Podcast appearances and mentions of april dunford

In this episode of the Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe sits down with growth advisor and author Vanessa Golsby to explore what it really takes to scale private equity-backed SaaS companies. Vanessa shares the story behind her new book, The $100M Push: The Four Decisions PE-Backed SaaS CEOs Make to Deliver Growth in 100 Days, and reveals the four critical decisions CEOs must lead to build scalable, resilient growth: defining the ideal customer profile, aligning go-to-market execution, making strategic investment decisions, and creating long-term operational accountability. Drawing from her experience advising more than 100 middle-market software companies and serving as an operating partner in private equity, Vanessa offers an inside look at how investors think, why commercial alignment matters, and how CEOs can create predictable growth through disciplined execution. The conversation also explores the role of generative AI in modern go-to-market strategy, the importance of reputation and purpose-driven leadership, and the entrepreneurial leap Vanessa took to launch her own advisory firm. This episode is packed with practical insights for founders, SaaS executives, and growth leaders looking to scale with clarity, confidence, and purpose. You can find out more about Vanessa at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby https://vanessagoolsby.com/ Or order her book at: https://www.amazon.com/100M-Push-Decisions-PE-Backed-Deliver/dp/1963549309 Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. Now in the fourth season, the Founder's Sandbox is a podcast that gathers business owners, founders, professional service providers. 00:31 and corporate directors. And we all are working towards the same mission, which is building scalable, resilient, purpose-driven companies to build a better world. We do this with underpinning, with great corporate governance, and really working with the founders to build that resilience and scalability. My guest, um join me here in what I like to consider a fun sandbox. 00:55 And this month, my guest, I'm actually delighted to invite Vanessa Golsby. Vanessa's joining me from, is it Dallas? Dallas, that's right. Dallas, Texas. So um more here, but thank you Vanessa for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox. And I wanna give a brief introduction to why Vanessa's here today. There's multiple um boxes that she checks, largely Vanessa. 01:22 has her own firm. She is a growth advisor who specializes in scaling private equity back middle market software companies. And it's an interesting time and that space that I'm certain we're going to get to a question here in a minute about the impact of generative AI and all those models out there and the effect on software businesses. You're a seven-year veteran as an operating partner. 01:48 in two private equity firms and portfolio SaaS CEOs. She has helped more than 100 middle market software companies drive growth, execute go-to-market companies, go-to-market, pardon me, turnarounds, and deliver investor returns through sharper commercial execution. That's all in the commercial execution, isn't it, Vanessa? That's right. Yeah. And prior to advising, she was a former operator leading product and commercial. 02:16 teams for 18 years at brands like Travelocity and Financial Times, which I didn't know that when we first were talking. I hadn't realized when we had our first conversations of your corporate experience with Travelocity and Financial Times. So you brought a lot of that corporate kind of know-how into the private equity world and you actually started your own firm. it four months back? 02:44 October, October of 2025. My goodness. So you're not even into your first year. I know. So, and, and, uh, you are an author. So your book, um, so I don't know when you found the time, Vanessa, but your book, the 100 million push the four decisions PE backed as SAS CEOs make to deliver growth. And a hundred days is out. 03:13 Matter of fact, this last week and we're in the third week of April, it uh hit bestseller, right? That's right. Amazon. Yeah. And in that book, we'll get into it. You distill the framework that you've developed. I don't know when, while setting up your own firm, but you developed over decades in the trenches, codifying the sequence behind the big four decisions. 03:40 that enable CEOs to scale with speed, clarity, and confidence. So welcome to the Founder Sandbox. Great. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Well, I always like to start with uh my guests to really talk about your origin story. And I think what's very appropriate for today's uh episode is what drove you to actually write a book, right? 04:09 because it distills both your professional as well as um this new tool that you got out there in the market. Yeah, you know, I never thought I would set out to write a book, if I'm being honest. I had, I'd spent, at this point, I'd spent probably about five years as an operating partner, so as a growth advisor for PE firms. And so in that role, I had been 04:38 pretty well practiced at writing best practices. So I understood how to codify a framework and explain it, you know, in long form, basically. But I never had dreams of being like a full author, like writing a book is totally different than writing a best practice. uh But a really strange thing happened about five years into my career as an operating partner. So I'd had about 18 years, as you mentioned, like in the trenches, like a tactical, and then about five years as an advisor. 05:06 And um over the course of those five years, I had developed for myself this framework because when I moved to the firm that I was at at that point, I was having to work on about 10 software companies at a time. And it's really difficult to show results uh efficiently when you're having to focus on so many different companies who have different industries and different sizes and different needs. And so I created this framework just so I could work at scale. 05:35 And uh I had been running it probably about three years at this point when I needed to go back and take a look at some of my case studies. So I wanted to collect case studies. And luckily, because I was still at the firm, I was able to get access to actual data from these companies that had been running the framework. And oftentimes what happens, because I focus on middle market software, there's a sales cycle. So oftentimes what happens 06:04 is we'll run through this framework and we'll see immediate results by way of pipeline and maybe bookings depending on the sales cycle time. But oftentimes we don't see the actual bookings and revenue results until a quarter or two after, depending on what it is that we're selling. So this was really the first time that I had really paused and like done, if anybody here has had to do a case study or fact finding exercise for a PE firm, know like what a... 06:32 slog it is to have to like go look through all this data. I like found the time, I prioritized it. And what I found was, I mean, there was no surprises in terms of like when we wrapped up our, usually my engagements, I try not to be there longer than 90 days. So it's either a 30 day, 60 day or 90 day plan that we run through. It's pretty tight ah in terms of how we manage through it. So by the end of our... 06:57 I have a sense of some results, like whether it's pipeline or early bookings. have some walking away knowing that we've seen some lift, but this was the first time I'd been able to go back like a couple of years to see like, what about those first companies that ran through it? And I'll tell you, Brenda, I fell out of my chair. I was like, I cannot believe the consistency. You can see in the data, like the trajectory, the upward trajectory from when we started working on the framework and then where they were today. And 07:27 At that, that was like the first seed. Like that was like a Thursday. And I was like, I don't know what to do with this information, but I have this information. Oh my gosh, this works. can't believe it. Right. And I really had to sit with that. And over the course of like two or three weeks, a few other things kind of happened that led me to the path of writing a book. Um, and one of those is I was listening to a podcast. I'm an avid podcast listener. 07:54 And I was catching up on April Dunford. She wrote a book on positioning. Obviously awesome. It's a great book for positioning. And I was going to have to run a positioning workshop. And so I was like, oh, let me like get into my head back into the game on messaging. So I just like queued up like the latest podcast I could find from her and then went on a run. And then I was like a captive audience. I went on this run. It turns out the podcast I had queued up was not about positioning. It was about her journey as an author and writing her book. 08:23 So I spent an hour listening and getting really inspired. And when I came back from that run, I thought, you know what? I have to tell the people, there is a way to consistently build and scale companies when they're going from, my framework is very from 10 to that first 100 million. And so that was really the inspiration for me. then it's just been a journey from there. 08:52 We'll get to it, but you uh codified um when you had those aha moments, right? You went back and looked at the cohorts of the companies that you had been working with, right? 30, 60, 90 day framework, for lack of another word. Can you share what are those four things that enterprise SaaS CEOs do? 09:18 Sure, so my framework is an order of operations. So everything that happens at the beginning has like downstream implications on the other activities. And originally when I created this order of operations, I hadn't high leveled it in terms of four decisions. I did that for the book because I wanted to write the book for CEOs. CEOs are such a, especially going to the first hundred million. CEOs. 09:45 have to have their hand on the strategic wheel of commercial growth. not yet mature, they haven't yet matured out of that. There is a place over a hundred where you can start to delegate more of the idea of commercial strategy to like a, you know, top tier executive CRO, for example. But when you're working on the path, especially if you're PE-backed to a hundred, you really need to stay involved. And that had, I had noticed that that core ingredient oftentimes was 10:15 one of the gaps I was inadvertently closing when I was working with these companies. And so because of that, I wrote the book for CEOs. And since I was writing it for CEOs, I was like, oh, I need to go one level higher than my traditional order of operations, which is very like activity sequenced and like talk about more of like, what is like, what is strategy? Strategy is making a decision and committing to it. So what are the four decisions that a CEO needs to direct and commit to have their team commit to in order to see this growth? 10:44 And those four decisions kind of tell the story of growth from up to the first hundred million. Frankly, it's kind of the same above a hundred, except the last decision actually becomes the first decision over a hundred. But anyway, that's right. So four decisions that CEOs that you were saying that are 10 and get to and to get in order to get to a hundred million, they have to be really continuously involved. 11:13 in the growth of the company. They cannot delegate until they reach that um upper level. They don't necessarily need to direct or be boots on the ground in these areas. But when they make these decisions and they guide their teams and champion these decisions, what happens as a byproduct of this is they inadvertently align their business in a way that is 11:43 successful for commercial strategy. So for example, I'll just walk through the decisions quickly to give you an example of how this works. um So the first decision, I high level it as the ideal customer profile or the ICP, which is just another way of saying who are we going to target? And my bit, my specialization is being PE backed. So part of what CEOs and companies hire me for is certainly the pattern recognition of working on over a hundred software engagements. 12:13 but also that sort of behind the scenes view of what the investor is expecting. you know, bringing that idea. When your PE backed, once that investment round closes, are inadvertent, not inadvertently, you are inherently um signing up to expand and grow either within your market, into an adjacent market, or in some other capacity. And just by that definition, you need to, 12:41 understand who your target is going to be, who your best buyer is going to look like for this next round of growth. So it's generally, this is such a major trigger event, this idea of becoming um PE backed, that it's generally a signal for CEOs to say, okay, now let's take a look and see if our existing customer today is going to get us to where we need to be in five years. Because that's five year journey is what you've signed up to take on essentially. So the first 13:10 The first decision is that ICP decision. Once we have an understanding of who we're going to target, then we focus, especially with the commercial side, we focus on how are we going to turn those targets into opportunities, right? So in software, it very much goes from like lead to opportunity to closed one deal, right? So that's what I mean when I say opportunities and or pipeline opening. And this idea of how do we turn targets into opportunities? I high level this decision as the SLA. 13:40 which is a pretty common service level agreement. in this framework, it covers about five or six very specific decisions that your sales, marketing, channel partner and CS teams need to align around to ensure that the build of their lead management system and how they're qualifying those leads to become opportunities is sufficient enough to have some predictability. like you have some confidence that when you put a dollar out, 14:10 into a marketing campaign, it's going to convert into pipeline, really, right? And then ideally into bookings from there. And so that's the second decision. the first one, who do we target? ICP decision. The second, how do we turn those targets into opportunities? The SLA decision. Once you reach... 14:29 Once you have the confidence and some predictability flowing through, now you're ready to make a more strategic decision. And these last two decisions are really where the CEO not just champions, but takes an active role in the decision making. The next one is the contribution decision. So this is now that we know who we're going to target and we understand and have confidence that when we target those buyers, they are going to turn into customers. The next question is where do we invest? 