effectiveness. You’re answering ‘how’ at this stage.
• At the purchase stage, you should focus on reinforcing the buyer’s decision to choose your product by highlighting differentiators that answer and reinforce the specific ‘what’ that each stakeholder is looking for.

Putting these both together

So if we combine both the primary stakeholder and the funnel stage, we get something like this:

At the awareness stage, you want to stand out and resonate with the differentiators that your stakeholder is going to engage with the most.

• For users, that’s things that will make their life easier – time savings, how much more organized they can be, the configurability.
• For managers, it’s about individual value – what do they stand to gain from working with you? Things like reputational assurance or the reduced anxiety they’ll feel using your product.
• For execs, you’ll engage best on inspirational value. Aspirational differentiators that get them pumped up about what they could achieve in the long-term.

During the consideration stage, you’re showcasing ‘how’ your product helps the stakeholder to achieve all the stuff you just said in the awareness stage.

• For users, show functional differentiators, the performance and economic impact of your product.
• For managers, make it real and show how your product differentiators make it easier to do business.
• For execs, it’s individual value differentiators that appeal most at this stage. You’ve said what the long-term vision is, but now the differentiators that matter will give them confidence.

Finally, at the purchase stage your differentiators are not high-level aspirational things – but rather, the extremely tangible components – because you’ve already sold the story and highlighted your unique values that separates you from the pack on the intangible.

• For users, tablestake differentiators will get them motivated. Price, specifications, and compliance.
• For managers, it’s that functional value that will help them – the performance and economic impact
• For execs, differentiators that matter here are about the ease of doing business with your product – configurability, responsiveness, fit, quality, and so on.

An example

Here’s how the matrix might look for a project management tool. See how the potential differentiators at each stage map back to the elements discussed in the B2B Elements of Value pyramid?

So what does this all mean?

Understanding your competitive differentiators is critical to your success – even more so, knowing where and when to use them.

Using the Bain Elements of B2B Value Pyramid and the framework above, you can align them to the needs and priorities of each stakeholder at each stage of the buyer journey. You can stand out from the competition, and provide the right mix of value to the right stakeholders at the right time.

Remember though: differentiators cannot be created; they can only be discovered. By focusing on what makes your product or service unique in the mind of your customer, you can provide value that truly resonates with your customers, build momentum, and find success.

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

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Positioning is what your company says about itself to the world, and can be the difference between being the hottest, must-have software, or the dullest product on earth.

Your positioning will adapt and evolve to remain relevant and effective – or at least, attempt to do so.

But it’s hard to see this in action. Positioning evolves pretty slowly at any company – in years, rather than months. So, in this example, I’ve taken a look at Zendesk – the customer support platform you all know (and if you’re a user, probably hate).

I’ve stepped back in time over 16 years of Internet Archive snapshots to look at how Zendesk positioned themselves, and see what insights we can glean about changes to their target customer, value proposition, frame of reference, and market trends.

But first, when should positioning evolve?

From my previous post on when you should consider repositioning, I called out the following:

• Product offering has legitimately changed – If you’ve made an acquisition, added a new product line, or developed new capabilities that vastly change the outcomes your customers can achieve, it’s time to refresh.
• New unique, unconventional wisdom unlocked – Unconventional wisdom is a great way to stand out from your competitors, re-educate your customers, and develop a strong sales and marketing narrative that drives urgency and demand.
• Customer patterns and feedback – As you win new customers, your ‘best-fit customer’ will change. As you continue to sell and market and support to them, you’ll learn much more about what’s going on in their minds – new hopes, dreams, and fears that can enable stronger positioning.
• Specific sales funnel challenges – Drops in MQLs or closed won rates can be really great indicators that you need to revisit the way you present your brand to the market.

And they still hold true. Building new product features, introducing new concepts or categories to the market, learning about your next ideal customers, and reacting to challenging sales environments cover nearly every reason you might need to change and adapt your positioning.

Zendesk’s positioning evolution

Zendesk is one of the longest-running ‘real’ SaaS businesses that we can look back almost two decades and see how their positioning, messaging, and value proposition has changed.

So… I’ve gone back over the last 16 years, and taken a screenshot of their website homepage hero section. This is the digital version of cutting a tree trunk and learning how old it is and how the conditions have changed each year.

Only in this case, we’re able to understand how Zendesk thought about:

• Their target customers
• Their value proposition
• The frame of reference they use
• Trends affecting the market

You can scroll down to the bottom of this post to see screenshots each year with a brief commentary. But first, let’s take a look at how it’s changed:

What we can learn from Zendesk

Zendesk have been unapologetic to evolve and experiment with positioning over the years, and while we’ll never know the full reasoning or context surrounding their decisions, we’re able to pass some judgement over what has changed – and potentially why.

Target customer: From IT to any company

Zendesk started by targeting agile IT organizations in 2007 but expanded to serve any company, large or small. Very quickly, Zendesk found product/market-fit quickly with a much broader audience, but still kept messaging to appeal to IT user needs throughout.

Value proposition: Reinventing the helpdesk, to the better choice

Straight out of the gate, Zendesk focused on how they were reimagining a boring software category for the new Web 2.0 age. Throughout the years, they’ve played around with several value props including those on speed, customer satisfaction, and – their most famous – “Beautiful customer support software”.

Today, Zendesk have landed on how they help businesses to meet customer needs, set teams up for success, and keep their business in sync.

Frame of reference: From helpdesk to multichannel and more

Unlike many tech darlings, Zendesk didn’t really try to own a frame of reference or create a category. Beginning as a helpdesk (common in the IT world) to ending with customer service software (a much broader framing), Zendesk has always been relatively consistent. Over the years, they’ve adjusted their frame of reference with clarifiers like multi-channel software, beautiful software, powerful platforms, etc.

Market trends: Web 2.0 to speed and scalability

Zendesk has ridden the general waves of B2B tech over the last 16 years. Firstly calling out the Web 2.0 trend of interconnectivity and fun user experiences, to then reiterating the benefits of on-demand (rather than on-premise) software, to gradually evolving as the market moved towards customer support as growth lever through better customer relationships. These can help build urgency and new consideration opportunities, as well as link your positioning to important trends.

Key takeaways

Over 16 years, Zendesk has remained the leader in the industry (not for our lack of trying!) by evolving to reflect changes in the market and customer needs.

Emphasising its core strengths, and staying true to its goal of reinventing the support software industry around the wholesome message of ‘tender loving customer care’ since 2008 is still visible in their tone of voice today. However, the 2013 repositioning as beautifully simple customer service software is probably their most resonant and successful, and still comes up when talking about Zendesk today.

So what can we learn?

• Evolving and broadening your target customer works – once you’re seeing positive shoots of product/market-fit
• Leaning into market trends can help influence your value proposition with the latest cool stuff – and drive new consideration opportunities too
• More than anything, your frame of reference must be from the perspective of your customers – adding clarifiers helps create differentiation here
• As you learn more, you can evolve the value proposition from focusing on features and benefits, to defining the valuable outcomes your customers seek – just don’t take it took far

Zendesk over the years

Below are screenshots from the Zendesk homepage each year according to the Internet Archive.

2007

It’s the summer of 2007, and Zendesk is still in pre-launch mode. Their homepage makes it clear their market: IT teams, looking for modern web 2.0 style software, and they’re bold enough to say they’re reinventing the help desk.

I also copied in their about page, adding more color to Zendesk’s IT team origins – but how they see an opportunity by connecting the features that IT teams care about, with the design and user experience they desire.

2008

Out of beta and using Flash – but see the language that Zendesk is using? Tender loving customer care – probably at stark odds with messaging from other IT help desk providers at the time.

Their hero section dials up the core benefits – elegant and simple, works for everyone, and no downloads or installs.

2009

Still using Flash Player, but we’ve now seen Zendesk jump from being for IT teams to being for any company, large and small. For context, 2009 was when Zendesk raised an undisclosed Series A in March, followed by a $6m Series B in August – undoubtedly this is the year that Zendesk knew they had product/market-fit.

Note their messaging still highlights ‘on-demand’ software, as companies were still getting used to SaaS delivery, but the value their customers are looking for is better customer care.

2010

In 2010 we see Zendesk dial back up the ‘reinvention’ angle, not seen since the first pre-launch homepage. Their header also calls out how it can help companies to engage their customers too, while their rotating callouts focus on core benefits like delivering ‘customer love’, being available ‘any time, any place’, and being ‘beyond SaaS’.

2011

In the December of 2010, Zendesk raise a $19m series C – and get to business. In 2011 they’re claiming 10k+ customers and also do a great job keyword-stuffing their homepage: help desk software, support ticket system, customer support platform.

And we see Zendesk’s messaging become more tangible. Gone is the lofty ‘reinventing’ message – and now it’s just the fastest way to great customer support. Supporting text highlights that Zendesk is agile, smart, and convenient.

2012

The fastest message continues into 2012 but we now see two new messages on their homepage:

• Powerful, yet simple: Positioning to appeal to their core IT team base, but wanting to reach a wider audience with a focus on simplicity.
• Multi-channel customer service software: Positioning to appeal to businesses pushing the boundaries – multi-channel across email, social, phone, chat, and more.

2013

We finally get to the phrase that everyone knows and remembers Zendesk for: beautifully simple customer service software.

We also see a ‘levelling up’ in terms of the overall value and outcome that customers are searching for. Fast customer support isn’t the endgame now – customer satisfaction is the holy grail.

2014

In 2014, Zendesk went public. And I think this homepage is probably an outcome of that, rather than an example of what actually worked well for them at the time.

It’s a good reminder that positioning doesn’t always have to serve your customers – sometimes, it can serve other purposes. In this case, we can speculate that it may have been to tell a story for the retail investor market.

Regardless, Zendesk have levelled up their messaging even higher still, probably to ineffective heights. There’s a lack of tangibility in this core message of ‘being better at customer service’.

2015

I think 2015 is another year where the brand marketers won the argument. Yes, bringing customers and their customers closer together is a good outcome, but it’s probably not the one that businesses are most motivated to achieve.

We do see an introduction of a frame of reference that makes senes: software for better customer service.

2016

The argument between the PMMs and the brand marketers is tipping ever more in the PMMs favour – but not quite. We see more information in the sub-hero section than we do above the fold.

Zendesk helps companies to provide a great overall customer experience. Aspirational enough? No. But clear.

Building customer relationships that are meaningful, personal, and productive. Tangible enough? No – feels like they’re skirting around the concept that “better customer support means customers spend more money”.

2017

The year of the big Zendesk rebrand, using geometric shapes to denote a whole suite of products. Building software for better relationships, great. Lending a hand? Not so sure.

2018

Deliver the best customer experience. Powerful, flexible, scalable customer service and engagement platform. Meeting the needs of any business. Clear, concise, and valuable.

2019

And it seems they found a winner – no changes over a whole year.

2020

We all know what happened in 2020, and this is a great example of reactive positioning. Scaling up faster than everything else is changing. Speaking to the core needs of getting to get up and running quickly, and flexibility to adapt to any need.

2021

Zendesk makes customer service better. Again, a return of ‘better’ – an ambiguous shapeshifter that can mean anything, to anyone – and probably why they use it. Better could mean more flexible to a support manager, more integrated to an IT person, or easier to use for a support agent.

We see Zendesk highlight the value their product delivers to businesses: meeting customer needs, setting team up for success, and keeping business in sync.

2022

Again, onto another winner? No changes for a whole other year.

2023

Even today, you’ll see the same hero header on the homepage.

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

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The post Analysis: 16 years of Zendesk positioning appeared first on Building Momentum.

Quickly after starting at Headstart – an early-stage enterprise HR AI SaaS company – I noticed two major things.

Firstly, our brand identity was corporate and stale.

Just because we were selling to the largest businesses on the planet didn’t mean we were destined to be blue and bland.

Secondly, our mission was to prove that people are more than a piece of paper, and deliver the next generation of diverse, future leaders into business. It was more than a product – it was our responsibility.

How could we inspire action around such an important social movement with a brand look-and-feel that was stuck in the early 00’s?

Here’s how.

But first… Branding vs Positioning

Positioning, if you’re a regular reader, is about occupying a space in the mind of your customer. It’s about being The Thing For Someone (rather than something for everyone), delivering clear and differentiated value, and discriminating against bad-fit prospects.