14:57 to go get more of those targets. So who's going to contribute to our revenue number? How much are we going to put into channel partners? How much are we going to invest into marketing? How much are we investing into outbound? How much are we investing into PLG or a self-serve motion, right? How much is new? How much is expansion? And in this decision, we start to bring the CFO in to take more of a governance posture around commercial. So we give the CEO more context around 15:26 Some of the horse trading that typically happens in a silo between the teams. We now have those kinds of conversations around investment decisions and headcount and budgets all together in a room. I run this like a workshop, but all together in a room. And the book teaches the CFO and the CEO how to run this on their own. Excellent. for kind of the terminology that I would use and correct me if I'm wrong, it's kind of capital allocation. So a bit more rigor. 15:56 is brought in with this discipline of budgeting, right? You're talking about contribution decisions, So it's budgeting, capital allocation, and um bringing another uh kind of the controller of the purse strings, the CFO. That's right. Right? And jointly with the CEO are posturing and actually sprinkling it down to their direct reports, I suspect. 16:25 Right. Well, we so the way that I teach contribution modeling is everyone needs to be in the room. No one function, not the CFO, not the CEO, not the CRO can make these decisions for the entire commercial team who is actually going to need to. Yes, it is a budget allocation exercise, but actually that's the second step. The first step, it's a goal setting exercise. oh We break down. 16:53 Each of those pipeline sources has different stages, which we just got very deep on in our SLA decision. So we understand what those stages are called. We understand how long we expect somebody to stick in those stages. We understand what those conversion rates are through those stages. And now that we have some sense of those inputs, we basically enabled ourselves to sign up for a number. So now we can look at marketing and we can say, oh 17:22 If you're gonna sign up for a million dollars in pipeline this year, that means at this selling price, you're gonna drive this many deals, right? At this conversion rate, at this close rate, this means you need to have this many opportunities and that this conversion rate from lead to opportunity, you need to drive this many leads. Can you drive this many leads? And the marketing person's like, that's a lot of leads. I don't know if I can drive that many leads, right? 17:48 And if they hesitate and they say like, can't realistically get that many, we look around the room and we say, okay, who else can drive more leads? Let's look at channel partners. Now we do the same thing from referral to meetings booked to, know, et cetera, et cetera down the So it's very like, it's very precise in terms of setting goals at the funnel stages, but not to become that, like we're not expecting frankly, to get a bullseye out of this workshop. What we're doing is we're kind of snapping the chalk line to say, 18:17 Okay, this is what we think we can go do. And now we're gonna meet with the CFO leading, we're gonna meet every two weeks or every month, and we're gonna see how we're doing. Are we driving this many leads for marketing? Are we getting this many referrals from channel partners? Are we booking this many meetings through the BDRs? And if the answer is no, then we look around the room. Where else can we do it this month? So we have something we can react to in real time, and rather than showing up to the board meeting and saying like, yeah, it was kind of a miss, but I think we have some ideas for next quarter. 18:46 Like this puts everyone in a position now to become far more reactive to what's happening in real time uh as a group, as like a singular one team. And what about the fourth? Yeah, so the fourth decision. And again, this decision is fourth when you're going to 100 million. But if you were above 200 million or as you like progress to like four up to a billion, this actually can become sometimes the first decision. 19:14 when you kind of need to work your way to this point um for when you're going to 100 million, especially after the contribution decision, that contribution. Yeah. Cause that's going to surface a lot of ahas for teams. Like oftentimes you're like, Oh, actually we need to break into a new market. We're saturated or, my gosh, you know, like we need a, you know, too many, we need a ton more reps or actually we don't need more new sale reps. What we need is expansion reps and really need more there. So 19:43 Like in that contribution conversation, you really surface so many of your growth levers that you're prepared for the fourth decision. So the fourth decision is now that we know who we're going to target and we know with confidence how we're going to turn those targets into opportunities. And we understand where we're going to investigate more of those targets. Now we talk about how are we going to do this over the long term? So how are we going to do this not just this year, but for the hold period? So for five years. 20:10 And so this decision I high level as the OKRs, which is an industry term. I didn't come up with that, but it stands for objectives and key results. And it's essentially gives the CEO like almost like a project management framework for long-term planning. um And you really can't necessarily jump to number four if you're going up to that hundred day plan without having these first three decisions at least somewhat cemented or somewhat committed to. 20:39 um Otherwise, what ends up happening is your OKRs are, you know, have like 25 things you're going to try and go tackle. So you kind of like, kind of, you know, by just by um the effort of making these first three decisions, you've already like started to prioritize for your team where the important levers are that you're going to focus on. 21:01 Thank you. I wanted to ask you by publishing this book, are you putting yourself out of business? That's a good question. A grow-to-market advisor, The enterprise SaaS sector that's under a lot of pressure right now with the dinner to bay eye. So let's take the two questions. Let's take them apart. And I'm being a bit. It's a great question. I asked myself that question. Yeah. 21:29 Yeah, my publisher asked this too. Why put it out there? You're putting yourself out of business or no? Yeah. Well, you know, the way I, there's a couple of answers to this, a couple of dimensions to this. The first is, you know, a lot of the motivation to write this book was to get the word out. Like when I saw the consistency and how well the results sustain when companies run through this framework, I was like, Oh my. 21:56 Why aren't we telling all of the CEOs that there's a way to go do this? Like we know these activities, it's things like territory planning and quota setting and SLAs. like, know, people know that activities that need to happen, but the unlock here is the sequence, like it's important to do them in order and that they're done altogether, which is the role of the CEO, right? Is to ensure that the right people are in the room when you're making these decisions and everything's like. 22:24 That's the those are the connectors right is are the those are the interlocks are the decisions the activations happen You know within the function so I? Was passionate like we talk about purpose the reason I was excited to be on this podcast is because this is very purposeful for me It felt like holy cow Look what I discovered under the pyramid I got to tell the people like there's an easier way to do this We don't have to bang our head against the wall to try and figure this out the hard way so 22:53 In that way, it didn't really feel like an option to necessarily hide it. ah And then the other side of me thought about it in terms of like changing the oil in my car. Like, I know that I can change the oil in my car. It's not a difficult, complex process. Like, it's very straightforward. But do I want to do, do I want to like get in coveralls and crawl underneath my car, like find the little lackey thing? No, I don't want to do any of that. I would far rather just bring someone in. 23:22 take the guesswork out, have it done, have it done correctly the first time, and leverage someone else's expertise in case they find something that I wasn't expecting. ah So I feel like I'm still bring, like when people leverage me to run through this, I'm still bringing a lot of value that you're not gonna necessarily get out of the book. mean, people, CEOs and firms hire me because of the pattern recognition and because I've seen these things play out enough times across different industries. 23:51 uh But I don't want to be a holdup. Like, please, if you are able to do it, then I welcome, I encourage you please to go run these plays yourself. And I try to give a lot of, it's very structured. This book is, the structure of this book was really difficult to come up with. It probably took me the longest amount of time, honestly. But I wrote it in a way that a CEO could read it quickly, because I know they don't want to read too many things. They are very busy. um 24:18 And so like they could digest it quickly and they could hand it off because that's kind of their role is to say like, I'm going to now equip my leaders to go do this and do it successfully. And they still have a role to play. But again, they don't have to be like in the trenches. Right. And without um seeing the book right now, I sound and Kendall on audibles or Kendall, um are there like exercises? Are there, is it like a handbook or is it um I'm a CEO? I 24:48 read your book um and I want to contact you. Do I to come in and maybe do some seminars? How does that work? Because this is a marketing tool as well. Yeah, yes. mean, of course I this book can be just a step by step guide for CEOs and their teams if they want to take it that way. So I tried to write it dimensionally. So the first dimension is 25:13 It equips the CEOs to understand, like the first two chapters are really around what is the investor expecting of you? Basically it's like, here's a little bit of the behind the scenes. Yeah, that was intriguing for me when we first spoke of it. Yeah, you've been in that room. Yeah, like I've been in it. Yeah, exactly. like, you know, one of the things that, again, like a lot of things happened in this like two or three week time period when I was kind of coming to the conclusion that I was going to write this book. And one of them was I was in a board. 25:44 meeting and there was a CEO advisor also in this board meeting and I could see the CEO advisor was um giving great advice based on their singular experience but the truth is is their experience was so unique to them that it would be really difficult it'd be like saying like 26:07 Yeah, just, once you press post, it's gonna go viral. It's like, let's not over promise here, you know, what's realistic. And that really hit me to say like, oh, this is a unique perspective. Like I'm not necessarily an investor and I'm not a CEO. it's been years since I've like managed a commercial team or been a GM, but I have... 26:34 I've flown all of those altitudes and I've been an observer in all of those rooms so many times that like the patterns, you just can't deny the patterns. um So yeah, I'll stop there. I'll pause there. So you do the reveal, right? So for any CEOs of enterprise, um SAS companies, this is a must read, right? Because you're doing the real deal. What is actually happening in the boardrooms of those private equity? uh 27:05 partners right that are yes looking at their portfolio companies yes yes thank you yes so i start with like you need to equip yourself with understanding what is expected of you when you took this investment which isn't frankly always talked about like it's not always revealed to the CEO ah so that's the first step and then it is a step-by-step guide so like there are the four decisions and then within each decision 27:33 I show them the book is structured to show them, tell them what the decision is, give them some case studies of other companies who have solved it, give them some red flags that say like, look, this is a really helpful book if you just closed your investment and you need to run like a, they call it a hundred day plan of like, you're going to deploy a lot of that, those investment dollars very quickly in order to like try to get traction on growth. So this is, I wrote it in that framework just because it is naturally 28:00 predisposed to running in like a 90 day plan framework anyway. um But it's also one that oftentimes in a hold period, you're going to hit some kind of plateau, right? It's very rare to like knock a home run out of the park right out of the gate. And so I also, so like in that, in that first part, so like each part, each decision has a part. So there's like a part for, there's like a four chapters on ICP, four chapters on SLA, four chapters on contribution. 28:26 The first chapter tells you, like gives you the red flags to look for if this is an issue, tells you what the investor is expecting, tells you your role and how you can direct the team, tells you when you need to maybe outsource, like what's the things you should absolutely do and the things that are kind of like nice to haves. Then the next chapter goes into how do you make this decision? And each of these decisions, the way that my approach is, 28:53 Um, is I like to do like 50 % gut and like 50 % data. So I always start my engagements with like surfacing from your internal experts already. Like a lot of times your C-suite lieutenants. Yeah. They like, I get called in for audits. Like that's like oftentimes I'm brought in initially for an audit of some kind. And in that audit, it's like a 360 commercial audit. And in that audit, I have like a week that I just cap off and I talk to anyone that you'll let me talk to. 29:23 And they're telling me the problems. like, this is really like, we've known this is very rare for people to like, I have no idea. They know what they did to get here. And so we start with the gut. And so in this framework for the book, the gut is surfaced through workshops. I'm a huge advocate of workshops. think, you know, honestly, my time with Vista really beat this into me, like the importance and the value of workshops, because not only is it a great place to surface everyone altogether, but it's 29:52 early adoption. Like when your voice is heard and you could challenge something in the room, when the decision is being made, you're far more likely to adopt it when we get to the final output. So I'm a huge fan of workshops. So each of these has a workshop. And this is a lot by and large when I'm training, when I'm teaching the CEOs, it's like, this is what you need to get out of the workshop. This is agendas. You can, have all of my agendas are up for download. Like you can download the agenda. You can run through it yourself. And this is who needs to be. 30:21 Yeah, like I want this to be helpful. That's the whole point is like it's supposed to be taking the guesswork out for the CEOs. uh And then you need to there's a data validation. Like, yeah, everyone's got gut. But then we do need like we are going to make some commitments here. So exactly. Yeah. So we need to like in each of these have different places that you go and source that data to validate. uh 30:43 So that's how we make the decision. Then I go through how you execute the decision. And for CEOs, this is almost like the TLDR. It's like, give you like, look, these are the steps that they're go through. Then in each of these chapters, I go far more into detail. This is what you're gonna go tell, like this is what your management team is gonna go do. And this is what good is gonna look like. So you're not done with this step until you've seen these five things come out of this exercise, essentially. 31:07 And then finally, each of these parts, so we've got like, what is the decision? How do we execute the decision? I'm sorry, how do we make the decision? How do we execute the decision? And then how do we measure the decision? And this goes back to how your growth story. So a CEO's role is not just to understand, right, our long-term objectives that may be surfaced in our investment thesis, right? Those are the first two chapters. It's not just coordinating the execution and setting the priorities and resourcing your team, right? Those are the four decisions. 31:37 But you also need to tell that story and you need to tell it in a way that makes you show well, that makes your company show well, and that makes you more attractive, frankly, at your next round of investment. so, yeah, externally telling exactly. So as well as internally. that's right. So that was really long winded, but that's basically the structure. It goes pretty far into detail, but I do. 32:02 high level for CEOs, like you can skip this part, just give it to your zero. So, so the book is out and um you started as you went rogue yourself and said, I'm working for myself and yeah, that's right. And um what happened is you've got some of your clients that had seen your, your work in prior years and, have taken you on as their advisor. 32:31 Why are they taking you on? it around your, are you scalable or your purpose? I mean, you're wanting to give back. So yeah, tell me. And you shared a little bit when we were talking before the podcast about you got a call from a client that you had from many, many years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, when I was deciding to go out on my own, it was really scary, right? Because I had, I never really even, I, I had been motivated to write the book. 33:00 And that was almost as far as my thinking had gone. And then at that point, the book was supposed to come out. Originally, the book was supposed to come out in January and we could have a whole other podcast about writing a book. so originally it was kind of, I knew like internally, I was like, gosh, by October, I was like, I need to make a decision. Like, what am I going to do? Am I staying? Am I going? Am I doing something else? And so I reached out to every person that, that I, you know, had some sort of like respected conversation, like a respected relationship with. 33:29 over the course of my career. And I basically asked him like, what do I do? What would you do? And I'm really lucky because at this point, I had been an advisor for about seven years, you know, with really established firms and the folks that I had worked with, that knew me, knew what I could do, had since gone on to a million other firms. So like my network on the firm side was pretty large. 33:59 And in those conversations, there was just inevitably a conversation that ended with like, look, if you go, I'll give you your first client right now. And so I was like, well, there you go. Close the door, a window, let's go. That was how it went. Yeah, so you reached out to your network, which is super powerful. Yeah, it really was. And it was honestly, I had surfaced my network throughout kind of writing the book because 34:27 You know, one of the things I think that is unique about my situation versus some of the other authors who have written fantastic, and I'm an avid business book reader, Fantastic Frameworks, is that my perspective is from the operating partner's point of view. And I am, yeah, it's very like, and so I'm really lucky because I, as I mentioned, like a lot of the folks that I have worked with over the years are now at so many different firms. 34:57 And so as I was writing this book, I would send out surveys to people and just say, Hey, just like gut check, do you see this too? Are you seeing this? Like when I wrote a whole chapter on like the value creation plan and you know, the value creation plan is one of those things that people talk about. Like it's this like standardized formal process, but it's wildly different, like firm to firm, like it's so totally different. And I just wanted to uh get a better sense of how these different firms of these different sizes were actually running their value creation plans. 35:26 And that's just impossible for me to do by myself. Like I need my network for that. So this whole process has been really great. And just like also bringing together some of my work friends that I hadn't been able to really, or I hadn't like, you know, kept up with as well as I should have. And so now I feel like my network is just like really thriving and humming. And I feel so much closer to like these people now than I have in a long time. So it's been really beautiful in that way. 35:54 Thanks for sharing. know, I want to ask you how has, well, your frameworks be at all affected in your opinion by the generative AI and how it's taken quite a bit of value out of the stock market. So now it's back up, right? So let's, so was, are you isolated from that effect? Your, your, your, your, just your, your frameworks. 36:22 Yeah, you know it's funny I wrote this book so I've done a lot around writing best practices for AI for go-to-market teams so I was pretty what by the time I wrote this book I had a lot of already like pretty packed research and thinking around AI and what it could do and what it couldn't do. I of course how could I you know I wrote this book almost two years ago now like 36:46 has really changed the game and just some of the new models that have come out. We knew that they were gonna be pretty revolutionary, but it was hard to be very specific. But I did, in the book, I have a very specific point of view on how AI can ah make what you do more effective, more scalable, where can use what you are bringing to the table and... uh 37:12 The word is escaping me, which is ironic scale, basically what you could do. And so that's my approach to AI and it's still my approach to AI. So I don't see AI as a competitor. I see it as an accelerator, really. And so I'll take account scoring as a great example. So in this idea of 37:38 these four decisions, one of the activities that you inevitably will need to do, it's under the ICP decision. So once you have an understanding of who you're going to target, you want to then score the accounts that are in your database to say like, is this a tier one, is this a tier two, is this a tier three, is this a tier four, and we're not gonna like, they're actually gonna churn too fast for them to even be worth that selling to. And so you're building out this account scoring model. Now, there are platforms that can just do this for you. 38:06 and they're just like, look at your data and they're like, great, we're gonna do this for you. But those platforms don't know your growth plan. They don't understand like what your investment thesis is. They don't understand that you have a very concentrated point in time where you're going to make, you know, a 30 % CAGR, you know, you've got like big, big goals. You're not just trying to do status quo every year. And so it's in that same kind of vein, like the human still needs to drive and be the director of... 38:33 where the AI is going to execute. um But AI is a fantastic accelerator. I'm excited. I love partnering with AI. It's not perfect. I think of it as almost like an MBA intern, like whip smart, smarter than I will ever be. But you can't totally take your hands off the wheel. You're like, there's context. That's great analogy. Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. It is true. um 39:03 AI. particularly like the perplexity model because it's on top of all of them for uh writing and preparing some of the work I do with my clients. So it becomes my companion is what I call it. Right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. Excellent. Well, I'd like to give you an opportunity to share how my listeners can reach out to you. Oh, sure. They'll be in your notes. Vanessa. Carry on. Okay. Great. 39:32 So I have a website Vanessa ghouls be calm I'm also on LinkedIn both ways You know are pretty easy ways to just you can look at my calendar and schedule time if you're interested Often time like my most most of the ways that I get brought into engagements is There is some kind of trigger event where the CEO or the PE firm Says like we need we need some 39:59 things, some kind of audit, some kind of assessment, some kind of strategy, some kind of like, what are our growth levers, right, to get us to whatever the next thing is. It's generally a two to four week audit. em And as I mentioned earlier, it combines interviews with your team with I have like a list of artifacts that we start off with. It's, I don't want to say it's like diligence, because it's not like diligence. But it is a pretty thorough 40:25 uh So you get sales, marketing, customer success, channel partners, digital, all of that. uh And oftentimes CEOs will have like a specific need on top of that. you know, I've got one where I just did one where it was like, we want to see, you know, we know we just got our investment came through and we kind of need to set our hundred day plan. So where should we go? You know, what are the foundations we need to build and fortify for this next round? uh We have one. 40:53 One other trigger that's pretty common is on the back of maybe M &A, where you have like two go-to-market teams that need to integrate together. Yeah, they like will bring me into sales. How are we gonna do that? Yeah. Or they have done that and maybe they're still not quite hitting that like expansion number that was originally conceptualized. um And then, yeah. And then the third, which is, I mean, it's like the... 41:21 the least positive, but honestly, the most exciting for me is, you you're like an a mid hold plateau. You're like, gosh, you know, I had one just last month where it was like, they hit this $30 million ceiling and they for like three years have thrown every spaghetti they could at the wall and just could not get past this ceiling. And, um, and so like the audit can, it's very focused and like trying to get to whatever the objective is, but it's, it's holistic because my whole, my whole shtick, right. Is that like, 41:51 It's no one team. It's like all of the teams kind of have to interlock in a line together. Yeah. Yeah. Quite revealing. Excellent. Those are excellent use cases. Um, and we'll put this in the show notes as well as your website and Vanessa. Um, let's come back to the sandbox. I do like to do a round of just questions about three words and what is the meaning for you. Um, and each of my guests comes up with their own um interpretation, their own meaning. it's 42:19 So what does resilience mean to you, Vanessa? Yeah, think resilience means being internally motivated. There's a drive that is not necessarily anchored or reactive to anything that's happening externally. uh For some reason, you just can't let it go. 42:47 How about scalable? What's scalable? Oh, wow. I mean, spent so many years uh writing about being scalable. Yeah, you know, it's funny when I think about being scalable, you know, it actually initially comes to mind as like growing pains, like this idea of growing pains. uh And I'm just now kicking myself for not reading the prep questions closer. We're going to rip a little bit, but. 43:15 But yes, being scalable is having that resilience through the growing pains, knowing, right, having like some kind of faith that at the end it's gonna be bigger, better, probably bigger than you even really could even have imagined or maybe even in a direction that might not have been initially planned. Excellent, excellent. Yes, and I also wanna just, I think. 43:43 you know, we're back to the title of the episode, is, um, and which is building purpose, building reputation with purpose. And you were adamant about that. So what does purpose mean? And maybe you'll bring into, know, what, what is building reputation with purpose for you? know, I, um, 44:11 It's funny, I feel like it really goes back to this resilience question, but it's so much of it just comes down to acting with kind of like, like I work with companies that have like cultural values, right? And they're like, oh, or Patrick Lindsay only has a great one, like the heat, likes to say, you know, hire people that are hungry, humble and smart, right? So like, you have your like keywords, your brand words, your value words. And I think for me, 44:40 um over the years, my purpose has been to act with integrity and grace and curiosity. And, um and that's something that I don't think about logically, right in life. But I try to bring that kind of inspiration to the teams that I'm working with. And it's a lot of the reason why I wrote the book was to say like, 45:10 Look, there is a way. You don't have to follow every single thing that's in this book. But if you get stuck, isn't it helpful to have a guide, like a troubleshooting guide to say like, oh, let me just go to the index here. I'm a little stuck on territories. I'm going to get over it. And that's the spirit that I try to bring to everything that I do, which is, yeah, we can solve any problem. Like any problem is solvable. And guess what? Execution problems are the easiest thing to solve. So like, 45:40 Let's have some fun and we can, we can, there's a way to do it basically. Right. Excellent. Thank you. And last question, did you have fun in the sandbox today? I had so much fun. This was great. You know, honestly, I didn't really know how this, like I do enough of these podcasts now and it's so usually anchored on the framework and like, you know, the execution and like, you know, very tactical. 46:07 And so this was just a really, this was like a breath of fresh air because we got to talk a little bit about the human side of it, which I find really motivating. It is. And I do recall you were really set on building you and you it's your reputation. Do you have Vanessa Goldsby that has gotten to you, gotten you where you are today and by giving back and providing that, you know, writing that book and then, you know, serendipity, you decide, Oh my gosh, I'm going to go out on my own. So it's, your reputation. 46:35 that has been built with purpose. I want to thank you for joining me here in the Founders Sandbox. To my listeners, if you like this episode with Vanessa Goldsby, sign up for the month release of the Founders Sandbox where I have guests that are Founders, business owners, service providers like Vanessa, um and board directors who build with strong governance, resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies. 47:03 So signing off for this month. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brenda.