Branding, on the other hand, is how your positioning is brought to life with the visual look and feel, your messaging and tone of voice, and the vibe you portray to the world. To be successful, branding has to be consistent and recognizable – once you’ve got it, use it – everywhere.

And positioning should always come first. Decide who you are, and then explore how you best show it.

Headstart case study

We started with refreshing our mission, revisiting positioning, and bringing life into our tone of voice.

We said au revoir to ‘Prioritise diverse candidates’ and hello to ‘Making recruiting fair’ – levelling up from benefit to value.

We leaned into contention, opinion, and focused on the dichotomy at stake between discrimination and fairness – we needed to find and activate the radicals in our target market, those who were motivated and engaged to change their approach.

So when it came to the visual identity, we knew what we had to do.

No more ‘typical business branding’. We leaned into a look-and-feel inspired by movements like Extinction Rebellion – bold, brash, chaotic, in your face. Unmissable.

Icons and design elements, sticker visuals, vibrant and bold block colors, big capital letters, thick bold sans-serif fonts.

We thought there’s no better way to visualise our mission than by including humans in our identity. Diverse humans: people of all races, disabilities, backgrounds, styles. Confident humans.

We knew we were onto a winner when we saw the mockup below.

Then… we put it into practice.

Our sales deck no longer looked like a sales deck… It was a manifesto. Big, bold slides. Eye-catching, almost distracting templates designed to surprise.

Our event collateral looked like handouts at a rally, not just a brochure.

Our social accounts were more like that of a cause, than a SaaS company.

We also asked the designer to deliver assets, templates, and elements that we could easily recreate in Canva, to scale brand design without needing continual design support.

So, how much did this cost? How long did it take?

Traditionally, brand redesigns cost tens of thousands, take months, and have to be signed off by a committee of people.

Well, no – that’s simply an unconscious decision that you make.

This took us about five weeks, from start-to-end. By focusing on reusable assets and templates, we could speed up the process, creating assets that we needed and asking the designer to perfect. And approvals were simple: just me and the CEO.

Did it work?

• Qualitatively yes – we received tons of great feedback on it from prospects, partners, and folks in the market.
• Quantitatively? Honestly, who knows. Covid hit just as we rolled it out, so we’ll never know.

But without a question, I’m really proud of how well this came together.

Branding tips for product marketers

Most product marketers will have a tangential relationship with brand: it’s something you might get involved in, but probably just as an aside.

But, product marketing really should be more involved in the whole process.

From identifying and bringing clarity to the target customer, to developing positioning that’s designed to resonate with them, and then representing the customer voice in the creative review room.

But there are a few things you can do to support the process:

• Collate together customer research with business strategy – who your target customer is, why they’re the target customer, and what the opportunity is.
• Provide positioning that links the value your target customers desire back to your product features and benefits. Without clear connections between them and proof points, you can make outrageous claims that aren’t supported by reality – which then creates a bigger gap between the brand and what you can deliver.
• If you have some input over the branding process, push for a small review group – avoid branding by committee.
• Don’t let the branding project run away. Use a tight, well-defined brief that delivers in multiple milestones.
• Think about how you’ll use the branding in conjunction with positioning. Plan with deliverables in mind, but create a simple system of templates and guidelines that you can work with.

Good luck!

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

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Every so often, I’ll see a Twitter or LinkedIn post go viral in the SaaS community and the topic is nearly always the same:

I decided not to request a demo from a SaaS company because they didn’t publish pricing on their website! Imagine how many leads they’re missing out on!!!

And honestly, it grinds my gears a little. And usually, these complainers have something in common: they’re all individual ‘makers’ or from early-stage, pre-PMF startups trying to buy from established SaaS companies that are usually targeted to more mature businesses.

Quite simply, if you (as a buyer) need to know pricing before requesting a demo or getting more information and the company doesn’t publish pricing, they are sending you a message: you are not their target customer.

Why SaaS companies don’t publish pricing

Good go-to-market strategy should discriminate.

Being something for everyone is a waste of time, effort, and focus. Most companies are focused on attracting up to 10% or maybe 20% share of the total market.

As startups mature they are often naturally pulled upmarket, away from serving very small businesses and SMBs who traditionally have lower average contract values (ACV) and higher churn. SMBs can also be expensive to acquire through paid performance marketing, and then still require an inside sales journey.

As companies are pulled upmarket, they win bigger, more mature companies as customers. These traditionally come with larger ACVs and more concrete growth prospects.

The effort to win a $10k customer is about the same as a $30k customer. From there, it’s only a period of experimentation and hiring the right people to get to $100k ACVs. These customers also cost less on the paid performance side, but can still be tended to and won by inside sales teams.

This whole process does leave a gap at the bottom of the market – which is usually quickly filled by other early-stage startups, and the same thing happens.

So as those companies mature, should they craft propositions and a buying experience that works for the 100%? No. They will focus on bigger ICPs, and adapt their marketing, sales, and product strategy accordingly.

It then makes less sense for these companies to publish pricing on their website for a number of reasons.

1. The buyer may not require pricing before getting more information. Larger businesses have more flexible budgets, and if the challenge to solve is important enough, budget can be created.
2. It leaves revenue on the table. Understanding a buyer’s problems before discussing pricing means you can size the proposal as required. A customer with a $1m problem will gladly pay $100k a year to solve, but if you’re setting public pricing at $50k, you’re missing out.
3. For perception. I don’t know about you, but I often feel companies without public pricing are going to take a more custom, solution-oriented approach to my problem. Not publishing pricing can help build perception as a higher-quality service.

What you can do instead

As a product marketer, you might be instructed to hide pricing on the pricing page – regardless of whether it’s the right thing or not – and you want to hedge against it.

And in some cases, you may want to offer hints on your pricing page, especially if you’re working through that transition period.

Here are two different ways you can bridge the gap.

Create an anchor with ‘good, best’ packaging

Defining a reference point on your pricing page can help your customers to understand how your product and value – and therefore, pricing – is likely to compare.

This might be a very low-touch plan that you offer with zero customization capabilities, or very cut down features. You can attach a per-user price, a platform fee, or whatever other value metric makes sense.

Usually, you won’t actually sell this to users – but it’s priced high enough that it’s an easy upsell to the minimum pricing for a basic offer for your ‘best’ plan, the one you actually want to sell.

This creates a anchor in your customer’s mind. If the first plan with not many features is priced at $x, then the recommended package must be higher.

Create an anchor with a competitor comparison

When you’re competing against low-value competitors but have clear, high-value differentiators, you can use this to your advantage.

You can group your competitors together as ‘Alternatives’ and present them in a comparison table, along with the primary features – and include your differentiators. For pricing, enter a range for the alternatives – and for your product, just use ‘Contact sales’ or ‘Request pricing’ or whatever works for your customers.

This format helps separate you from the crowd, set yourselves apart in terms of features and value, and offer a pricing anchor too. Your potential customers visit the page and instantly expect you to be higher priced, but have some point of reference.

Be very clear who your product is for

This one is contentious because for some reason, it’s considered a little gauche to say exactly who your target customer is.

But if you can push through, there’s no harm in stating something like

• Our product is best suited to customers with 500 to 5000 employees and spend an average of $1m per month on performance marketing
• We serve Enterprise customers who handle 50k transactions per day
• Customers typically invest $1m per year across their cybersecurity stack

And you have all of these guidelines already – your sales reps are using these in qualification calls. Could you experiment being upfront and transparent on your website? Would this help your SDRs be more productive?

Understand your customer, iterate

When it comes down to it, the companies that win will be the ones that best understand their customers – and support their buyer’s experience with the right information, at the right time.

Ultimately, the impact of transparent pricing on the website or not is unlikely to be the needle-mover you (or your execs) think it will be.

Give it a try, or don’t. But definitely get out there and understand what your customers want, then do that.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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Do we all know what tech debt means?

“Technical debt… is the consequence of software development decisions that result in prioritizing speed or release over the [most] well-designed code… It is often the result of using quick fixes and patches rather than full-scale solutions.”

When something is created without thinking through the second-order implications – something that product marketers are good at – debt is created. You’ve solved today’s problem, but you just have a different problem in the future.

Just like real financial debt, you can borrow money – but in this case, it’s time. You can pay it off slowly – fixing things adhoc. Or you take the plunge to save and repay it all at once with a rewrite. But be careful – you’re borrowing future time. Spend too much without the ability to repay and you might go bankrupt.

And just like financial debt and tech debt, you can also incur positioning debt.

Different types of positioning debt

In a number of different ways, quick fixes and patches to ‘fix’ positioning without proper consideration can definitely solve today’s problem, but present you more issues in the future.

Credit cards: Positioning to win a deal

Ah, the trusty credit card. I bet you’ve got many in your pocket.

Small, easy to use, always accepted – adapting your positioning to win a deal can really help turn a prospect into a customer.

Sure, maybe it’s only a small white lie (“We serve many enterprise customers!”) or just over-exaggerating features (“Yep, all automated, you don’t even have to click a button!”).

But it will only be a short while until the balance needs paying. Customer complaints. Churn. Bad G2 reviews. Product teams trying to build retention features, less focus on new biz priorities, and the house of cards starts to crumble.

Loans: Positioning for every campaign

Consistency in your positioning matters – probably more than you think it does.

If you’re creating new messaging for every campaign, you’re losing impact. Rather than having one message across all of your campaigns, you’re now attracting and winning customers on multiple different angles.

And at some point, you’ve got to pay the piper.

Say there’s a reactive campaign you created to scramble against a competitor’s news. At the same time, you’ve got thought leadership messages on a nascent angle you’re starting to explore. And your SDRs are using last quarters collateral with your ‘grow revenue’ messaging – but now the industry is in cost-saving mode.

Now you have to support at least three different strands across the go-to-market horizon. You can probably pay these back, a bit a time just like a loan, spread out over a few months or even longer.

But loans mean you don’t have the money/time to spend today, because of your prior commitments. And you don’t have any spare cash/hours, so it’s difficult to save for the next big spend.

Mortgages: Hasty repositioning projects

Repositioning your product and business is a lot like buying a house (stick with me here…!).

Every mortgage needs a downpayment. You can save for ages – in the case of positioning, by carrying out market research and getting ahead of the game. Or, you can move forward with the meagre minimum deposit, but not get the best results

Mortgages have valuations. If you’ve committed to positioning and then take it to market, you’re going to quickly find out whether it works or not. Do your research poorly and you’ll pay above market-value.

And are you sure you’re choosing the right house/positioning to begin with? What if you do it quickly, invest a lot of effort and time, but quickly outgrow it? Will you be stuck there, unable to move? Will you tack on extensions to your positioning, weird outhouses and follies that don’t match the style?

Just like mortgages, big positioning projects are affected by the economy too. Last year’s ‘invest in growth’ message can get wiped out in a matter of weeks as inflation and interest rates bite, with companies now favoring vendors with cost-efficiency messages. Can you quickly ‘re-mortgage’ without losing too much impact and finding worse terms?

Avoiding positioning debt

There are three things you can do to repay positioning debt and prevent getting there in the first place. Spoiler: it’s just positioning best practices.

Have a niche ideal customer profile that your entire business is aligned on building, marketing to, selling to, and supporting. This drives efficiencies and impact – but it does require hard conversations and discipline. You need to drive consistency.

In the early days while you’re still finding product/market-fit you have luxury to play around with positioning without much impact on your market perception. When you’re starting to scale and double-down, you have less wiggle room. This means you need more confidence in your positioning: that reality is going to meet expectations. You need to know how it’s going to perform, having tested and adapted it as necessary.

Lastly, building a constant pipeline of customer interviews, market research, and review will help you keep a pulse check on the market so you can react faster, adapt constantly, and look out for warning signs that you’re not keeping up with your debts.

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

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I speak to a lot of product marketers at all different levels, and one common strand is that everyone is being asked to cut corners. To provide critical input quickly. Without proper due diligence. Without thoughtful consideration. Without understanding the context, the requirements, the situation.

And unfortunately, that’s only over going to lead to poor results. Even the most capable, on-the-pulse product marketer is not going to craft a GTM strategy, messaging doc, or sales overview doc without full context.

Here are some common shortcuts I see product marketers trying to take – often at the behest of others – and how to counter them.

Working with assumptions (without validating or iterating)

Firstly, working based on assumptions at the start of a project is absolutely fine. We all need to start somewhere. Your team probably has enough domain experience to have a comfortable level of intuition (that is, internalised pattern-matching).

The shortcut PMMs try to take (usually on the direction of their seniors) is treating those assumptions as fact… and integrating those assumptions into the business-as-usual shared understanding. This is pretty dangerous – your entire strategy and execution can be based on unproven, biased assumptions.

How to get back on track

Just do the validation anyway. Frame it as an opportunity to measure the impact, prove you’re on the right path.

Check in with internal and external sources – sales reps, CSMs, friendly customers, or random folks in the market. Ask them broad, top-level related questions and keep asking ‘why’ to prove or disprove the assumptions you have, without asking leading questions.

When you present the learnings back, offer a plan on what needs to happen next. Show what you’ve learnt with a summary of the impact and suggestions on the way forward, to save time and build your reputation.

They say jump, you say ‘how high?’

Particularly when it comes to sales collateral, custom slide or deck requests, or even a new idea for content, it’s sooo eassyyyy to just be a yes-person.

While it may be easy, it’s also a surefire way to be unsatisfied with your job. You have less input and control, and instead react to the whims of various stakeholders (who probably don’t know what they want anyway!).

How to get back on track

You have two options.

Firstly, graciously accept new requests for collateral as ideas and opportunities, not as hard-and-fast requirements. Use this as an opportunity to redirect the conversation to focus on the reason for the request, not the actual request itself. Maybe they have some unique insight, a hot opportunity to test something, or feel underserved by what you have today. Rather than jumping to create new collateral, it could just be reframing something you have already, or solving by other means.

Secondly, you can make the time to build the foundational artefacts that help you hold your ground and frame requests against your current, documented understanding. This means your:

• ICP – your aligned target segment for cross-functional focus
• Personas – a representation of core buying group stakeholders
• Buyer journey – the process a buying group follows from initial awareness to purchase decision and expansion
• Messaging guide – the framework for communicating our unique value proposition
• JTBD map – understanding what ‘jobs’ customers achieve with the product and the steps they take to get there

This means that for new requests, you can refer back to the documentation, ask for information, and counter with alternatives as required to make sure everyone leaves happy.

“Let’s set it live and we’ll measure performance later”

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you’ve spent enough time and effort doing something – a big product launch, a huge content campaign – and don’t set your goals upfront, you’re always going to be a step behind. You’ll also be left unsatisfied with whatever results you do get, feeling anxious that you could’ve achieved more – and no idea what’s working best, what to double-down on, and where to improve.

How to get back on track

During the planning phase of a project, define the leading and lagging metrics that you’ll track, and set a primary goal, even just for your own satisfaction.

Set your goal and create a burn-up chart to predict your progress over time. You’ll be able to measure progress against this every week, allowing you to react to changes in performance and iterate on your way to results.

Being this diligent will set you apart from other product marketers, and act as a forcing function for delivering on your goals.

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

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The post Product marketing shortcuts don’t work appeared first on Building Momentum.

We’re all guilty of indulging in a little bit of fluffy marketing copy. “Enable teams to excel”, “be your customer’s hero”, and “personalize all your touchpoints” are all things I’ve written before.

But looking back, what did they mean? They were empty attempts to say something smart. Contrite. A waste of bits and bytes, crowding the internet, taking up much-needed space for more cat gifs.

And we see this all around the internet.

Nearly every B2B website – including yours, sorry – has some version of the same old tired cliches:

• Work faster, not smarter
• Save time and effort
• Grow revenue
• Scale with ease
• Connect with your customers
• Build stronger relationships
• Deliver a better customer experience
• Enable teams to collaborate
• Turn X into a strategic advantage
• … and many more.

And what surprises me is that these garbled monstrosities don’t come from a thousand monkeys banging on keyboards, or from fresh interns souped up on Red Bull.

They come from experienced people who care so much about what they’re trying to say. People with so much passion, insight, experience, and genuine love for the product and technology.

The thought process in people like this – speaking from personal experience – goes like this. We feel the overwhelming to say everything. We know that we’re too close to the metal, so we try to ‘dumb down’ language for the normies out there. We rely on cliches because everyone knows what they mean – they’re cliches for a reason!

But these attempts to say something, actually say nothing at all. Confusing, unreadable, and create more questions than they answer.

Your copy should never lead to this outcome.

The goal of product marketing copy, whether on your website or sales collateral or a video script, should never make prospects think. Cognition is a barrier, not an accelerant. Your prospects should nod along, embracing your proposition and adjusting their view of the world.

Start with the customer

Go back to that thought process: we try to dumb down language because we want to make it easier for people to understand what we really do.

This is the wrong approach. Rather than mangle the product to fit the customer’s world, can we understand our customers and create something that fits perfectly?

This means understanding the value that customers desire. The jobs they undertake, the pains to avoid, gains they want to achieve, and triggers that motivate them to search/switch/buy.

It can be tricky to convince product-/technology-first stakeholders that this is the way, but it’s not an either/or situation. You need to do both: customer discovery with technology innovation.

The ‘so what?’ antidote

When you find yourself reaching for a comfortable cliche, stop. Take a breath, and ask yourself “so what?”. Then write that!

What exactly does ‘saving time’ enable? What do customers gain when they can collaborate better? What outcomes are improved when the business grows and is successful?

These are often the hardest questions for CEOs, founders, and technologists to answer.

But levelling up your copy and answering ‘so what’ doesn’t just help customers understand what you do better. It helps you justify higher prices. Build stronger brand positioning. Build word of mouth. Build loyalty. Reduce sales objections and improve sales efficiency. These all lead to one thing: easier revenue generation.

Sometimes these will be obvious: reducing specific metrics or achieving a new status. Sometimes they’ll be more opaque: being seen as a leader, achieving a higher valuation, or helping the company embrace a new direction.

And you might wonder… can you say those out loud? Is it not a bit gauche or transactional to say exactly what we enable?

Absolutely not. B2B is rational. See a problem, solve a problem.

Don’t make them think ‘so what?’. Tell them.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post It’s obvious, but… say what you mean appeared first on Building Momentum.

I’ve recently moved to a new house, and had to buy a ton of new furniture and home stuff.

New bed, new sofa, a vacuum cleaner, and so much more.

I’m also looking to buy a new clothes airer.

You might think it’s a pretty simple thing to buy. They’re all pretty much the same style, they do the same job, and besides, it’s only a small thing to use a few times a week.

But in my mind, when I was browsing around looking to buy, my criteria expanded.

Not only was I looking for a clothes airer that:

1. Had enough space for a load of washing
2. Was easy to fold down and pack away

but also

3. Is well-designed, and would look good when in use

This surprised me. I didn’t recognise this in advance: I thought I just wanted a basic dryer, like the other millions in use around the world.

But when I was in buying mode, my evaluation criteria changed.

And did you notice what was missing from that list? Price. Whilst an outrageously expensive item would have been an instant ‘no’, it wasn’t an important aspect of the search.

So what does an extremely middle-class search for a random house object mean?

I think there are a few takeaways.

Firstly, desk research and interviews need to be supplemented with observational research. We’re human: our brains lie to us without us knowing. What we say might not be what we mean, and what we say might not be what we do.

Secondly, there are potential customers for everything, everywhere. From low-cost cheap and cheerful, to high-end boutique offerings of every item, every service. The only question is timing the market right.

And then pricing. A pricing consultant I once worked with told me:

“It’s not the price that people have an issue with; it’s what they understand they are – or are not – getting for that price.”

Chris Hopf

If someone put me to the test and asked me how much I’d spend on a well-designed clothes airer, I’d probably say £70 would be a bargain, and that £130 would be expensive but I’d still consider.

But luckily for me (and unluckily for retailers), the kind of items I’m looking at are priced anywhere from £30-60.

If I had to bet, retailers looked at their costs and their margin and calculated a price that way. If they’d have done willingness-to-pay research instead, they’d be making up to 100% more on every sale.

So there you go. Some random takeaways from a rather mundane shopping search that might inspire you to reconsider how you carry out research, how you think about your customers and the market, and how you price.

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

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The post I’m looking for a clothes airer appeared first on Building Momentum.

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“One area in my current role that I’m struggling with are the very short value props and elevator pitches for our new product releases. I’m strong at writing longer descriptions but when I really need to scale it down to one or two sentences I find it challenging. Do you have any good frameworks to help with this?”

I got this message from a Building Momentum subscriber on LinkedIn and thought it’d be worth sharing and expanding upon my answer.

As product marketers, we’re really comfortable writing long tomes of product copy. Give us a blank Google Doc and we can wax lyrical about the product, the value it delivers, how customers use it, and the future direction of the industry.

… But ask us to come up with headlines and short elevator pitches? It’s difficult!

There are so many things we want to say, so many angles to cover, and we need to get our key phrases and differentiators and category description in there too…

(And, even worse, we’re usually crafting copy for use by other teams, leading to copy by committee. Nothing good happens here).

There are a few short copy tricks and tips that I’ve picked up that can help you craft concise, captivating, creative statements. Keep these in mind when you’re drafting website copy, 25-word ‘about us’ descriptions, sales decks, digital ads, and more.

Remember, ABC

Something that’s stuck with me from journalism class: you should always write with accuracy, brevity, and clarity in mind.

• Accuracy: As well as accurate information, you need to accurately express what you’re writing through tone of voice, precision, and spelling/grammar.
• Brevity: You should get to the point in as few words as possible. Additional words often don’t make anything clearer, but add more cognitive effort for the reader to comprehend.
• Clarity: Avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity in your writing. Use simple language, avoid jargon, and be direct.

This blogpost has a ton of tips on how to make your writing accurate, brief, and clear: bookmark for future use.

Use rhetorical devices

As humans, we’re tuned to listen and engage more when we hear certain persuasive tactics. Rhetorical devices are techniques that you can steal to elevate your copy from drab to fab.

This post on ‘16 Rhetorical Devices That Will Make You Sound Like Steve Jobs‘ is one I’ve bookmarked and come back to time and time again. Here are my favorites:

• Aporia: A feigned statement of doubt by the speaker and a question to the audience.
  • “Now, how are we gonna communicate this? We don’t wanna carry around a mouse, right? What are we gonna do?”
• Antitheton: Two opposing facts of contrasting content.
  • “The kind of things you would find on a typical phone, but in a very untypical way now.”
• Climax: The increase from a weaker to a stronger expression. A word sequence is arranged in ascending order.
  • “First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we’re gonna bring multi-touch to the market.”

Build an inspiration swipefile

Take notes of inspiring value propositions, engaging use of language, and creative copy execution.

Take a look at my post on good examples of messaging for some inspiration, and add your own.

Look outside your own industry and vertical too, from consumer products to heavy machinery manufacturers. You’re not so much interested in the words, but more how the statements are formed and crafted.

If you can, work with a copywriter

Product marketers are trained to become excellent at understanding customer needs. Copywriters are trained to become excellent at communicating in copy.

Working with a copywriter, whether in-house or freelance, will 100% help to level up your results.

Steal from your customers

If you’re talking to your customers regularly, carrying out market research, or even checking their profiles out on LinkedIn, then you’ve got a creative copy goldmine at your fingertips.

Sometimes, our customers can sum our product value up better than we ever could. You might be surprised at the gems you’ll discover.

Imagine customer conversations

Hopefully, you’ve been able to build significant empathy with your customers and feel in sync with who they are, their mindset, what their jobs/gains/pains/triggers are, and the value they desire.

If you can’t talk to customers, try imagining what they would say if you did ask them.

Some prompts that might be useful are things like:

• “So, what is [product] and why do you use it?”
• “What was life like before, and what’s life like now?”
• “Why do you recommend our product?”
• “Explain where our product compares to others in the market.”

Creative writing is an art

Hopefully some of these tips will help you find new inspiration or employ frameworks to improve the copy you’ve already created.

Creative writing is an art so again, think about working with an experienced copywriter to help you create copy that works for your business and customers.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to push the boundaries. Understand your brand voice, try different angles, and stick your neck out on the line: fortune favors the brave.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post 6 tips to craft concise, captivating, creative value propositions appeared first on Building Momentum.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve cultivated a positioning process that I call Customer Value Positioning.

I’ve written about all of the component pieces on this newsletter so regular readers will recognise the themes, but it’s taken me the last 12 months to revise, simplify, and improve based on the feedback of over 20+ marketers.