In this week's repeat episode, we're joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning: April Dunford. April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant, helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass. In this episode, April talks about: Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals. The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategy—and how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition can't. Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them). And finally, Vision vs. Reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/ April's books: https://www.aprildunford.com/books Resources (Ethically) cheat your way to $250M+ | Mikal Lewis, Product Exec. (Whole Foods, Nordstrom): https://youtu.be/5txeT2U_YQo Chapters 00:00: Introduction 01:45: April's journey from engineering to marketing to product positioning expert 05:00: The shifting lansscape: Position from COVID to the AI era 10:45: Moving beyond "AI washing" to find differentiated value 15:30: Defining your true competitive landscape 20:30: How to be worth your customers' migration risk 23:45: Why April likes when competitors "lie" about their capabilities and features 32:00: Why positioning is critical for product and engineering alignment 35:00: April's new book details Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: April Dunford.

On this episode, I am joined for a third (and probably final!) time by April Dunford, renowned positioning expert and author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch. We explore what's changed in her updated edition of Obviously Awesome, what she's learned through delivering hundreds of positioning workshops and how she's honed her approach to reposition positioning to make it clearer for the next generation of product people. Episode highlights Positioning is how you win - Positioning is the answer to "why pick us now?", grounding your product in real value for a clearly defined customer segment. Positioning vs strategy - Strategy defines where you're going, while positioning reflects where you are today and must evolve as your product and market change. AI isn't a position - Simply adding AI is no longer meaningful; if everyone has it, the focus shifts to what tangible value you deliver right now. From unique to distinct - Capabilities don't need to be truly unique, just meaningfully different in the context of your real competitors. Trends matter less than clarity - The industry's baseline understanding of positioning has improved, making abstract ideas like "trends" less useful than clear market definitions. Readiness before action - Teams need to decide what they're positioning, whether they have real customers, and how product structure (single vs multi-product) affects the work. Positioning as hypothesis - Without customers, positioning is a best guess that must be tested and refined rather than treated as fact. Sell to the champion - Positioning should resonate with the internal champion, while objections from other stakeholders are handled separately. Test through sales, not copy - The real validation of positioning happens in sales conversations, not by endlessly tweaking website copy. AI is a tool, not a shortcut - AI can support positioning work, but it can't replace the thinking, collaboration and deep company context required to define real differentiation. ... and much more. Buy the new version of Obviously Awesome Look for the yellow "updated" sticker! Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers-dp-1999023056/dp/1999023056/ April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/books Contact April LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ Website: https://www.aprildunford.com

This was a wild surprise of a podcast. I knew I'd learn more about AI, but I was not prepared for the additional life lessons. This is one of those podcasts where I just sat in as a student instead of an interviewer, and I was not disappointed.   About Daniel… He chose a computer over a car as a teenager. He broke his first computer twice and fixed it Thomas Edison style by figuring it out on his own. Noem AI builds concierge AI agents for any type of industry and any size. You gotta listen to the podcast to hear some of the amazing examples.   Some highlights… Tell your AI (ChatGPT, Claude, whatever), not to be your friend. It's not helping you by blowing smoke up your arse about how great you are. If you're stuck in life, what's the lesson you're refusing to learn? Problems aren't a bug or a glitch. They're a feature to be worked on. AI is unlocking barriers in your life to do better things. Quit playing in the shallows. Engage in more deep thought. AI prompts are just exposing existing bad communication skills. Do you talk to your employees this way and expect them to know what you want?  If you don't get what you want from AI, ask it “What wasn't clear?”   Find Daniel Hindi and Noem AI at: https://noem.ai/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhindi/    Things mentioned in the show: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson- https://amzn.to/4tdd99Y  Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss https://amzn.to/48foZbt  Obviously Awesome by April Dunford https://amzn.to/4dk8mit    --- Click here to change your life- http://eepurl.com/gy5T3T   Hit me up for a one-on-one brainstorming session- https://militaryimagesproject.com/products/brainstorming-session-1-hour    Check out my Linktree for different ways to rock your world! https://linktr.ee/ruggeddad    Check out the sweet Hyper X mic I'm using. https://amzn.to/41AF4px    Check out my best-selling books: Rapid Skill Development 101- https://amzn.to/3J0oDJ0 Streams of Income with Ryan Reger- https://amzn.to/3SDhDHg Strangest Secret Challenge- https://amzn.to/3xiJmVO This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!) This doesn't affect our opinions or our reviews. Everything we do is to benefit you as the reader, so all of our reviews are as honest and unbiased as possible. #passiveincome #sidehustle #cryptocurrency #richlife

El 90% de los negocios que cierran no lo hacen porque su producto sea malo. Lo hacen porque nadie se enteró de que existían. Russell Brunson fundó ClickFunnels y la llevó a superar los cien mil clientes activos de pago sin un solo céntimo de inversores externos. Todo con tráfico. Todo con las estrategias que vas a aprender en este episodio. Traffic Secrets cierra la trilogía Secrets (después de DotCom Secrets y Expert Secrets) con el eslabón que faltaba: cómo hacer que las personas correctas encuentren tu negocio. En este episodio vas a descubrir: ✅ Por qué el tráfico no se crea (y dónde está escondido ahora mismo) ✅ El Dream 100: las cien personas que ya tienen a tus clientes ideales ✅ La estructura Gancho-Historia-Oferta que Brunson usa para cada pieza de contenido ✅ Las dos formas de conseguir tráfico: ganártelo o comprarlo ✅ Por qué tu lista de email es tu activo más valioso (y los números que lo demuestran) ✅ La temperatura del tráfico: por qué no puedes hablarle igual a un desconocido que a un fan ✅ Y qué hacer cuando los algoritmos cambien (porque van a cambiar) Si tienes un producto que funciona pero no llegan suficientes clientes, este episodio te va a cambiar la perspectiva por completo. Y si vienes de escuchar nuestro episodio de Obviously Awesome de April Dunford, hoy vas a descubrir el siguiente paso: cómo llenar de personas el posicionamiento que ya construiste.

Llama a tu madre. Hazle UNA pregunta: "Mamá, ¿a qué me dedico?" Y escucha. Sin interrumpir. Sin corregir. Sin poner los ojos en blanco. Porque lo que tu madre te diga es EXACTAMENTE lo que el mercado entiende de ti. Si después de escucharte hablar de tu negocio cientos de veces ella no sabe explicarlo... ¿cómo esperas que lo entienda alguien que ve tu web 8 segundos? Inspirado en los principios de Obviously Awesome de April Dunford, en este episodio vemos: ✅ El "museo de los horrores" — lo que dicen las madres cuando no entienden tu negocio  ✅ "Hace algo con ordenadores" — cuando tu mensaje es demasiado técnico  ✅ "Vende cursos por internet" — cuando te comparan con Udemy a 12,99€  ✅ "Ayuda a empresas con... cosas" — cuando no tienes una idea central clara  ✅ El test de las 3 preguntas para analizar la respuesta de tu madre  ✅ Cómo reescribir tu presentación hasta que tu madre la pueda repetir Si tu madre puede repetirla, tu mercado también puede entenderla.

In today's episode, I explore what should happen after a positioning exercise and why too many teams test positioning the wrong way. I explain why I prefer testing positioning through live sales conversations instead of homepage experiments, and I walk through the sales pitch structure I use to make that test meaningful. I also share how to turn positioning into a messaging document, how to keep that messaging consistent over time, and how to know when it is actually time to revisit your positioning.You will learn: (00:03:25) Why testing positioning through landing pages or homepage A B tests creates noisy results and does not isolate the positioning itself.(00:05:37) Why live sales conversations with best-fit prospects are a much better way to test whether positioning truly lands.(00:10:59) Why many companies struggle to translate positioning into a structured sales pitch and what that revealed in my workshops.(00:16:24) Why I recommend creating a messaging document before updating the homepage so your language stays consistent across campaigns, trade shows, and other assets.(00:21:25) How to recognize when positioning actually needs to change, and why teams should review market shifts, competitor movement, and product changes on a regular basis.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=books Barnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford —The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstU Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

Estás en una reunión de venta. La persona asiente. Dice "ajá". Te deja hablar. Y tú piensas que lo estás haciendo bien. Pero no. La persona no te está entendiendo. Solo está siendo educada. Y tú no te das cuenta porque estás concentrado en lo que TÚ dices, no en lo que su CARA te grita. En este episodio vemos las 5 señales que tu cliente te manda cuando no entiende lo que vendes, inspirado en los principios de Obviously Awesome de April Dunford. ✅ La inclinación de cabeza — y por qué hablar más solo lo empeora  ✅ El "ah, entonces eres como..." — la frase que destruye tu posicionamiento en 3 segundos  ✅ El asentimiento vacío — la más traicionera porque PARECE que va bien  ✅ La cara de "qué caro" — que casi nunca es un problema de precio  ✅ La peor de todas: la no-cara — cuando ni siquiera generas reacción Si aprendes a leer estas caras, te ahorras meses de dar vueltas sin entender por qué no vendes.

¿Sabías que uno de los mejores violinistas del mundo ganó solo 32 dólares tocando en una estación de metro, mientras llena salas de 300 dólares la entrada? Mismo talento, mismo violín, diferente CONTEXTO. Eso es exactamente lo que le pasa a tu negocio cuando no controlas tu posicionamiento. April Dunford ha dedicado más de 25 años al posicionamiento de productos. Ha reposicionado 16 productos como ejecutiva de marketing en empresas como IBM, y después ha trabajado con más de 200 empresas como consultora. En Obviously Awesome comparte su sistema probado de 10 pasos para que cualquier producto o servicio sea entendido, valorado y comprado. En este episodio verás: ✅ Qué es realmente el posicionamiento (y por qué NO es un eslogan ni una frase bonita) ✅ Las 2 trampas mortales que atrapan a la mayoría de emprendedores sin que se den cuenta ✅ Los 5 componentes (+1 bonus) de un posicionamiento efectivo ✅ La pregunta que cambia todo: "¿Qué haría tu cliente si no existieras?" ✅ Los 3 estilos de posicionamiento y cuándo usar cada uno ✅ Un reto concreto para que apliques esto a tu negocio ESTA SEMANA No cambias tu producto. Cambias tu contexto. Y al cambiar tu contexto, cambias tu negocio.