With Customer Value Positioning (CVP), you’ll:

• Define the perfect website heading and slogan that resonates
• Detail exactly how your product helps your customer achieve their goals
• Describe the top three outcomes your customers desire
• Discover your ideal customer profile and build a fluff-free persona that aligns your sales, marketing, and product teams

And, just like the name might suggest, we’re basing the whole process on the only thing that matters: your customer.

Background: Why positioning needs more support

Last year I was named Positioning & Messaging Maestro of the Year 2021 by the Product Marketing Alliance.

Positioning is my jam: the intersection of customer-centricity, internal assumptions, and strategy in practice.

The literal definition of positioning is “to occupy a space in the customer’s mind,”… but how are we going to position effectively if we don’t understand what’s going on in their head?

Traditionally, marketers have relied on the ol’ trusty positioning statement, something that’s been around for ~30+ years. Unfortunately, it’s become a limp safety blanket for uninventive marketers and founders, crushing their innovations and aspirations into a maddening game of adlibs.

More recent positioning frameworks like Obviously Awesome have provided a much-needed boost and spotlight on positioning as a whole… but after talking to 100+ product marketers and founders over the last few years, it still leaves a gap:

• Positioning has so many subtle inputs, and is too intangible for many “casual” users to internalise no matter how good the book is
• Trying to connect the dots between the product you’ve built and the customers you think are good fit is difficult, because we’re so close to it that we can’t see the wood for the trees
• Usually these processes don’t have a tangible output – a mark of success that helps build momentum. A positioning document is great: but then what? How is that doc then translated to the website, or a tradeshow banner, or a sales deck?

Download The Customer Value Positioning framework

Introducing my battle-tested positioning process

Firstly, I want to mention that this framework builds on top of the work of many great marketers, and as such you’ll see echoes and similarities with the work of April Dunford, Myk Pono, Al Ries and Jack Trout, Andy Raskin, and more. If this framework can be a quarter as good as their work, I’ll be happy.

Secondly, customer value positioning is not strictly just a framework, it’s a battle-tested process.

It’s built to ensure that with the right inputs and the right questions asked, the outcome is the same: quality positioning that resonates with your customer, and showcases how your product supports them in obtaining the value they desire.

Let’s walk through the process.

Discover your buyer persona

Buyer personas are discovered, not created.

The most valuable input to this process is customer insight. You can use your internal assumptions, but please: go and ask 10-15 customers these questions.

Transcribe your interviews, extract each point into an online Mural board, then group and summarise the themes.

Then organize those themes into:

• Jobs: common responsibilities and activities your customer does as part of their day-to-day
• Gains: their personal, professional, or business goals they want to achieve
• Pains: marks of failure and frustrations the customer must avoid
• Triggers: motivations that encourage them to solve their problem and switch away from their current solution

Make sure you’re also capturing some information on your customer’s psychographic profile. Are they early adopters and innovators, or laggards? Are they rational or emotional beings? Introverts or extroverts?

Describe the value your customers desire

I define value as an element that your customer wants to attain that:

• Is useful
• Is worth the effort (cost, time, energy)
• Is a priority for them

These might be the outcomes of solving problems and overcoming challenges, or new states that they can achieve by unlocking new capabilities.

You’ll see value themes jump out at you from the previous step. Describe why the value is important to the customer, with a value story following this script:

• Situation:
  • Today, our customer is… (what are they doing, what’s the situation that sets context for the value?)
• Problem:
  • However, …(the limitations or challenges that they’re experiencing)
• Implication:
  • This means…(what’s the downside of continuing in the current way?)
• Resolution:
  • By… (what does fixing the problem look like, not necessarily your product)
• Value:
  • … our customer will…(detail the value they can gain)

Detail how your product helps

We can’t promise that we’ll help customers achieve their outcomes without connecting it back to our product.

Think about the features within your product that support each desired value. These might be an obvious product capability like an integration, a less obvious consideration like a modern and clean UX, or even service elements like a dedicated account manager

Then list out the benefits that those features enable. Benefits are tangible advantages a buyer experiences when using your product; something they can report on, and usually starts with a verb. 

Define your positioning

Start at the bottom.

Frame of reference

April Dunford’s book explains how a frame of reference works with a great example. A wholegrain cake can be a diet muffin, or a paleo snack – depending on the target customer.

The frame of reference, or category, you define your product as will help target customers understand in a few words what you are, what you do, and whether they’re interested or not.

Think about the value your customer desires, the trends they’re experiencing in the market, and how they interpret your product.

Alternative solutions

Your biggest competitors are probably spreadsheets and people power, rather than technology vendors. Defining the alternative solutions that your customers actually use will help your frontline sales and marketing teams to consider how they frame your product in conversations and in marketing material, and provides a foundation to build shared understanding.

Are customers relatively green and new to the market, using niche cloud solutions? That requires different go-to-market tactics, compared to customers who use legacy enterprise hosted solutions.

Value statements

For each value story you created in the Describe stage, get creative.

Think about how you message and wordsmith the outcomes they seek. Start these with a verb: get, make, change, smash, unlock, break, bring, grow – the opportunities are endless.

Website homepage hero

I think the most obvious use of positioning is to decide what you say on the top of your website homepage, so it makes sense to just lock this down in the positioning process.

You’re going to write two things:

1. A creative heading that catches attention and appeals to the outcomes your customer desires
2. A matter-of-fact sentence that describes what your product is (frame of reference), and key values or benefits

You can find some examples of good homepage messaging here.

Remember the psychographic details you captured in the first stage? Use these to find your tone of voice. If your customer is an innovative extrovert, you have license to be more creative and wacky; if they’re more risk-averse and logical, you’ll need to focus on the facts more than feelings.

Four steps to focused customer value positioning

In four stages, you’ve:

• Discovered your ICP and built a fluff-free persona that aligns your sales, marketing, and product teams
• Described the top three outcomes your customers desire
• Detailed exactly how your product helps your customer achieve their goals
• Defined the perfect website heading and slogan that resonates

And this process works, regardless of your industry, target customer, or product.

This process always results in successful positioning.

Think back to the definition of positioning: “to occupy a space in the customer’s mind,”.

Following the Customer Value Positioning framework helps you position more effectively by understanding exactly what your customers care about, finding the gaps that exist, and occupying them with positioning that resonates.

Frequently asked questions

Who should be involved in this process?

I recommend the CEO, a marketing lead, a sales lead, and a product lead: people who have experience with customers, and are charged with directing teams to make change. Positioning often leads to new ideas: don’t waste that opportunity.

What customers should we talk to?

Your ‘best-fit’ customers (and non-customers like them): those that represent the best product/market fit, the best growth opportunity, the highest satisfaction with your product. Niche down for tighter results.

How long does this take?

Most teams will budget for a minimum of 4 weeks with ~4 hours of workshops a week, but often 6-8 weeks gives you the opportunity to set customer interviews, interpret findings, and validate your messaging with internal teams and external methods.

Do we have to do research interviews?

Yes. I feel extremely strongly that interviewing best-fit customers, prospects, and friendly people in the market is the best way to understand your customers. You can do this process by building on top of internal assumptions, but it will never be as strong. Focus on evidence over assumptions.

Can you help facilitate this process, or recommend others who can help?

Yes – book an intro call here.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

The post Introducing the Customer Value Positioning framework appeared first on Building Momentum.

I care a lot about defining the value that our customers gain from our products.

Not the immediate, tangible benefits they achieve – but the true, ultimate value they derive.

I define value as an element that your customer wants to attain that:

• Is useful
• Is worth the effort (cost, time, energy)
• Is a priority for them

And ideally, all three things will be true. When we understand the true value our product enables customers to achieve, we are able to sell faster, charge more, fight commoditisation, and market more easily.

Value is deduced from the work we do to discover our personas. The patterns emerge in broad-to-narrow customer interviews as we understand more about their jobs (common activities), gains (personal/professional/organizational desires), pains (marks of failure and frustrations), and triggers (motivations to search/switch/buy).

This process can be messy. And sometimes it’s easy to miss the woods for the trees as value becomes less tangible, less related to how they use the product, and more about the tangentially-connected outcomes they’ll be able to achieve.

In my positioning process, I used to just extract value themes and then go straight into messaging, creating value nuggets that tie back to product features.

But as I rolled out more messaging to larger teams or in more complex arenas, I noticed that we had to go further, and give frontline sales and marketing teams the context of where our customers are today, the challenges they’re facing, and then showcase how fixing the problem enables value.

Introducing the value story

I use the SPIN selling framework as a foundation for telling a story about what our customers are doing, why that’s not great, and how much better life could be.

Here’s the framework:

• Situation:
  • Today, our customer is… (what are they doing, what’s the situation that sets context for the value?)
• Problem:
  • However, …(the limitations or challenges that they’re experiencing)
• Implication:
  • This means…(what’s the downside of continuing in the current way?)
• Resolution:
  • By… (what does fixing the problem look like, not necessarily your product)
• Value:
  • … our customer will…(detail the value they can gain)

Using the prompts for each section, it’s possible to craft a simple narrative that helps build empathy with customers.

It starts by detailing the situation our customers finds themselves in. Today, our customer is doing something – a painful process, achieving mediocre results, or struggling to make sense of something.

Then we learn the real problem they’re facing. The problem is not the situation; the problem is a blocker that prevents them from advancing.

Next we learn the implications of that – a core part that many gloss over. This is where we uncover the pain, the lost opportunity cost of what they could achieve.

Then we address the resolution. What steps would they take to fix the problem? This probably shouldn’t be anything to do with your product.

Lastly, we drill down on the value. By solving the problem, the customer will achieve a value.

Example

I’ll use the same example as I offer for value nuggets; that of Xerox, and how they moved from selling printers based on features, to instead sell the value of increased student education performance (read more on that here).

• Situation:
  • Today, our customer is… a school administrator, responsible for delivering quality student education experiences whilst managing slim budgets.
• Problem:
  • However, … students find it hard to retain information from their black-and-white workbooks, and there’s limited budget for alternative study methods
• Implication:
  • This means… students may not achieve good grades, reducing the school’s performance.
• Resolution:
  • By… printing workbooks in color, students will be more likely to focus and retain information, and
• Value:
  • … our customer will… provide the best possible educational experiences while managing year-over-year budget pressures

Using value stories

I find value stories an invaluable way at every stage of the positioning and messaging journey.

It helps sanity-check whether the ‘value’ is really important, or whether it’s missing an important point. It helps recenter messaging around the challenges and intended outcomes, providing structure. And it’s so useful for training sales reps on specific use cases, building a simple narrative to frame pitches, and for building website/marketing copy.

Ultimately, this is a simple way to help frame customer context for almost anyone who needs to get up-to-speed. We’re not using jargon or business-speak. We’re simply trying to detail what our customers are facing today, and how solving their problem will help.

Extract value, don’t make it up

It’s important to restate here that value stories shouldn’t be built on anything that sounds good. We can’t position based on assumptions, and we can’t just assume our customers think about.

We need to learn from our ideal customers through interviews and research.

Buyer personas must be discovered, not created.

Value stories must detail the challenges that our customers are facing.

This allows us to connect the dots and create messaging showing how our product supports customers in achieving those outcomes.

And only then can we position ourselves effectively in the minds of our customers.

Good luck!

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

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You go to the refrigerator, desperate for a cold and refreshing hit of natural sunshine: orange juice. You’re in luck – there are two options for you to choose from!

A freshly-squeezed juice using single variety oranges from Valencia. Or a supermarket own-brand ‘orange juice from concentrate’.

Which one will not just quench your thirst, but taste better? Which one will deliver more value to you in that moment?

It’s obvious: the freshly-squeezed juice with Valencian oranges will meet your need, delight you, and surpass your expectations.

The antidote to dilution is focus and confidence

What does this have to do with B2B SaaS product marketing, you ask?

I believe it’s more important to be the thing for someone, than something for everyone. This means proactively making a decision to include or exclude audiences through your product, marketing, and sales process – focus in action.

But making that decision needs to be an outcome of enough confidence – that the reality will match our expectations.

To do that, we have to learn from our customers and validate our assumptions. If we don’t, we run the risk of positioning on assumptions – damaging confidence, and leading to the onset of inertia.

And customers, prospects, and suspects in the market recognise the power of focus too. We’re more drawn to solutions that meet our needs exactly, that solve the exact problem we have, and that speak the same language.

The more diluted your focus and message, the more cognitive effort is required for the prospect to make sense of it in their world – and the higher likelihood that it doesn’t work as intended.