In today's episode, I explore why companies overcomplicate market categories, how starting with the wrong category leads to confusion, and what the job of a market category actually is. I break down how to align your category with your differentiated value so customers immediately understand what you do. You will also learn the three positioning strategies and how to choose the one that gives you the best chance of winning in your market.You will learn: (00:00:00) Understand why starting with an aspirational market category leads to weak positioning and customer confusion.(00:03:29) Discover the true role of a market category as a tool to guide customer understanding, not replace messaging.(00:05:02) Identify how the wrong category creates false assumptions that sales and marketing must constantly undo.(00:10:16) Break down the three positioning strategies and when each one makes sense for your business.(00:18:00) Recognize the long-term risks and challenges of creating a brand new market category.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=books Barnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford —The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstU Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

How to Leverage Brand Differentiation for Massive B2B Growth In the increasingly competitive and saturated world of B2B SaaS and tech, clear brand differentiation and strategic positioning are the most overlooked levers for sustainable growth. While often dismissed, these are critical components in helping companies directly shorten sales cycles and lower their customer acquisition costs (CAC). When done the right way, they can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B marketing teams develop clear brand differentiation strategy that drives measurable revenue? That's why we're talking to Chantelle Little (Founder and CEO, Tiller Digital), who shares her expertise on how to leverage brand differentiation for massive B2B growth. During our conversation, Chantelle discussed why clear brand differentiation and positioning are underrated growth levers for SaaS and tech companies, especially regarding shorten sales cycles and lowering CAC. She also highlighted the importance of strategic alignment and effective positioning, particularly in the face of increasing competition and the market's maturity. Chantelle discussed why understanding customer pain points is crucial, and how to leverage AI for audience insights. She provided advice on conducting competitor analyses, gathering customer feedback, and leveraging metrics like unaided recall and CAC to quantify brand performance. Chantelle also underscored the necessity of aligning product marketing and sales teams for impactful branding and scaling. https://youtu.be/IF4TaI0QAfU Topics discussed in episode: [00:00] Why brand differentiation is a non-negotiable now in the world of SaaS [02:36] Why AI is a double-edged sword: great for starting positioning work, but dangerous if human judgment isn’t layered in [08:40] The pushback founders give (“it’s too early”) and why those that invest early remove friction from fundraising, hiring, and conversion  [11:49] Key pitfalls to avoid regarding brand differentiation (and branding in general) [20:14] How to make brand ROI tangible: work backward from customer lifetime value (CLV), target a specific CAC reduction, and show the revenue math in founder language  [28:34] The 4-step positioning framework:  1) Define your market and competitive alternatives,  2) Gather customer interviews, surveys and competitor audits,  3) Mine for real differentiation beyond table stakes,  4) Operationalize across the website, sales decks and outbound  [39:31] Metrics for proving brand’s impact: unaided recall, branded search growth, direct traffic, CAC trends, conversion rates, sales cycle length, and inbound lead quality Companies and links mentioned: Chantelle Little on LinkedIn  Tiller Digital G2 Transcript Christian Klepp, Chantelle Little Chantelle Little  00:00 One key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing. It can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. Christian Klepp  00:19 It’s something that tends to get overlooked in the world of B2B SaaS and tech, yet it’s a crucial component in helping companies to shorten sales cycles and lower Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) I’m talking about clear brand differentiation and positioning. When done the right way, it can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B Marketing Teams develop clear brand differentiation for growth? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Chantelle Little, who will be answering this question. She’s the founder and CEO of Tiller Digital that helps B2B, SaaS and tech companies scale through strategic customer centric marketing. Tune in to find out more about what the speed to be Marketers Mission is okay, and away we go. Chantelle Little, welcome to the show. Chantelle Little  01:13 Thanks for having me, Christian. I appreciate it. Christian Klepp  01:15 Great to have you on the show. You know, we had such a great pre interview conversation, and I’m really looking forward to this discussion because, man, this is something that’s so important. And I’m not saying this because I also do branding, but it’s just something that I think is really important. I personally feel from my own experience, it’s something that tends to get overlooked a lot, especially in in the world that you operate in, which is in B2B, SaaS and tech, all right, so I’m going to keep the audience in suspense a little while longer, while I go through the first question. Chantelle Little  01:48 Okay, sounds good. Christian Klepp  01:49 So you’re on a mission to help B2B SaaS teams clarify their story, sharpen positioning, and build websites that drive pipeline. And who doesn’t want that? I think is the better question. But for this conversation, I’d like to narrow it down to the topic of how clear brand differentiation and positioning shorten sales cycles and lower CAC. So for those that don’t know what CAC is, it’s Customer Acquisition Cost. So let’s kick off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So question number one, why do you believe that brand differentiation is the most underrated growth lever in B2B? And question number two, as a follow up, where do you see many B2B SaaS companies struggle? Chantelle Little  02:36 Yeah, well, maybe I can kick off with the differentiation and positioning pieces. I think one thought that comes to mind is that differentiation from a branding perspective, perspective has always mattered. But the market has changed a lot in in the last decade, but even in the last 18 months, last two years, it has shifted a lot. One of the things that has changed so much is that the SaaS market in particular has matured a lot over the last number of years. And I love to follow all the stats on what’s happening in the market. And if you just consider that, we’re like mid 2020s, and it’s like the SaaS market is roughly 300, 400 billion. And a lot of you know data out there suggesting that that market could double between now and 2030 so in the next four years, kind of thing, we might see that market reach closer to 700 billion. So I share that, because a decade ago, when people were entering the SaaS market, there were fewer that. There was less competition. There were fewer people to actually compete with. By nature, there were fewer buyers as well, because less companies have shifted a lot in terms of their use of SaaS products in operating their businesses, but the market has shifted so it’s more mature, there’s more competition, there’s higher expectations that come with that as well. And then the other thing you know, in addition to saturation in the market, is that the barriers to entry have dramatically lowered, right? So I think last week, I was reading an article about, yet again, another company that has used lovable to launch a you know, product in market within two weeks and generated millions of dollars of revenue. I’m worried about misstating the facts so, but it was like millions of revenue in a short period of time. So when the barriers are lower, the market is saturated, there’s more of a need for differentiation, and I’m really passionate about that, because if we communicate the same story, and if we communicate sameness, we’re never going to win. AI (Artificial Intelligence), obviously lovable is a good example of an AI platform companies are using, but it also has accelerated the ability to create products, but also it is contributing to sameness, like if you put your your competitors into AI and you ask it to spit out positioning for you and your key messaging, it’s a great start, and I’m actually. A huge advocate of using AI for those those steps, but probably talk about that a little bit later in the podcast too. But it’s really critical that human judgment is layered into that that work. Otherwise, you know, brands will be just spit out from AI, and by nature, they will probably become more similar, not more distinct. So those are a couple to answer. Kind of the first question on why I think it’s underrated. I think if companies can really nail that, it really helps with getting traction, and not just, you know, a little bubble of success, but long term traction and long term performance, which is really key. That’s a that’s a big one for brand. So hopefully that that helps, and then I could go into, like, some of the things where I see companies really struggling. I think there’s a few areas I think that a lot of companies, really, if I’m talking early stage for a moment, a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, or I’ve seen, have really struggled to understand the power of getting those foundational brand pieces figured out. So if I use positioning as an example, if you don’t get your positioning correct, all the money invested after that really might, you know, not work in the way that you’re hoping it will work. So it’s kind of going to that foundational layer, and really making sure the foundation is solid, and then building off of that foundation worth saying, hard to get it right. You know, like the first time, you’re constantly iterating on your positioning, not just in the early stage, but as you scale up, you know, I go back to our positioning as a company every year, if not more frequently than that, and you start to tune and experiment and hone it. But I think the core piece is that if you don’t position yourself, you will be positioned by the market, and it may not be in your favor. So being intentional and strategic about that, it may be seemingly insignificant, but it’s really, really critical in terms of getting momentum. So that’s just kind of one thing is like undervaluing brand, which I know we’re going to talk about more here today. Christian Klepp  07:14 Absolutely, absolutely no thanks for sharing that. And that’s something that like, really, you know, when you brought it up, it makes me clench my teeth and I just, I just like, you know, because every time, I mean, not always, you know, certainly there’s, there’s companies that we work with that, um, they either do get it or they’re open to a different perspective, right? Chantelle Little  07:37 Yeah. Christian Klepp  07:38 But more often than not, especially in B2B, I always find that there’s always got to be somebody down there that pushes back on the whole branding aspect and says that’s a complete waste of our time. Chantelle Little  07:50 Yes. Christian Klepp  07:51 Right? And I feel, and perhaps this has been your experience as well. But not to sound harsh, but you know, ignorance is bliss. Chantelle Little  07:57 Yes. Christian Klepp  07:59 Because, you know, if people don’t understand something the dangerous Well, if I don’t understand it, then perhaps it’s not that important, and nothing can be further from the truth. Chantelle Little  08:11 Yeah. Christian Klepp  08:11 Right. So what’s your take on that? Because, I mean, you must, you know, in your in your day to day dealings with clients, especially in those sectors that you serve, you probably get some pushback on, well, why should we do this foundation piece? Why should we do this branding like, you know, we it just sounds like it’s gonna run up, you know, our costs, it’s, it’s, it’s more investment. Why should we do that? We should focus on generating pipeline instead. But what’s your take on that? Chantelle Little  08:40 Yeah, I definitely have experienced that, so it’s a great question. And have come up that come up against that a lot, and I don’t like generalizations, but generally speaking, a lot of founders that you know, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with and work with over the years are not necessarily coming from a marketing background, and often not coming from a sales background as well. They they usually have a specific area of expertise. It could be domain knowledge, it could be subject matter knowledge, but they’re very focused on the product itself, especially in the SaaS space. So it’s, it’s very product centric. And that’s good, because if, if all you have is sales and marketing and you don’t have a product, then it doesn’t work. Either it’s it’s really about this balance and this, this tension between the two. So the pushback that I often get is that it’s too early to invest in brand. That’s the the one that I hear quite frequently. It’s not worth the investment, or it’s too early, or we need to have 100 customers before we’re going to spend that much money or that much effort. And I think some of it stems from limited data pools. We only have so much data, and we only have so many customers we can speak to that spending money on it. Now we’re making too many hypotheses. So why would we over invest? And like I said, a balance is needed because you don’t want to over invest. But the pattern that I see sometimes downstream is that those founders are sometimes struggling to get investment, struggling to attract top talent, struggling to, you know, convince beta users to convert into paid customers. There there’s some downstream effects that happen and they offer. There’s nuance to its of course, that changes by the nature of the business. But my observation is that founders that are willing to invest, you know that reasonable amount in brand see friction removed from a lot of those different kind of goals that they’re trying to achieve. So I think that that’s, that’s super, super key, is that, you know, proper positioning, proper differentiation, and I mean even going to the visual side of branding as well. Is that credible brand? It really helps, especially in a world where there is a lot of skepticism, right? Like, is that fake? Is that real? Like, am I really going to spend money on that? It concerns compliance, like, the list goes on. You know? How do I know this is credible? And brand plays a really, really big, critical role in that. So I do see that pattern quite a bit, and I’ve seen those that are willing to take the investment, and I’ve seen friction be removed. Christian Klepp  11:30 Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next question about key pitfalls. So if we’re talking about marketing teams within B2B SaaS or tech. What are some of these key pitfalls that you would say they should be avoiding, and what should they do instead?   