What does dilution look like in action?

How many of the marketing campaigns you’re currently running try to speak to multiple personas, instead of one?

Is your sales pitch the same for all stakeholders, and not tailored to the persona of your champion?

Is your product roadmap delivering value to specific personas, or building features that you hope will resonate across all groups?

If the answer to any of those was ‘yes’, you might want to revisit – it’s highly likely that you don’t understand your customers well enough.

Diluting focus is not a winning strategy. Diluting focus will not help you build traction. Diluting focus will only slow you down.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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Being the thing for someone is more important than being something for everyone.

Once you recognise this, you’ll see it everywhere. Successful businesses, products, value propositions, ads, sales pitches, and more all hinge on being able to convey that “This” is for “You”.

But making the decision to be the thing for someone is so difficult. You’ll spend hours deliberating if you should or shouldn’t, whether the opportunity is too small, how you should prioritize segments, and more.

Instead of thinking about this decision as a limiting function, think about it as a move of strength. You only have so many hours, so much brainpower: you can do so much more with so much less. Rather than diluting effort, you’ll concentrate energy.

To do this well, I think there are four key considerations.

How to define ‘someone’?

Having a tight understanding of your target customer is the most important, underpinning your business strategy.

Ultimately, you’re trying to identify a market group of customers: people linked by similar traits who have a similar problem that they’ll pay to solve.

This ‘market group’ should form your ideal customer profile – this linked post walks through an structured approach to help define yours.

How to know what ‘the thing’ is?

Your value proposition needs to be built on top of the customer you’ve defined. But value propositions aren’t created out of nothing – they need to be discovered through pattern-matching, both evidenced and intuition.

The inputs to your value proposition should be based on research (like my 19 customer development questions). From there, you’ll understand the customer’s:

• Jobs: common responsibilities and activities your customer does as part of their day-to-day
• Gains: their personal, professional, or business goals they want to achieve
• Pains: marks of failure and frustrations the customer must avoid
• Triggers: motivations that encourage them to solve their problem and switch away from their current solution

Ultimately, you’ll need to understand the value your customer desires: an element that they want to attain that:

1. Is useful
2. Is worth the effort (cost, time, energy)
3. Is a priority for them

Say no, don’t prioritize

One of the reactions you’ll have to counter is other teams taking the safe route of prioritizing the direction you’ve began to set in addition to everything they were doing before.

Take it from me: this doesn’t work well. This doesn’t bring clarity: it dilutes energy and effort even more. It creates inertia.

To counteract this, you need to get buy-in. As product marketers we don’t do all the work, but we make sure the work happens. Aligning all of the teams we work with and ensuring they have the right context from the market and the business means they’re set up to have the most impact.

Meet your business goals

Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. Your teams need to see results, recognition that change is paying off.

Implementing a strategy built on the steps above won’t happen overnight, but you’ll need to ensure every team is fully committed. Marketing and sales need to be targeting the customer, and selling the same thing. Product need to build the thing for the customer. Any dilution will muddy the waters.

You need to show momentum and communicate what you’ve learnt at every stage. That means being transparent. Didn’t meet goals? Say why. Changing strategy? Say why.

It’s a journey

Being the thing for someone is a journey. You’ll learn, adapt, and evolve often. Embrace it, and bring everyone along for the ride.

Hold strong on the principle, and help everyone understand why.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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My first real job in marketing began with a data entry gig as part of an internship: sorting out Excel lists of leads, importing and de-duplicating into a CRM. What was expected to take two weeks took two days instead. So I broadened out: writing some blog posts, tweeting, and playing around with the website. I was employee number four

Fast forward 10 months, and I’d been working with them throughout my last year of university, and fell nicely into a full-time position in the now-10 people startup. We were PredictiveIntent: a flexible recommendation platform, first developed for mobile network operator media portals (remember those?).

Our audience then? Anything, and anyone. The sales team (the CEO and one sales rep) were trying to nail down any opportunity, any pilot, any conversation they could. Funded with an initial $2m seed – in traction-based tranches – meant incentives were mismatched with the expected progress, and so the behavior was rewarded.

The most consistent interest we’d seen was from the eCommerce world. Retailers wanted to increase average order values, increase conversion rates, and deliver a more relevant experience (on the expectation it would grow loyalty and revenue).

In this post, I’m going to cover the three elements we used to focus our efforts to build traction, turn an API platform into something tangible, and join a mutually-rewarding ecosystem… and how these three steps took us to an acquisition within 13 months.

Niching down in action

We were trying to sell our technology: an ultra-configurable recommendation and personalization platform that used a number of different algorithms to determine the best content to put in front of a user, based on what they were doing, what they had done, and what was known about them.

The co-founders had come from the mobile world, developing and selling mobile internet technology to network operators. But timing – namely the rapid growth of internet-enabled 3G phones – meant their problems dissipated over night. Without a coordinated strategy, they’d succumbed to a common mistake – trying to sell something to anyone. This meant our messages were broad, and confusing. Marketing activity was disjointed. The engineering team had no focus.

A few months into my internship, whilst I was working part-time, I’d began a more coordinated marketing and sales approach for the eCommerce industry, and we’d scored our first customer – an online Christian bookstore from the Midwest.

This was enough validation for us to narrow and niche. We restructured our website to speak the customer’s language and began to focus solely on solving an online retailer’s central problems: growing revenue, and saving on costs.

With a narrower value proposition, we tried multiple ways to sell the product. At its core, it was an API that required developer integration and quite a lot of setup. At the time – early 10’s – most retailers would have a Head of eCommerce, a business buyer that wasn’t technical. Any technical slides were an instant put-off.

So we changed the way we described the product to a core and components, delivered in combination in plans. We offered PersonalMerchant (simple, structured, with as little integration as possible) and PersonalMerchant Pro (requiring heavy custom integration and setup). The top plan acted as an anchor, pushing most prospects towards the main plan.

By naming and defining the plans, we made an intangible API platform into a real thing, a package that a non-technical buyer could understand and purchase.

Making it tangible

Even with a slimmed down proposition, we were struggling to get real traction: a plethora of closed-wall eCommerce platforms available meant every customer was using something different – or worse, their own.

At the same time, we started talking to our first customer on the Magento platform. Back then it was an independent company, one of the first platforms to follow the commercial open-source model. They offered the core for free which anyone could use, and they charged extra for a Pro platform with extra features and support.

Magento had built the first app store for eCommerce platforms, Magento Connect. Anyone could create a plugin and market it via the marketplace with direct installation to a self-hosted Magento instance.

I remember checking Google Trends for the Magento search term, a steady upward trajectory. Within a few weeks, I’d suggested and fought for us to prioritise an integration, targeting a quicker time-to-close and improving our deal velocity with a more focused ideal customer profile.

And it worked. Being able to claim (and prove) installation in under 60 minutes was a godsend for proof-of-concept trials, whilst we worked on building a strong business case for our $50,000 annual contract value target.

Focusing on one platform and creating an integration that we could literally give away for free was driving deals, and traction was building.

At the same time, Magento were building out their partner network, with one person on the ground in Europe. So we jumped straight in. We signed up for their top-tier paid partner program, which gave us the opportunity to train their account managers, get better visibility on the marketplace, and take part in co-marketing activities.

Growing in an ecosystem

A rising tide lifts all boats: Magento was booming. Conferences in Las Vegas has grown from a few hundred people to 10,000. A community of developers, agencies, software providers, and retailers all connected, eager to learn and advance together. So we went all in.

We dug deeper into the Magento world, looking for tech agencies that had top-tier classes and building joint propositions together. We took control of usual partner relationship mechanics, and flipped it to work in our advantage.

During the sales process, a client would introduce us to their eCommerce agency to scope out the technical integration. At this point, we would also start partner conversations and invite them to become ‘certified’, allowing them to re-sell the integration they were going to build anyway, and profit from a partner margin.

We did this for every third-party we came into contact with, and created a certified partner program complete with sales training, collateral, co-marketing events, and of course, generous margins for them. We transformed traditionally intangible partner relationships into a tangible program.

We specialized in the pincer-sale – approaching the customer direct, and orchestrating partner activity to drive engagement and ultimately contracts.

We started saying no to non-Magento deals – one-off integrations weren’t worth our time anymore. We removed the other integration platforms from our website. We had truly found product-market fit with a targeted, growing market.

Marketing agencies would recommend us, and they would manage the process. The same with conversion rate optimization consultants, email providers, and more. We were relatively well-known in the industry, despite having less than 20 employees based in two rooms in a co-working space on the south-coast of England.

Bringing it all together

We were not alone – many other software providers were trying to do the same. One of those companies was Emailvision, a French email marketing platform that was growing fast.

Within 6 months of an introduction, Emailvision had acquired PredictiveIntent, using the technology to create a unified eCommerce marketing platform with personalization and recommendation technology at the core, using the partner network we had created as a core sales channel, and using the Magento integration as a core driver of sales and marketing.

In this post, I hope you can see how three important principles – niche focus, making the intangible tangible, and utilising ecosystems – lead us from unfocused with no traction, to high-growth and eventual acquisition.

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Nearly every first-time founder I’ve worked with believes their new product is a total gamechanger, a completely new, never-been-done-before innovation that’s going to create a category and spark a new market.

But when I work with second-time founders or career CEOs, their new products are nearly always positioned as a step-change to an existing category.

When we look at new products, new categories, or new methodologies that pop up every day, they could all have exponential potential to change your customers life.

But introducing them as truly revolutionary isn’t always the best approach.

The California Roll

In this article, Nir Eyal talks about how Japanese restaurants introduced sushi to the American public in the 1970’s. In a market where fish was cooked, not raw, and seaweed was strictly something found on a beach and not eaten, how could they convince consumers to try something completely foreign to them?

The answer? The California Roll. Rice, avocado, cucumber, sesame seeds, and crab meat – with a small sliver of nori seaweed holding it together.

In a perfect example of new product innovation, sushi restaurateurs combined an existing product concept with the taste preferences of a new market – reducing barriers to entry and serving as an entry point into the world of sushi.

But early-stage first-time founders usually don’t want to create and sell a California roll – it’s not as exciting.

Instead, they create their own version of fugu: confusing, weird, off-putting, even dangerous.

In these scenarios, at a minimum you risk confusing potential customers and failing. At worst, you alienate them and get a bad reputation.

In B2B SaaS however, most likely prospects probably just won’t believe what you’re selling can help them.

Surely, if they have a discrete problem, then they need a tool that solves that – not something completely new that helps them achieve something they’ve never experienced?

So how do you create a narrative that blends ingenuity and innovation with familiarity and comfort? By designing your product pitch around the concept of evolution, not revolution.

Andy Raskin has posted before about how category creation must be based on a new game that your customers see others playing – not just assumptions or wishful thinking.

Instead of a complete revolution to an existing market, can you create and test a narrative around your product as an evolution of an existing process, category, or belief system?

Anchoring

Hubspot did this with inbound marketing: the old way doesn’t work, the new way does. Zuora did this with the subscription economy: people don’t want to buy anymore, they want to rent. Drift did this with conversational marketing: people don’t want to fill out forms, they want to talk to companies.

By anchoring to existing formats, you’re reducing the cognitive load on the customer. You’re connecting the dots for them, rather than hoping they’ll make the connection themselves.

Educate on life with and life without

Can you help prospects understand where they are today – what they’re missing out on, what their real expenses are, and where their problems will be if they don’t fix something?

And can you present an example of where they could be – their gains achieved, pains solved, costs reduced, money made, free of problems and worries?

Andy Raskin calls this the promised land – the state your customer will exist in after they have made their journey. This is never just as simple as a problem solved – it’s a new way of being.

Monsters

When presenting an evolution message, how do you make sure that people can only get there with you? By promoting the monsters and enemies that prevent prospects from achieving their promised land.

This might be anything from the existing processes they work with, their organization’s change environment, and the systems they use, to the beliefs they have. Limitations, boundaries, blockers – find the most effective narrative that helps prospects who want to improve realize they are incapable of doing so without you.

NIHITO

Nothing important happens in the office.

You might have your finger on the pulse, have all the relevant domain experience, and be super tuned into the market – but still miss out on potential interesting angles because of your bias.

It’s crucial get out of your head and into the mind of your customer. Positioning by assumption doesn’t work. Learning from your customers does.

Evolution is the natural selection of what works

We know enough about evolution from biology to know that natural selection rewards those who test, who adapt, who build on top of existing concepts.