Chantelle Little  11:49 Yeah, so there’s a couple that come to mind. One is, one key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing, it can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. So I think just remembering that just because you have a nice logo, it doesn’t mean that you’ve clearly positioned yourself. Just because you have a really strong, you know, a nice looking website, it doesn’t mean that the value has been clearly articulated and that you’ve differentiated yourself from, you know, competitors, and that all can go go right through. So it really impacts, you know, sales. If you don’t get those, those P those, those specific foundations in place. So I think you know do instead is you want to start with the positioning as the most critical piece, clarify what market you’re playing in. So this is, like, really practical, but like, clarify what market you’re playing in, because you want to make it easy for buyers to assess you against competitive alternatives. This is really challenging if you’re creating a new category, because the competitive alternatives are less clear. But if you’re entering a market where there are more competitive alternatives, like really making sure that you, you know, figure out what market you’re playing in and what value you’re you’re delivering. So that’s kind of like a couple of key things. So that’s one pitfall. The other one that I definitely could talk about for a while is just over reliance on internal perspective. So this is again challenging, and I see it at different stages, because, you know, I’ve worked with, you know, different founders or leadership teams at variety of different scales, some pre revenue, most in sort of a mid market growth phase, a rate up through it to enterprise. So you see this in different ways, shapes and forms. When you’re in the earlier stages, you have a lot of assumptions that you’re making as an internal team. So the more beta users you can talk to, the more potential customers you can talk to, and if none of that’s available, leverage look alike audiences like get as much input as you can to shape your strategy. It’s quite high risk, and it’s usually ineffective to sit in a room with two people that like your idea, and just brainstorm and build a strategy, because it’s not informed by much other than a couple people’s perspectives. So that’s that’s kind of one at larger scales. This gets really tricky, because if you have an executive team of 10 people, right, and then you have other layers of leadership, so Csuite, and maybe there’s VPs (Vice President) and director levels. It’s really tricky for all those people to get into a room and start to debate what makes sense, because sometimes ego gets in the way. You know, people have their own unique perspective, and then, as a marketer, you’re kind of left with trying to integrate all of that. So I’m a big believer in getting customer feedback, be it interviews, be it surveys, you know, if you’re a B2B tech company or SaaS company, looking at competitor reviews on G2 like, looking for patterns in vocabulary, in how people talk about pain solutions, whatever it might be if you don’t have G2 profiles, like, you know, you can go and get look at your competitors, G2 profiles, and start to look at what people are complaining about and what they’re celebrating about your competitors. And you can mine for patterns there. So that’s, that’s another pitfall is just like over reliance on on internal perspective, and then the the cascading effect of all the assumptions that are made in that in that process as well. Christian Klepp  15:42 Yeah, yeah. No, I was, um, I was kind of having a little bit of a chuckle to myself when you said over relying internal perspective. Because, um, it’s, um, I think, I think they’ve diagnosed this, um, this malaise. It’s um, it’s analysis paralysis and opinion. Chantelle Little  16:00 Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christian Klepp  16:03 Yeah. I tried to say that with a very serious face, yes, but, um, but it’s but it’s so true though, right? Like you just mentioned it, and I’ve been in situations. I’ve certainly been in meetings where there was this constant and very heated, like debate about positioning on what the brand stands for from an internal perspective. And it was usually like, unfortunately, more often than not, the loudest voice in the room at once, right? Chantelle Little  16:30 Yeah. Christian Klepp  16:31 Or, depending on the person’s level of seniority as well. And I would then see that falter when they take it to market. Chantelle Little  16:41 Yes. Christian Klepp  16:41 Because, as you rightfully pointed out, just because they agreed upon it in the meeting room, that doesn’t mean that the market agrees with that person. Chantelle Little  16:49 Yes, yes, yeah. Real balance to to to find, and it’s not easy, but it is also surprising how many companies are reluctant. I mean, I talk to B2B, SaaS companies, day in and day out, and there is a reluctancy to ask the customer for a case study or to ask the customer for an interview or survey. And I think some of it comes from, you know, it takes time and energy, which is a very precious commodity in today’s world. But sometimes, I think deep down, people don’t really want to know because they’re trying to protect something, and that’s really tricky. So I think a growth mindset and being willing to accept that customer feedback can be quite, quite powerful, because it creates an ally and ambassador from the customer, not always, but that’s the vision, that’s the goal, right? So if done properly, it really can create that. And then now we have fuel to put in the marketing engine that will help us go further, faster. And that’s a really exciting thing. Christian Klepp  17:57 It is an exciting thing. It is also a very thin line to walk, because I’ve been in a situation previously where I was a product marketer and I had to go out into the field with salespeople and listen to the way that they would conduct, conduct the meetings with the prospects, and listen to the concerns, the objections and the questions and whatnot, right? And from there to your point is, we can see what the prospect really thinks about the product. Chantelle Little  18:26 Yes. Christian Klepp  18:27 Versus what the you know, sometimes when the sales come back, they say, oh yeah. The meeting, the meeting went well. They said they think about it. But when you’re actually there in the meeting, then you actually hear what their concerns are, it’s like, yeah, they like it however they have, they had all of these different questions and concerns, and if that’s not captured in some shape or form, yeah, then anything that we put out from a marketing perspective might not be relevant to them, might not help them, might not also move the sales closer to to getting a deal. Chantelle Little  19:02 Yeah. Well, and I love that you bring that up Christian, because that kind of reminds me of just the other challenge of scaling brand. It’s at like scaling brand, right? And how it can fracture as you try to scale it. Christian Klepp  19:15 Yeah. Chantelle Little  19:15 And one of the things that you you mentioned is just that alignment between product marketing and sales like that is one of the biggest challenges that companies face as they scale. And so it’s like, if sales isn’t, you know, having these great conversations, they’re getting clear on objections, not feeding that back to marketing. And if marketing doesn’t have that Intel or those inputs, it gets difficult to learn from every opportunity to improve conversion performance and improve performance in general. So, yeah, I love that. It’s, it’s really key. Christian Klepp  19:47 Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. For sure. We already talked about this a little bit, you know, like how to deal with pushback, especially from founders. And you know, more often than not, they’re not from a marketing background. They’re not from us. Sales background. But I think the question that I want to ask you is basically, how do you convince them, or how do you prove to them, I think is the better word. How do you prove to them that brand differentiation and positioning can indeed shorten sales cycles and CAC. Chantelle Little  20:14 Yeah, I think when speaking to founders and early stage leadership teams, I think it’s important to speak their language. So there’s like, when I’m when I’m talking to a CMO of a, you know, $80 million company, you are dealing with different context and perspective and experience. And so you can kind of adjust your your your pitch and your conversation around more common marketing related terminology. But I’d say when you’re talking to founders, it’s really important for them to see this in context of revenue and a context of how it’s going to really, really move the needle. And so there’s a few different things. Like, there’s different ways that you can that you can position it, but I think really understanding there’s a couple things that I love to understand is, I love to understand about average deal size. Like, I like to understand, okay, so how much money do we anticipate we can make off of this customer in one year? But more important than that, how much do we think that you’re going to make off the customer over the course of the lifetime of the customer? So is it three years, you know, lifetime value, five years lifetime value, whatever that might be, whatever the customer lifetime value is. That’s actually more important than the the annual recurring revenue for one year or one month, right? So if, if I know that, then it becomes easier to work backwards and figure out, okay, so if that customer is worth $20,000 to you over the lifetime of the customer, how much would you be willing to spend to get that customer? If, if that customer is worth 700,000 or a million over the lifetime of the customer. How much would you spend there? And kind of get into some of the unit economics of it, and then help them understand what makes sense to spend to acquire that customer. And I think, like, like I said, talking in context of revenue, talking in context of, you know, the cost to acquire the lead is really helpful. And so let’s just, you know, use a simple example. A couple weeks back, I was speaking to someone, they were sharing that their their cack was closer to $1,000 and based on their price point, it just didn’t make sense. Like the economics only work when we run the numbers. It only works if we can get that down to three or $400 so the question is, how do you move the needle from a CAC of 1000 to a CAC of 300 to 400 and there’s different levers we can pull right? But when you know that that’s the target, we have to reduce the cost to acquire the customer down to 300 400 for all the economics to work and for you to put more money into this and to really scale it now we can start to look for all the friction that’s in the process that or that’s in the buyer journey, the user journey, depending on what context we’re talking about, and remove every little bit of friction. And when we start to see that, if, okay, if we remove that friction, if we change the messaging, if we do better message mismatching or better message matching from the ad to the landing page. If we, you know, maybe improve the brand, because right now, you feel early stage, and we could through better visuals, make you, you know, position you better amongst your four competitors that you’re trying to beat. If we start to change those little levers, then we can start to, you know, incrementally bring down that number. And you have to be careful talking about this, because there’s so many other things that are variables, right, that influence costs to acquire a customer that are outside of, you know, our ability to influence. But I think talking about it in context of the numbers is most helpful, because now we have really concrete goals all anchored to trying to achieve something that could be scaled and sometimes the answer might be, you need to increase your price, like I’ve come along that before as well. It doesn’t work, not because the CAC is wrong, but because the price is actually wrong. When I look at the competitive landscape, you could double your price, and, you know, not price yourself out of market. So there’s, there’s different levers, and that’s actually what’s so fun about marketing, is that it’s like being a mad scientist and sitting there with all your beakers and putting different things in there and seeing what you can achieve, like what you can create, in terms of results that that is what it’s it’s like. So I think that’s, that’s really key. So I think, like, just really practically as it relates to sales cycles, if you have weak positioning, it usually leads to confusion. Buyers are confused. You know, now I’m having to give repeated explanations of what we do. There’s the the marketing website, but now the sales team is having to, like, repeat or re explain or re educate or change the prospects perspective, and then objections end up getting rooted in misunderstandings, like in the sales process, right? So if we have strong positioning, the opposite would be true. Now we probably have better self qualification, so the quality of leads in your pipeline would be going up. In theory, that’s what would happen, right? We’d have easier comparison. The competitor can compare you better against competitive alternatives. Like it starts to make more sense, less friction, less cognitive load. And then, you know, it will someone will move through the pipeline with less friction. So usually shorter sales cycles. That really matters, right? If you could turn 60 day sales cycles into 30, like, what would that mean for you from a cash flow perspective, right? So it’s kind of looking at at all of those different variables. Christian Klepp  25:51 I love it. I love it. When you talked about the mad scientist that you know, the thing that came to mind was like, Dr. Frankenstein saying. Chantelle Little  25:59 Yeah, exactly that. Christian Klepp  26:03 But I love how you started out with as contradictory as it sounds, it’s very profound working backwards. Chantelle Little  26:11 Yes. Christian Klepp  26:12 What’s the end game? How much? How much is a customer worth to you, right? And working from there, because if you don’t start out like that, everything is really a guesstimation for for lack of a better description. But going back to something that you said, which I thought is really interesting, because at least I’ve seen this a lot. Do you think a lot of this the issue with differentiation and positioning as it pertains to SaaS and tech, also stems from a, this might sound oversimplified, but it stems from a lack of an actual lack of understanding of who the who the customer is, Chantelle Little  26:53 Yes. Christian Klepp  26:53 And what their pain points are, and how you have the ability to address those pain points, versus like, Oh, look at, look at our platform with all these neat features? Chantelle Little  27:02 Yes, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s, it’s hard, like, really, simply, it’s really hard to serve someone if you don’t know their problem first, Christian Klepp  27:12 Right. Chantelle Little  27:13 Right? And I think that’s why I don’t remember the exact quote, and I should look it up, because I keep misquoting it. Then that whole concept of, like, if I had to solve a problem, I’d spend 90% of the time solving the problem, and then whatever, 10% of the time executing against that to actually solve the problem, something like that, right? It is. It is some of that. It’s kind of like if we don’t know the problem, if we don’t know the pain, it’s really hard to solve it. So I think putting adequate energy into understanding, defining the pain, is really critical. Christian Klepp  27:47 Absolutely, absolutely, okay, you’ve given us quite a bit now, but like, walk us through these steps, right? Like, like, like, without that magic formula of yours, I’m joking. We know. We know that it’s not magic. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into this, right? Chantelle Little  28:02 Yeah. Christian Klepp  28:03 Walk us through these steps that that process, right? That helps B2B SaaS teams find their differentiation and strategic positioning. So what? What steps do they need to take? How? How do they? How can they, I should say, conduct research, generate insights, and move rapidly. I think the name of the game is speed too. Like a lot of these guys, especially founder led, they don’t have five years to prove what they have us working. Chantelle Little  28:31 Yeah. Christian Klepp  28:32 We’re talking about months here, right? Chantelle Little  28:34 Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, that’s such a great question. So I’ll try to do this in a way that’s easy to, you know, kind of explain so, so the first part is really defining the market. So in order for us to do positioning like step one, define the market, a couple key questions you can ask is, what cat or category are you in? Right? That’s, that’s really key. And then, what are the competitive alternatives that exist in the market? I’m a big April Dunford fan. I like, there’s a lot of frameworks that there are a lot of books out there about this, but she uses the language of competitive alternatives. And I’ve really, I’ve really taken that and leveraged that, because I think you want to understand who people what I find is that when you start to ask, what are the competitive alternatives? You might realize that the category you originally said you play in is not quite the right category. So if you ask both questions, you can use them to hone in on the right the right spot for early stage founders. I think narrowing in early is really key, and then you can expand really intentionally and strategically later down the line. So what I mean by that is it’s really hard to get traction with the new product in market when you’re trying to solve 30 problems. You know, we’ve talked, talked to so many founders, where it’s like, well, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. We’re solving this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and and so it gets difficult because you need traction. So it’s either, you know, simplify the number of problems you’re solving, or maybe simplify how many industries you’re trying to go after, like start in your best hypothesis industry, get traction there, and then expand later. But I think it’s just being careful, careful about that from a positioning perspective. So that’s kind of step one, just a couple key questions you can ask. Step two is gathering those inputs. So, you know, for customer interviews, you know that’s something that you can do on your own. You can work with an agency to help you do that. I know that that can be really challenging to get