An evolutionary narrative doesn’t restrict you from innovation or experimenting – but it does require you always think back to your customer’s view of the world, and how to bring them along the journey.

Let me know what you thought – find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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What makes you different compared to competitors?

You’ve probably been asked this question before, and answered with something similar to the below:

• Our product is our differentiator.

• No, actually, our people are our competitive differentiation.

• Our pricing: economies of scale make us cheaper whilst providing the same service.

• Customers love our design-led ethos, that makes us stand out.

But, is it really?

If you workshopped your competitive differentiator internally, relied on biased interpretations of competitor strengths and weaknesses from your team, then… honestly? I’d say you don’t know the real answer.

What is a differentiator?

Definition: something that enables a difference or distinction to be made.

In the context of B2B SaaS, a differentiator is an element of your product, service, worldview, or other method that positions you away from competitors in some aspect.

Often, marketers and founders early in the journey will rely on objective differentiation: the product, the service, the performance, the economic value – or my pet peeve, configurability.

Standout SaaS companies, especially those that grow faster, understand earlier on that what makes them distinct is not something that can be shown or demonstrated or modelled – but it’s something the customer can believe in… something they can buy into.

Think about category creation – it’s not about naming a new type of product, but about naming a new game people are playing.

The B2B Elements of Value Pyramid

This diagram, created by Bain, extends Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to order the motivations of B2B buyers. Read more about the pyramid here.

The base begins with table stake, basic requirements, and functional value like the product or the price.

As we go up the pyramid, elements of value become less tangible and more about the implication of using the product – first within the organization, then what matters to the individual buyer.

The pyramid tops out with purpose – hope, vision, and social responsibility. Here, differentiators aim to align the vendor with the buyer’s cultural and ethical worldview.

Think about some SaaS products you know. Take Drift:

• Yes, there is functional product value.

• The product delivers high impact implications to the organizations.

• It allows individual buyers to signal their innovation and become more marketable themselves in the job market.

• They build community and a category through their vision of transforming the way companies connect with their customers.

• They offer a bright spark of hope in an otherwise grey sea of same-same, from their tone of voice to their visual brand to their events to their product launches.

Discovering your differentiators

Notice I said discover your differentiators, not define them.

Many marketers I know don’t know about the different elements of value above and therefore struggle to determine what their competitive differentiators might be.

But they’re also usually looking inward to find the answers.

NIHITO: Nothing Important Happens In The Office – Pragmatic Marketing

The best way to understand why you are different in the market is to look to your customers and others in the market.

Follow the questions in my customer development framework, and ask them to your customers, friendly experts, and non-affiliated other buyers in the market. Ask your competitor’s customers too.

From here, you’ll be able to define your personas: their jobs, pains, gains, and triggers. This forms the basis of the value your customers desire. From there, discovering your differentiators is simple. What value are your customers wanting that they can’t get elsewhere?

Maybe they are super price sensitive, so price is a distinction – or your product is a 100% fit for their needs.

But it’s more likely that you’ll best differentiate when you can meet higher-level needs as well. Help an organization deliver on qualitative goals. Allow the buyer to become more marketable. Set a vision that buyers can literally buy into.

And there will be more than one differentiator, more than one element of value that you’re meeting. See the Drift example above. So make sure to prioritize them in a way that aligns with your persona’s triggers, their motivations for searching, switching, or buying.

As an example, at Headstart our personas were radically progressive, so we prioritized our ethos and vision. We still promoted the economic benefits and savings, but led with the heart, and followed with the brain.

What’s your competitive differentiator?

Next time, don’t just wing it. Look to your customers and prospects to understand why you matter to them.

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

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If there’s one thing I tell everyone, it’s that it’s much more valuable to be ‘the thing for someone’. Niches for riches.

But look around many SaaS websites, and it’s obvious they haven’t learnt the lesson yet. They’re trying to be something for everyone.

This is often a goal for early-stage founders and sales leaders.

“We can sell to everyone!”

“Our market is everyone who’s ever had this problem!”

And yet… it never quite works out.

Spreading focus too thin, and trying to be something for everyone, has a slim chance of success. It also has a high probability of negative impact.

Your value proposition becomes muddied, as your external positioning confuses both ends of the market.

Marketing can’t quite deliver. Either there aren’t enough leads, they’re not the right type, or CAC is too high, or LTV is too low.

Sales resources become stretched and inertia sets in. In my experience, most sales reps want to sell bigger and bigger deals, so they neglect smaller prospects. But reps become dissatisfied with the lack of momentum from bigger prospects. And then they flip-flop back and forth, aimlessly without a sales plan.

Product teams fight: priorities compete, sales asks win, and customer advocacy takes a hit.

Pricing becomes a mess. You’re either priced too cheap and therefore leaving tons of cash on the table. Or, you’re too expensive, losing out on a big chunk of low-effort high-reward revenue.

Internal discussions go on for ages about whether to remove pricing on the website. When sales win the argument to remove prices, you see an increase in tweets and complaints that you’re losing out on business.

Culture flails between the inevitable struggle as hires from both scrappy self-service startups and the enterprise SaaS world butt heads with each other.

Good go-to-market should discriminate

If to discriminate is to “make a distinction in the treatment of different categories”, that’s what your go-to-market should do.

Disqualification is much more important than qualification.

The way you go-to-market should disquality bad-fit prospects out. They should – politely – be discouraged from moving forward from the moment they land on your website or engage with your sales reps.

Of course, you don’t want to scar them for life; they might be the next big market you move into. But today, say ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

Meanwhile, your ideal customers should be welcomed with an experience tailor made for them. Roll out the red carpet and make the whole experience effortless for them from the first click.

Make sure these components are aligned

Pay attention to these components, to sanity-check how focused your GTM is for today’s ideal customers:

Positioning and messaging

Know your customer. Extract their jobs, pains, gains, and triggers. Understand the value your product can deliver for them – and build your messaging around it.

Everything from the phrasing in your ads and headline on the homepage, to the illustrations on your website and the customer logos you choose to promote, matter.

Buyer journey

It’s not as simple as self-service vs inside sales. Buyers will have many different needs and questions based on their company stage, maturity, and change environment.

What should your meeting decks look like? Do they expect to receive send-over decks too? What about PDF one-pagers?

And onboarding: should it be a white-glove service, or should it be self-activation with lots of educational content?

Pricing

Do potential customers need to know the prices before they sign up or request a demo, or is price not the most important factor?

What’s the right value metric: number of seats, utilization, or a flat platform fee?

What’s the number that’s borderline expensive, but at which they would still consider?

Customer support expectations

In my experience, this is the biggest indicator of whether your GTM is working as expected (although, customer support is often neglected in GTM planning).

Is your customer success program set up and aligned with the types of customers you’re bringing onboard?

Are you focusing on self-service content and in-product chat, or are you providing 1 customer success manager for every 10 customers? Do you deliver personalized QBRs on how to maximize adoption and results, or do you just send new feature emails to your product admins?

GTM evolves, but be considerate about it

As you grow and learn more, it’s natural that your go-to-market will evolve along with your customers and the market opportunity. Some businesses will find themselves being pulled upmarket by bigger customers – others will try to force a change.

Especially if you have aggressive funding, you rightly have the space and opportunity to explore multiple GTM motions – just make sure that your choices are considered, and decisions made with aligned tactics and execution.

But at the early stage, trying to be something for everyone risks spreading your focus too thin.

And in this community, we know that a tight focus + increasing confidence = building momentum.

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

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If I see the “buyers are x% through their journey before they talk with you” stat one more time…. *shakes fist*.

But yes, the concept stands. The power is in the buyer’s hands. Caveat emptor stands no more.

Buyers request meetings knowing more about your product, your competitors, and the market landscape than ever before.

So how do you stand out, challenge preconceptions, and persuade them that you have the best solution for them?

Your unconventional wisdom

Presenting unconventional wisdom is a core part of many story-driven sales narrative frameworks:

• Andy Raskin’s ‘world change’ and ‘enemy’

• Gartner’s ‘sense-making’ framework

• The Challenger Sale ‘reframe’

Introducing a unique insight that goes against commonly-accepted knowledge has a number of goals:

1. To position your company and product as an innovator

2. To differentiate from competitors by reframing the problem and value to be achieved

3. To create excitement and motivation or fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) with the prospect

But often, these insights don’t perform as expected.

Instead of unique wisdom that shifts the narrative… we get a generic, dull, and obvious rehashing of the world we already know.

‘Competitive’ product capabilities are retold with macro-level sprinkles of ‘customers expect more’ or ‘technology has changed’ thrown in for good measure.

So what makes unconventional wisdom… unconventional?

Unconventional wisdom that wins

I posit there are three elements that make your unconventional wisdom / world change / sense-making strategy / reframe really pop, and get you the results you want.

1. It’s staring them in the face

Sometimes, your customer can’t see the forest for the trees. They’re so close to their immediate, tangible problems to be solved that they are blind to… or choosing to ignore.

Right now, they’re standing at a forked path in the woods; one way leads to heaven, the other to hell. Can you help them zoom out and see the the bigger picture?

Take Drift’s earlier unconventional wisdom: forms suck. Of course! How could we not see that before?!

2. It’s a rational statement that drives an emotional response

Just like the Drift example above, you can feel the exasperation.

Good nuggets of unconventional wisdom will be a purely rational statement, based on fact and truth and natural laws.

But they’ll tug at the heartstrings, make you feel dumb, or galvanize your ambition.

Here’s an example:

This is the story of Nina – a young woman who grew up in a working-class family from a dodgy part of London. She went to school that was in measures for low performance. She received free school meals as a result of a low family income. She worked at a supermarket part-time to put herself through a good university, even after receiving education grants. She received a good grade, and applied for a graduate role in your company.

But so did Thomas, an Eton student from Surrey who interned at Goldman Sachs and received the same grade from the same university.

If you were the recruiter with both resumes on your desk… who would you put forward: Thomas or Nina? Be honest.

On paper, Thomas is the best candidate. In reality, Nina has shown more grit, determination, and ability. But the recruiting screening process isn’t designed to spotlight people’s potential.

Telling a story like this with an emotional edge takes a conventional situation, causes people to look inwards and ask themselves the hard questions.

3. It’s a blocker to their aspirations and ambitions

Telling someone they’re not going to achieve their goal is a surefire way to either get an attentive audience, or get ignored.

When you can back this up with proof, you’ll be able to point out the mistakes and missteps before they’re made. These need to be grounded in reality, and you need to have a solid path to help them overcome these new hidden barriers, and get them to success.

Hubspot’s inbound marketing narrative did this well. Outbound marketing was making lead generation more expensive and less effective – you’re not going to meet your revenue and growth without change.

Strong unconventional wisdom blames the game, not the tools

When you’re bringing in an unconventional wisdom narrative element, make sure it’s not telling them they’re stupid. Instead, help them make sense of the world – it’s not their fault.

There is something happening – to their buyers, to their market, to their organization – that is causing them stress and pain. Not only will you let them in on the secret that nobody else knows… you have the key to fix their challenges too.

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

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Do you know the story of how Xerox went from selling printers to selling improved student performance?

It’s a masterclass in the switch from selling features to selling value.

A summary:

• Xerox were struggling to sell their premium products in the K12 education sector

• Sales reps and marketers focused on technical features and benefits; more vibrant colors, the latest tech, and less waste

• But their customers still bought on price, often in a competitive bid situation

• They knew they needed to change the story using customer insights

• After surveying customers, they found that their buyers were focused on outcomes that increase student performance

• After further research and creative thinking, they arrived at a compelling value proposition: color printouts help students perform better in school

• They surveyed customers and students to back this claim up with data: 77% said color helped them focus and remember things better

• Rather than selling technical features, their reps could sell a solution to a critical challenge

• Rather than competing on price, their reps are able to have high-urgency, non-competitive conversations with buyers who are motivated to pay a premium

Want to learn more? Read The Challenger Customer or check out this recap.

The Xerox example presents two interesting takeaways for B2B SaaS companies.

Firstly, Xerox found success when they changed their narrative away from technical features and solutions to helping customers achieve value.

Remember what value is?

A value is an element that your customer wants to attain that:

Read more: What is value?

And secondly, they didn’t just lead with a marketing message – they linked the value they delivered, through to product benefits, through to features, and backed it up with proof points.

I call this hierarchy a value nugget.

A value nugget is a way to package up your product features and benefits, while providing a clear hierarchy to navigate effortlessly in sales conversations and marketing.

A value nugget is comprised of:

You can move through the value nugget by asking ‘why’ and ‘how’. This makes it easier to train a narrative and talk track that can be navigated in real-time.

Read more: Crafting strong messaging with value nuggets

Value nugget teardown

I wanted to give a quick example of how a value nugget can be used to provide the basis for strong messaging.

I’ve extracted different elements from Xerox’s latest K12 Education datasheet and transposed them into the value nugget framework. I’ve tried to distill elements using closely-located copy from the datasheet to show the relationships between the value that’s being communicated through to the proof-points being used.

Here, we’re looking at two distinct values:

1. Broadening the spectrum of learning in the classroom

2. Provide the best possible educational experiences while managing year-over-year budget pressures

Let’s take the second example and use the ‘how’ method to travel down the elements.

Moving down by asking ‘how’:

• We help K12 educators to provide the best possible educational experiences while managing year-over-year budget pressures (value)

• How? Educational institutions can:

  • Incorporate more color without adding more costs (benefit)

    • How? Through on-demand printing (feature)

    • How? 50% cost savings by printing what they needed, when they needed it in-house (proof point)

  • Encourage higher student performance (benefit)

    • How? By printing full-color workbooks (feature)

    • How? Because reading comprehension is 14% better with color (proof point)

    Get up to speed in no time (benefit)

    • How? Our printer has a small footprint, is high-output, scalable, and complementary with existing devices (feature)

    • How? Our customers see a 25% increase in productivity (proof point)

How could you use value nuggets in your messaging?

Although not a perfect example due to limited information (just one datasheet!), hopefully you can see how the value nugget framework works to connect product features to tangible benefits to aspirational value – and back your claims up with proof.

Instead of training teams with details they won’t use – or will forget! – value nuggets provide an opportunity to distill your product into a format that’s memorable with a hierarchy that can be traversed in real-time.

With this teardown, I hope you can see how value nuggets provide one way to package your product features, benefits and value into easily-consumable bites of insight.

Improving your messaging – and empowering others to tell it successfully – means your sales reps and marketers will be more focused, more confident, and build momentum.

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

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Take a look around the B2B SaaS Space, and you’ll see these messages proclaimed by almost everyone.

“Our product is the fastest.”

“Ours is the only…”.

“We’re an all-in-one solution.”

So what?

Startups generally suck at describing the value of their product. They rely on generic ad libs that provide zero competitive differentiation, full of weasel words.

This happens when deciding the messaging – usually founders, sales leaders, and growth marketers – think about how to make the product sound sexy.

People want to hear that things are fast, that it’s comprehensive, that it’s feature-rich – right?

No. They want to know what your product will do for them.

So we need to convey our product value in a way that resonates.

What is value?

A value is an element that your customer wants to attain that:

1. Is useful

2. Is worth the effort (cost, time, energy)

3. Is a priority for them

Every value you communicate should meet these three tests.

• Is a faster product useful? It could be, for time-sensitive processes.

• Is an all-in-one product worth the cost to a customer that only has part of the problem you’re solving? Probably not.

• Trying to sell a videoconferencing platform to Zoom? Probably not a priority for them.

Understanding the exact value you deliver helps you:

• differentiate and stand out from your competition

• sell faster, as a result of increased buyer motivation

• build a moat around your product and brand

• become more efficient, by building a tight and repeatable sales/marketing process

• make much better decisions across the business, from product and engineering to finance

But… how do you discover what value you deliver to begin with?

Deducing value

It all starts by being focused on your customer.

You need to know who you are targeting – be uncomfortably narrow with your Ideal Customer Profile.

Then, do your research. Speak to customers, prospects, friendly people in the market, analysts and experts in the field.

Ask your customers and prospects these 19 customer development questions, and make notes for all the things they said. Pull them up on a whiteboard or Mural board and you’ll get something like this:

Finding patterns – the diamonds in the haystack – can be tricky. Use a small group to review each section, group cards that have similar themes and create a summary – and then use another small group to review and validate.

You’ll also want to keep an eye out for unusual statements that you didn’t expect to hear. The more unguarded your interviewees are, the more honest they’ll be about their challenges – providing you with the perfect insight to resonate hard.

Once you’ve got your summaries for each question, look to extract four elements to build your persona:

• Key jobs – common activities that your customer does as part of their day-to-day

• Top 3 gains – their personal, professional, or business goals they want to achieve

• Top 3 pains – marks of failure and frustrations the customer must avoid,

• Likely triggers – their motivations to search for a way to solve their problem and switch away from their current solution

Once you’ve defined these, you’ll see clear distinctions in what your customer is hoping to achieve, avoid, or take action on. These will provide the basis for providing your value messaging.

Communicating value through value nuggets

It’s crucial to connect the dots from your product features, through to the tangible benefits they deliver, through to the value your product is delivering. And back them up with proof points.

I call this a value nugget: a way to package your product features and benefits around a clear hierarchy to navigate effortlessly in sales conversations and marketing.

A value nugget is comprised of:

• A value: an attribute or state that the buyer hopes to attain.

• One or more benefits: the advantage a buyer gets when using your product.

• Benefits are gained via features: a specific piece of functionality that’s used by your customer.

• Benefits are justified through proof: stats or testimonials that can be highlighted to provide social proof, additional context, and evidence that it works.

You can move through the value nugget by asking ‘why’ and ‘how’. This makes it easier to train a narrative and talk track that can be navigated in real-time.

Good value messaging is specific

There’s no excuse for describing your product in broad terms anymore. Good value messaging needs to cut straight through the noise to the heart of someone who cares. It makes you stand out, and gives you a platform to stand for.

It’s not enough to be something for anyone. Don’t miss the opportunity to be the thing for someone.

Thanks for reading! Let’s connect on Twitter and LinkedIn, and let me know what you thought.

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I was working remotely for two weeks when we launched the new Kayako. The launch – a huge deal for the 110 employees that had been working on the new product for the last two years – happened over Google Hangouts and Slack. Everyone joined a video call, with champagne and cake ready in the offices in London and Gurgaon, India.

Everyone had a part to play – it would only happen if everyone had typed a custom command in our Slackbot to take the old marketing website down, push the new one live, and remove the restrictions, finally opening up the new product to the world.

We were confident. The new Kayako was really different from anything else out there: a new customer service and live chat platform for companies that obsessed over their customer experience. It killed the concept of ‘tickets’, and instead promoted a single, effortless customer relationship across contact channels.

Our target market away from IT helpdesks and technical support teams to a new ‘customer-service-as-growth’ persona. With this, we released a new brand, pricing, and positioning. Gone was the dark blue, corporate feel that was a hangover from the 00’s; we created a brand that felt comfortable, personal, and effortless.

A few months in, that confidence had been chipped away by the reality we were facing. Low trial conversions. Product stability issues and bugs. Negative feedback. Revenue was falling. Accounts were cancelling after a few months.

We’d gone from adding thousands of dollars in new contracted monthly recurring revenue (CMRR) from the old product every month, to just hundreds.

It was bad. We got together in a war-room scenario: what was happening, and how do we fix it?

Aside from product issues, we identified areas of our go-to-market strategy that were seriously problematic. Although we had followed best practice, sought expert advice, and carried out research, we failed in three key areas: pricing, positioning, and onboarding.

How we failed at pricing strategy, and how we fixed it

In the run-up to the launch, we had worked with a pricing consultant who’d developed best practices and frameworks from his time at Microsoft. We learnt a lot; the engagements were helpful, productive, and we felt assured and confident in the strategy.

The process involved carrying out a survey to understand the value that customers gained from our product. There was a big spreadsheet, listing each features with a dollar value against them, depending on how big of a draw it was.We drilled into competitor pricing, looking at how we compared on features and value.

In hindsight, we should have known that a pricing process developed for billion dollar corporate organizations like Microsoft could never have worked for our ~$5m ARR startup.

Our launch pricing strategy was simple enough. Three plans – good, better, best. Similar to our biggest competitor, although a few dollars cheaper.

We knew it was failing.

1. Free trial signups dropped, because they were put off by the pricing page

2. Conversions to paid accounts were falling, because they couldn’t experience the value they were expecting

3. First month cancellations were high, because customers didn’t experience the value they expected for the price they were paying

We had followed pricing best practices as instructions, not inspiration.

Immediately, we stepped up our research. We were already doing win/loss calls, which gave us a head start into the challenges we were facing. We began to call customers, prospects, and anyone that had signed up to get their feedback.

Our suspicions were correct. The pricing wasn’t working because people couldn’t see the right plan for them, at a reasonable price, that represented good value for them.

So we went back to the drawing board, starting with our target market. Who were our customers?

We created a spectrum of customers, from individual users that just wanted a simple live chat tool, to large teams that wanted an enterprise-level customer service platform. By mapping them out, we could see where our focus should be in the short term: building revenue from mid-sized accounts, and building volume.

We then followed a value-based pricing process from Profitwell, with three stages.

Firstly, we quantified our personas. Who were they? How profitable were they? We could do this with the data we already had.

Secondly, survey customers and people in the target market to understand the features they value the most.

Then, ask those people for four price points with a willingness-to-pay survey:

1. How much would be too expensive? 

2. How much would be expensive, but not out of the question? 

3. What price would be a bargain? 

4. How much would be so cheap that you would question the quality?.

After analysing the results, we found that everything aligned with our customer spectrum. People who wanted a live chat tool wanted something very cheap or free. And those companies that wanted a full platform would be willing to pay significantly more. 

This was a big milestone. We had turned our innate understanding of our customers into quantified, evidenced results as the basis of our strategy. We were being led by our customers.

Our original plan had been to evaluate pricing every six months. If we had waited that long, we would have been in serious trouble. After implementing the new pricing structure, we constantly gathered feedback. We analysed, cohorted, pivot-tabled the fuck out of the performance numbers to see what was going on.

Over the coming months, we adapted and tested pricing multiple times. Sometimes we offered a free plan, sometimes without. We changed the numbers, the layout of the plan, the plan names, the features included or excluded, based on what we were hearing and seeing.

We forced ourselves to iterate. And that wasn’t easy; every change took at least a day’s worth of effort from three people just to implement, let alone plan, agree, and announce.

But our ability to react quickly was the difference between success and failure.

Getting positioning wrong, and turning it around

A common best practice is to lead with aspirational, ‘world change’ messaging; and to create a category that you can own.

As part of the product launch, we wanted to set ourselves apart from competitors. We thought the most effective way to do this was by creating a narrative, using Andy Raskin’s Medium posts as a guide.

His key to creating a narrative is to define the promised land, the world that your customers can achieve when they have your product.

Naively, we used this format as instruction again, not inspiration. We tried to build a category and narrative around ‘effortless customer experience’. It was really human: no more having to repeat yourself across departments, the end of being treated like a ticket number.

When we showed this to customers and prospects, it really resonated. So we went big. The messaging united our website, collateral, and sales deck.

But after the launch, we discovered it wasn’t actually working. We found we had focused almost exclusively on this aspirational world change so much that we hadn’t covered the functional benefits that our customers expected to see (and in some cases, prioritized more).

We were alienating our customers with high-level messaging. Although we had done research and testing, we had biased ourselves towards executives and decision-makers in more mature businesses, without realising that in most cases, that wasn’t our customer.

Armed with the knowledge we had from our pricing research, we were able to pick up interviews and calls with those people that were actually interested, and were actually the correct stakeholder at different stages of the buying process.

Often, those people were at smaller companies: like co-founders that needed something they could set up easily and forget about, or an ambitious customer service professional who was looking to make big changes to the way their orgs approached customer service.

We created a single Slack channel that automatically posted every bit of good, bad, and neutral feedback we received from customers and prospects across every feedback channel. This gave us a real-time pulse check, helping us refine our mental model of who our customers were and what they cared about. We also used this to create a regular Voice of the Customer report that helped communicate this across the rest of the business.

It reduced the distance between us and our customers: a direct feed into what they cared about, and what they didn’t. We had to forget our bias, removing our impression of what we thought they wanted – and actually listened to what they were saying. We let our customers lead us.

So it was time to flex that iteration muscle again. We could test, rollout, and update new messaging really quickly. Sometimes we’d change it every day by rewriting headlines, making small tweaks, or trying something completely different.