people’s time, but for that, it’s really about designing the right script. It’s about making sure that you kind of maintain some continuity through those through those interviews, so that you start to be able to mine for patterns versus changing up the question set every time, leveraging customer surveys. I mean that that requires that you have an outreach list, but often you can, you know, build a bit of an outreach list from the network of folks on your team. But I would say on that one to be really, really careful about narrowing in on the right persona, like the right person, so that you don’t get, you know, the wrong type of input and the wrong type of data. One other thing that you know is really effective is doing a competitor messaging audit. So if you pull up all your competitor websites, and you can use AI to also help you get a start on it, at least you can pull up those websites and basically try to create a bit of a map, right? So it’s like, what is the positioning of each competitor and then what’s their core value prop? Like, that’s that’s also really helpful, outside of positioning. What’s a core value prop? And then, what are some of the key messages that are being highlighted? And then, what proof are they stating? So, is it case studies? Is it testimonials? Is it data points? Like, if that company is saying, we reduce time by 20% or whatever, like, What is the proof that they’re attaching to the message. And again, if you create a bit of a map of those competitors, you can start to see patterns where there’s overlap, and you can also start to see where there’s open gaps, like places you could play that aren’t directly competing. So it can be quite strategic. It can be a lot of fun. You can leverage AI. You could bring all that data back to your team and analyze it. So that’s another one. The review mining, like looking at G2 reviews, that’s really helpful as well, for looking for patterns, again, for all of these things, I we definitely have, you know, really advanced the way that we use AI to do these things, so doing them, but then also validating, making sure you’re using deep research. Sometimes we use multiple platforms so to see if we’re getting the same data from multiple platforms. But I think when you have all this data, AI can be really helpful for analyzing and looking for patterns. So that’s a really useful, useful case. And then internal workshops. I mean, if you’ve got someone on your team that you know is able to run an internal workshop, then that would be a great way to gather feedback from your team and have some of that necessary dialog to drive alignment and pull from the different perspectives on your team. In a perfect world, it’s great if you have a sales perspective, a marketing perspective, a product perspective, and if you’re unsure how to run these workshops, one that’s really useful is just doing a jobs, pains and gains, type or jobs to be done. Using that framework, even that could be really helpful to try map out, you know, the jobs that you believe your customer is doing. And then you can use customer interviews and surveys to validate some of that. And then, to your point, Christian about speed, we actually were. We’ve, we’ve had this a couple times with some customers that we’ve worked with, and even for our own testing, where we will use third party, you know, B2B platforms to, you know, interview look alike audiences. And there’s a whole science to that. So it’s not as simple as just going paying money and then, boom, you get 50 people’s feedback. You have to be super strategic about how you structure the surveys and the questions and what tests you run. But that’s beautiful, because now, 48 hours from now, you’re getting feedback. Now you’re able to leverage that, put that in AI look for patterns. It can be quite helpful when, when speed is the game. So that’s, that’s another one. So that’s kind of step two, gathering the real inputs. Step three is your mining for that true differentiation. A couple things that I’ll just quickly mention here is like, really try avoid table stakes. I see this time and time again, and even it’s very tempting to say, well, we’re we’ve got great customer service, whatever company is going to claim they do. Now, the customer interviews might say something different, and the customer, the competitor reviews online, might say something different, but like, is that sticky enough as a differentiation? Or like, even when people talk about their brand personality, it’s like, well, we’re professional. Well, that’s table stakes, right? Like, everyone’s expecting a level of professionalism. Christian Klepp  34:58 We hope so. Chantelle Little  34:59 We hope, we hope, right? So it’s like, try avoid that, or try avoid really vague adjectives. Like, get like, really specific. Don’t be satisfied with like, the vague. So here’s, like, the process where, now that you’ve done all that pre work, right now, you’re trying to, like, look for specific strengths and just where that real uniqueness is. And I believe that when it’s really grounded in real customer language, or maybe it’s lookalike audience language, it drives better performance from a marketing perspective. So that’s something to really look for. And step four, of course, like once you’ve actually found the differentiation, now you have to operationalize all of that, right? So that’s a whole other thing. I could go on and on and on, but it’s a whole other thing, because it can’t just live in a slide deck or a pitch deck. Now we have to figure out, how do we change the website, our sales decks, our email, outbound emails, like literally every touch point so that it aligns with that positioning, because everything that’s out of alignment is going to create confusion and potentially introduce friction. So that’s kind of the other part. So I’ll stop there. Does that help? Christian Klepp  36:15 I think you’ve got enough material here for an audio book. Chantelle Little  36:21 So that’s not the first time I’ve been described as robust. Christian Klepp  36:27 But jokes aside. I mean, I think that that was, that was quite comprehensive, and thank you for walking us through that. And by appreciate the amount of detail that you’ve provided here, because it is, again, one of the reasons why we agreed to discuss this topic on, you know, on this episode, is because this is a component, a vital component, that tends to get overlooked because they feel like, like it’s not such a big deal, or it’s something that’s easy to come up with. And now that you’ve met, you know, you’ve put in the effort to, like, walk us through what that actual process looks like. Chantelle Little  37:04 Yeah. Christian Klepp  37:06 We hopefully have dispelled that myth of how easy this is. Because, you know, as you’ve rightfully pointed out, it’s not, I mean, even if you Yes, of course you can use AI. I mean, like, we use it too, but there’s a certain way to use it and leverage it, where it generates, like you said, it helps to aggregate data, it helps to identify patterns, and it helps to generate those insights that also create true differentiation. Chantelle Little  37:34 Yes. Christian Klepp  37:35 None of this nonsense. And you know where I’m going with this, like you know, our true brand, our true differentiation, you know, lies in our people. Chantelle Little  37:43 Right? Christian Klepp  37:44 No, it does not right. Chantelle Little  37:45 Yeah, yeah. Christian Klepp  37:47 It lies in your ability to solve your you know, whatever challenges and problems and pain points your customer is facing, whatever those may be. Chantelle Little  37:56 Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think I love that you said that, because I think we also are living in this like world where outcomes, there’s so much focus on outcomes. So if you have a B in the B2B SaaS space, you know, saying that we have good customer service, saying that we have good people, those are, those are how we create value. They’re not the value. Christian Klepp  38:21 Right? Chantelle Little  38:21 So it’s like the the, you know, old challenge of people that focus on their features versus focusing on the value that they’re creating. And in today’s world, you can’t stand out if you don’t lean into outcomes, Christian Klepp  38:34 Correct. Chantelle Little  38:35 Right? So, Christian Klepp  38:36 I’ll come I’ll come focused, I’ll come driven. Chantelle Little  38:39 Yes, Christian Klepp  38:40 Right? I’m love it or hate it, right? Metrics, you know, at some point, especially in the world of SaaS and tech, which is, you know, very technical. Sorry, I’m trying to, try not to use any puns here, but, like, you know, right? But, but, but you, you will have to, especially if you’re dealing with founders and people that are have a very technical background, they need to be able to, like, grab on to something tangible. Chantelle Little  39:09 Yes. Christian Klepp  39:10 And sometimes, and I hate to say this myself, because I am that person that that lives and breathes branding, but sometimes that’s not something that’s that’s tangible to them, so you have to show them. This is working. We are making progress here. So what kind of metrics would you suggest marketers pay attention to when it comes to differentiation and positioning? Chantelle Little  39:31 Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question, and you’ve already alluded to the fact that measuring brand performance is like the thing that every marketer wishes they could do with higher degrees of precision and accuracy, because when they’re sitting, especially we work with so many mid mark, mid market, you know, marketers, and I hear about them going into the Csuite meetings, the board meetings, and I hear how difficult it is for them to get that approval on brand investments. Because, like everyone wants demand, we want x, you know, pipeline by the end of this year. We want, you know, this many (MQL) Marketing Qualified Leads by, you know, July, whatever it is, right? There’s these high expectations for performance, and usually more tendency to focus on demand investments than brand. So I think there’s a number of metrics like, I could go on and on and probably do an audio book on that one too Christian. But the one that I thought was worth maybe highlighting, because I think it’s not talked about enough, is this concept of unaided recall. And it’s it’s a little bit tricky to measure that as well. But I think what, what conceptually, you know, I try to encourage founders to think about is that at any given point in time, only 5% of your market is, like in market ready to buy. So if we run any demand campaigns, we are focused on converting that 5% into customers, right? But the other 95% we don’t want to alienate them. We don’t want to forget about want to forget about them, because they’re not in market today, but they might be tomorrow. They might be next month, next quarter, next year. So how can we build some mental availability with that 95% so that when they go in market and they become in the category of the 5% they think of your brand first, that’s, that’s the una like the recall piece. So typically, you know, we encourage people to think about what buying triggers, what moments in time happen that essentially prompt someone to move from the 95% that aren’t in market to the 5% that are in market. And then we try build campaigns and marketing around those buying triggers. But the key point is, is that we do that to build mental availability, right? So I think of it like this when you think of this category. So I’ll just use (CRM) customer relationship management. We think of this category of customer relationship management, who comes to mind, right? HubSpot, Salesforce. Christian Klepp  42:00 Yeah, right. Chantelle Little  42:01 So you kind of want to be the one that comes to mind. So it’s about really building that so. So I think measuring, like unaided, unaided recall, maybe aided recognition too. There’s you can. You can use branded search growth to help, you know, figure that out. Sometimes branded search growth, you know, you have to think about that in context. But are we seeing more people directly search for our solution? You know that could be an indication that they are aware of your company and your brand. There could be direct traffic trends that could be measured, but you’re trying to really think about if, if someone was prompted, like, if someone has pain, and that buying trigger happens like I now have pain. Do they think of your brand first, right? And I mean, some people will say, well, that’s hard to achieve because HubSpot Salesforce, they have these huge they have these huge budgets. And I’m not, you know, trying to gloss over that. That is a reality, but I think that there are targeted ways to build brand awareness and that mental availability and measure those metrics and help boards and Csuite understand the value of that so that they will approve brand investments, because when we invest in brand demand, performs better, right? Christian Klepp  43:19 Amen. Amen. Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, gosh, I wish. I wish more people would be saying something like that, but you said something which I thought was like, almost like a key phrase in this conversation, almost like an outcome. It’s like the it’s the logical, like, next step. It’s this building mental availability. Chantelle Little  43:40 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:41 Because that’s really a big part of what this exercise is. Chantelle Little  43:46 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:47 Especially in B2B, as you, as you rightfully pointed out that not everybody’s out there like, oh yeah, I need to get me some of that software. Let me pull up my credit card. Chantelle Little  43:55 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:56 It doesn’t happen that way, right? It usually is a much longer process. It usually involves a buying committee of anywhere between four to six people, maybe even more. Chantelle Little  44:05 Yes. Christian Klepp  44:05 Right? And they they do, you know, they do their own due diligence and research, and what they find online is extremely important. Chantelle Little  44:14 Yes. Christian Klepp  44:16 To your point, about like, not just the review sites, but what you know and what other people are saying, but you know, what are people online commenting, with regards to the software? What’s out there that’s available? Like, okay, if you, if you, if you Google or, or in the this day and age, you do AI search, what is AI saying? Chantelle Little  44:35 Yes, Christian Klepp  44:36 Right? Chantelle Little  44:37 Yeah. Christian Klepp  44:37 All important. Chantelle Little  44:38 Yeah. And I think, obviously, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, of course, you want to measure measure like branded related metrics, like we’ve talked about. But I think you know, it’s also important to be measuring your your CAC, right? Because, like, some people aren’t even measuring their CAC. Christian Klepp  44:55 That’s right. Chantelle Little  44:56 And so measuring CAC is important, because if we want to prove you. That increased investment in brand reduces cap. We also have to measure CAC right conversion rates like, that’s a that’s another thing that you we can be measuring on the web level and paid campaigns. We can measure sales cycles, whether they’re shortening right. These are things brand influences. So ideally, we and we measure, you know, how brand is performing, and then we measure the things, the things that we’re trying to improve, right? CAC, conversion rates, sales cycles, all that kind of stuff, quality, right? Inbound quality. What’s the sales team say about the quality of these leads? Christian Klepp  45:34 Absolutely. Chantelle Little  45:35 All those pieces could be measured, and it will help us prove that brand is is helping remove friction. Christian Klepp  45:43 That’s absolutely right. Well, Chantelle, we could have gone on for another 10 hours, but like you know, in the interest of time, I’d like to thank you for coming on, and thank you for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. So please quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Chantelle Little  45:59 Sure. Thanks Christian for having me. I appreciate it. So I’m Chantelle Little, founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency that serves B2B SaaS companies, and we help B2B SaaS teams clarify positioning, build differentiated brands, and also create websites and campaigns that drive qualified pipeline and ultimately revenue. That’s the key. So, so that’s that’s that in terms of connecting with me, you can check out our agency at tillerdigital.com that’s T, I, L, L, E R digital.com and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Christian Klepp  46:35 Perfect and we will drop the links to those all in the show notes when this episode comes out so once again. Chantelle, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Chantelle Little  46:45 Thanks, Christian, see ya. Christian Klepp  46:47 Thank you. Bye for now.