We were lucky enough to have instant access to making website changes, along with a fantastic in-house designers and marketing developers to help. We forced ourselves to iterate and experiment – everything could be reversed if it didn’t work out, with hardly any lasting risk.

Strong relationships with our sales and success teams were crucial too, allowing us to try out new messaging, test new demo structures, and try different ways of presenting our value.

From a broken onboarding process to a smooth welcome

In the run up to launching the product, we’d researched best practices for SaaS onboarding.

The majority follow a simple rule, called time-to-value. Your product’s goal is get your customers to experience value as soon as possible, for best chance of success. It’s pretty good; it means you don’t have to focus on helping users set your product up for use, and instead you can focus on getting them to a point of satisfaction.

Our product, however, needed a lot of setup to experience value. You had to set up your support email address, connect social accounts, invite your team, set up workflows, and much more.

This was way too much to do for someone just trialling the product. But there was no substitute: you had to commit completely. But we had still followed those rules as prescribed, instead of using it as inspiration. Our first onboarding process was set up around helping users set up the account. Obviously, this was not going to be effective.

The results were disappointing. Leads were signing up for trials, looking around for a few minutes, then leaving straight away.

We couldn’t let this go on. All the work we were putting in from the marketing side to get visitors to the website… the work we had put in to iterate our messaging… the huge strides we had made with pricing… were all for nothing. We were falling down at the last hurdle.

To understand what was happening, we used Fullstory to review what users were doing in their first experience. We found that the majority of people went straight to the worst place in the product. The place where nothing looks good, where no attention was paid during development, and where things got confusing, quickly. They were going to the admin area.

We really had no idea that users would go there within the first few minutes of signing up. We had to understand why, so following this line of investigation in our calls and interviews.

We tried to find out what it was that prospects were trying to discover that they couldn’t find elsewhere. The results were interesting – users were saying they wanted to learn what features we had, and how flexible the configuration options were.

They had been interested by the website, and now we realised the first experience needed to show not just the product, but it’s potential.

So we dialled up our product education efforts. As soon as someone signed up, we showed a two minute intro video, then we hit them again with three key points to drive the message home.

We added better information in the admin menu, not just describing the technical detail, but making it clear what the potential usage of each feature could be. We carried out research to understand the most logical grouping of admin features.

We added empty stages and dummy data that demonstrated the full range of capability, without requiring any setup. Our goal was to get to a place where users could see what working in the product was like from the moment they signed up.

We didn’t get this right first time. We tried to get a balance between providing education, and getting out of the way and letting users learn and explore for themselves.

We worked with our designers and frontend developers to iterate together. As we made progress, some users weren’t happy as we tried something weird. Generally, feedback was positive. We tried to distill complexity into more simple, logical areas.

Fullstory was really useful to instantly see results, and whether users were being successful with each version we tried. When we looked at cohort data, we found a clear connection between the educational onboarding experience, and higher trial conversions.

Reacting well

It took us about six months to right these wrongs. Over that time, we had increased the new CMRR we were adding each month by other 80%. Within 18 months of launch, the new product had become a $2m ARR product, and Kayako was then acquired on the strength of it’s growth.

In each of these three examples we were able to turn around a struggling product launch, and put it back on track. Three guidelines determined our reaction.

Best practices are inspiration, not instruction

The same goes for any advice, any tips, recommendations, talks, and blog posts. There are simply too many variables, too many unknowns, and too many inherent biases at play to use a best practice or process from one situation, and expect it to perform well.

That’s not to say we can’t take inspiration from them. So long as we are applying some critical analysis to assess how we should interpret that advice.

Let your customers lead you

Doing this can feel pretty strange, however obvious. Especially if, like this product launch, you’re moving towards a new audience, a new type of customer that you don’t fully understand yet.

It’s tempting to put something out that you think will work, because you don’t know enough yet. Positioning that’s created in an internal vacuum, or pricing that’s based on your competitors.

It’s really crucial to continually build an understanding of customers all the time. Continual research over one-off projects. We have to listen, set aside our own biases, get out of our heads, and really get into theirs.

Flex your iteration muscle

I’ve called it a muscle because unless you don’t do it often, it will be hard, it will hurt, and it is going to be uncomfortable.

As marketers, I think we’re conditioned to prefer one-off, big bang launches. We do the work, launch, move onto the next thing… with plans to revisit at some point in the future.

But we’re in 2020. Nothing lasts six months anymore. Your customer’s goals, gains, pains, and jobs change much more often than we think. And so does your business strategy. What was true, and worked well yesterday, might not be true tomorrow.

We found it extremely useful to implement pulse checks: small polls, real-time feeds, and regular evaluations to keep on top of what’s happening. The goal is to test two things: if your understanding is still correct, and if your execution is still effective.

Bringing it all together

I hope this gives you a few ideas on how we approached a failing product launch, and how we turned it around by really listening to our customers, constantly iterating, and using best practices as inspiration.

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

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Probably the most overused, yet most misunderstood word in SaaS?

Go-to-market is often used to refer to everything that happens in a business outside of engineering and core functions like finance and HR.

Often this isn’t defined as a single strategy, but as an amalgamation of everything you’re already doing. Even to those in the know, GTM can feel really intangible – and extremely difficult to communicate internally.

And if it’s difficult to communicate amongst different teams, are you sure you’re all rowing in the same direction?

Ultimately, it needs to be a summary of:

• how you are literally taking (through marketing and sales)…

• …the product you have (and are) building…

• …to the market (who, and in which landscape)

Your go-to-market plan needs to convey target customer, your product and positioning, pricing, and distribution channels.

You probably have strategies for all of these pieces, but aligning these together under one GTM strategy can really help focus the message, refine rough edges, and bring everyone on the journey together.

One slide to rule them all

Get the template here

This is not a replacement for more in-depth documentation, but a way to reduce your core strategies and actions into one simple slide that can be shared internally.

The first column covers your customers:

• Summarise your target market – beginning with your ICP segment, the teams you sell to, and the job title personas in your core audience

• Pull out the unique value that your product delivers, which aligns with your customers expectations and needs. Reminder: these need to be based in reality, not fiction.

The second column covers your product and landscape:

• Category – what’s the frame of reference for your product?

• Key differentiators – what are they key features that your product delivers that others don’t?

• Competitors – who are your top immediate competitors, and how do you differ from them? Also describe any alternative solutions that customers use to achieve similar outcomes.

Lastly, communicate distribution channels (sales and marketing):

• Sales strategy – how do you sell and engage prospects, what are the key actions in the sales process?

• Pricing – what’s the pricing goal, how much does the product cost, and what is the target average revenue per account?

• Marketing strategy – how are you finding prospects in the market, what are the key channels you’re using, what’s your customer acquisition cost?

• Elevator pitch – how should everyone who reads the slide explain what your product delivers?

Communicate better, finetune strategy, and increase alignment

I’ve used slides like this before as a summary in presentations to give teams context and grounding on how their work connects to the go-to-market process.

Whether you already have a defined GTM strategy or not, it’s always an interesting process to review within these boundaries with some questions in mind:

• Can you spot misalignment in your GTM, rough edges across the components that create some friction?

• Are there still questions around who your customers are and their problems, your product differentiators, or how you compete?

• Does everyone understand why your price is what it is?

• Are people actually using the customer value / product differentiator points in conversations?

One of the most powerful pieces of this template is sharing drafts with people across your business. After reviewing the slide, would they fundamentally disagree with the points you’ve detailed?

If so, you may need to revisit your underlying strategies to unlock higher levels of alignment. Focusing your you go-to-market strategy creates confidence, which in turn builds momentum.

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

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Positioning: “the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers,”

At least, that’s what Wikipedia says. And yet… I’ve always thought it’s weird when other positioning methodologies start with competitive alternatives and world changes, before agreeing who the customer actually is.

Most positioning conversations are inwardly-focused on the product, the company, the mission. What we know, what we think, our assumptions about customers and their world. Everything is viewed through the rose-tinted, biased view of our company.

I think this is a fundamental mistake that most B2B startups make.

How is our brand supposed to occupy a space in our customers minds if we don’t know what else is in their heads?

What is positioning-by-assumption?

It starts small and innocuously. The sales rep who’s seen a pattern in their wins. The CEO, influenced by the latest hot-shot unicorn. The marketer, spotting a gap in the market. A technical co-founder thinking their tech stack is a differentiator.

These honest assumptions can quickly snowball into huge decisions that set a new path for the company – only for it to melt away as soon as it meets the market.

But strong positioning needs to be based evidence and insight direct from customers.

The strongest positioning is when:

• You’ve identified a space in your customer’s mind that actually exists

• You can build a defensible moat of opinion to own that space

• That opinion becomes an integral shortcut in your customer’s understanding of the world

Drift is a great example of strong positioning in action:

• Marketers and sales reps are concerned about the majority people who come to their website but don’t convert

• Drift says that forms are to blame, and that conversational marketing tools are better

• Suddenly, it clicks; of course chat is better than forms

• And the category is created

I believe the strongest positioning happens when you start with your customer. Early-stage startups have the best opportunity to do this, and start right.

Assumptions have a wide impact

I’ve made the same mistake of positioning-by-assumption many times before – including this example, where we created messaging that resonated with visionary budget holders rather than the champions we actually sold to (because we assumed they would think the same).

Positioning that is based on untested assumptions will likely impact the business in the following ways:

• The positioning team like it, but sales/marketing struggle to understand – so they hook onto one message (probably ease of use or time saved) that they can parrot

• The majority of the first sales conversation is spent walking the prospect through the message, rather than the proposition

• Outreach emails become solely focused on features, rather than value

• Product teams get caught in a prioritization loop, as they can’t decide what to build to support the positioning

Ultimately it sets you further back than before you rolled out the new message – leaving you scratching your head, wondering what to do… but blind as to the cause.

But at this stage, most teams will try to fix the symptoms, rather than the cause.

You’ll re-educate sales on messaging, forcing them to push the on-brand message. Product teams will be tasked with just getting back to building, with a direction to ‘build something small and iterate from there’. Marketing will ask if customer segmentation is correct, because nobody seems to be responding in the expected way.

The alternative isn’t difficult

Imagine the alternative. Your team want to improve positioning, based on what you’ve learnt over the last six months.

• We start with customer segmentation, and niche down on the market problem groups1 we are going to support

• Once we have an idea, we ideate on an empathy map for each group. What do they think, feel, see, hear, say, and do? What do we think they want to gain, and what do they want to avoid?

• Armed with the empathy map, we form a proto-persona – literally a prototype of a persona – that covers their demographics, firmographics, psychographics, gains and pains.

• Armed with this, we test our assumptions internally – what feels right, what’s not correct?

• We set up 10-20 research calls with customers, prospects, and people in the market. The conversations cover five areas: segmentation, problem discovery, problem validation, product discovery, product validation.

• These areas give us a whole range of insights to help us to slightly adjust our understanding, or highlight that our assumptions are completely false.

This process helps us refine our focus and align on a customer. It means the positioning team start from a shared understanding of ‘what we think about our customers’. It means we have created a hypothesis (the proto-persona) of what we expect to find in the market to evaluate our discovery against.

If we skipped straight to research calls, internal teams won’t feel heard. They feel they have some unique insight that’s been ignored – and will be more likely to reject the new positioning.

If we skipped the hypothesis building and didn’t create a proto-persona, people in the positioning team will use their own interpretation (of the customer, market, and problems). Rather than starting from a single, agreed interpretation, you’ll start from many differing opinions.

If we didn’t do research calls, then we wouldn’t be positioning for a customer, we’d be positioning for an imaginary creature that just doesn’t exist. It is always possible to do these – enterprise B2B startups often insist that research calls are impossible, but find a ton of value above-and-beyond the positioning purpose when they actually make it happen.

The best positioning is defensible. When someone asks ‘why message X?’, you must be able to tie that back to a customer insight.

Assume, then test

Assumptions are useful. I’m strongly of the belief that assumptions, gut-feeling, and intuition are internalized pattern-recognition. The challenge, however, is extracting assumptions affected by our many biases from those which are grounded in true insight.

In my work with early-stage B2B startups, we rely a lot on untested assumptions about the world. But it’s important that we learn from real people. It’s important that we learn about their lives, their goals, and what’s going on for them. It’s important that we can find a real space that exists in our customer’s head. Because that’s positioning.

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

P.S: If you enjoyed this post, will you share Building Momentum with your network?

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