In today's episode, I explore why differentiated value is the most important—and most misunderstood—part of positioning. I explain why customers don't really care that much about features, how to use the “so what?” question to uncover what truly matters, and why this step takes more time than any other in a positioning exercise. I also share how my thinking on value has evolved since the first edition of my book, Obviously Awesome, and why I expanded this section so much in the second edition.You will learn: (03:14) How skipping competitive alternatives and capabilities leads to opinion-based positioning.(04:38) Why differentiated value is about outcomes, not feature checklists.(06:15) How to use repeated “so what?” questions to move from features to real value.(08:27) Why “make money” and “save money” alone are not enough to differentiate.(10:02) How to focus value messaging on the champion rather than every stakeholder.(13:31) Why teams should align on value concepts before worrying about copywriting.(17:23) How to separate true value from objection handling in your positioning.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Mentioned in this episode: * Obviously Awesome, Second Edition (forthcoming), by April Dunford. —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=books Barnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford —The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstU Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

In today's episode, I dive into why competitive alternatives—not problems or future visions—are the right place to start a positioning exercise. I explain how different teams inside a company misunderstand competition in predictable ways, and why positioning must focus only on who shows up on customer shortlists right now. I also share how my thinking on this step has evolved since the first edition of my book, Obviously Awesome, and why getting this step wrong makes every other positioning decision harder.You will learn: (03:26) How competitive alternatives are broader than direct competitors but narrower than imagined threats.(05:05) Why starting with “the problem” often leads to vague or misleading positioning inputs.(09:21) How jobs-to-be-done thinking reshaped April's positioning methodology.(12:19) What the milkshake story teaches about customer comparison frameworks.(14:46) Why sales teams are the most reliable source for identifying real competitive alternatives.(17:52) How product, marketing, and founders each skew the competitive picture in different ways.(24:49) Why AI tools like ChatGPT cannot accurately tell you who your real competitors are.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Mentioned in this episode: * Obviously Awesome, Second Edition (forthcoming), by April Dunford. * Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen.* Bob Moesta, researcher at JobsToBeDone.org.—Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=books Barnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford —The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstU Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

In today's episode, I dive into what needs to happen before you ever start a positioning exercise. I explain why positioning fails when teams skip preparation, ignore alignment, or try to make positioning work for every customer they've ever had. I also walk through how to assemble the right team, let go of outdated assumptions, and create shared language so positioning decisions actually stick.You will learn: (01:53) How the second edition of my book Obviously Awesome restructures positioning into pre-work, core work, and post-work.(03:12) Why positioning is not a marketing-only activity and requires cross-functional input.(05:54) What sales, product, founders, and executives uniquely contribute to positioning decisions.(10:29) How to assemble the right-sized positioning team without derailing facilitation.(11:56) Why identifying obvious bad-fit customers upfront improves positioning clarity.(18:56) How to let go of legacy positioning baggage that no longer fits your market reality.(21:58) Why aligning on positioning vocabulary before the workshop prevents costly confusion.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Mentioned in this episode: * Obviously Awesome, Second Edition (forthcoming). —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=books Barnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford —The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstU Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

In today's episode, I dive into the decisions teams need to make before they ever start a positioning exercise. I explain why positioning readiness matters, how unlaunched products lead to positioning theses rather than true positioning, and why clarity around audience, scope, and personas is essential. Also, this episode sets the foundation for a new mini-series tied to the second edition of my book, Obviously Awesome, focusing on what I've learned after hundreds of positioning workshops.You will learn:(01:34) Why I decided to release a second edition of Obviously Awesome after six years of client feedback.(04:35) How the positioning methodology has evolved from ten steps to five steps and five components.(08:38) Why unlaunched products should focus on a "positioning thesis" rather than a final positioning strategy.(09:58) The benefit of keeping your positioning loose before launch.(13:00) Why it's vital to distinguish positioning for customers from positioning for investors.(15:59) Why single-product companies should treat company and product positioning as the same thing.(17:51) Strategies for deciding whether to position a lead wedge product, a platform, or a suite of products.(22:26) How to identify the "champion" persona.—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales:Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contactApril's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunfordApril's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Mentioned in this episode:* Obviously Awesome, Second Edition (forthcoming).—Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks:Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRYAmazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgtAmazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22April%20Dunford%22&c=booksBarnes & Noble: https://www.bn.com/s/%22April%20Dunford%22Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/contributors/april-dunford—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWxSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02XBrnPJ7NVGPUgHC7xstUSubscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow—This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

This week, we're joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning, April Dunford. April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass. In this episode, April talks about: Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals. The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategy—and how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition can't. Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them). And finally, Vision vs. Reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/ April's books: https://www.aprildunford.com/books Chapters 00:00: Introduction 01:45: April's journey from engineering to marketing to product positioning expert 05:00: The shifting lansscape: Position from COVID to the AI era 10:45: Moving beyond "AI washing" to find differentiated value 15:30: Defining your true competitive landscape 20:30: How to be worth your customers' migration risk 23:45: Why April likes when competitors "lie" about their capabilities and features 32:00: Why positioning is critical for product and engineering alignment 35:00: April's new book details Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchPodPodcast)! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr). Special Guest: April Dunford.

#309 Product Positioning | This episode is from a Drive 2025 (our annual Exit Five event) session with April Dunford (Founder, Ambient Strategy). April pulls from working with 300+ tech companies to unpack the real patterns behind winning positioning from calling out competitors' nonsense to teaching buyers what actually matters, avoiding category-creation traps, and fixing the sales messes that weak positioning creates. It's sharp, funny, brutally honest, and basically a crash course in how to make your product unmistakably different in a market full of noise.PS. Want to join us at Drive 2026?Head over to exitfive.com/drive to join the waitlist for Drive 2026 and be the first to know when tickets go on sale.Timestamps(00:00) - – Why Positioning Breaks (03:20) - – Teaching Buyers to Spot Competitor BS (06:48) - – Turning Differentiators into Real Value (10:26) - – The Trap of Overthinking Categories (14:13) - – Choosing Your Go-To-Market Before Your Positioning (18:50) - – Building a Story Only You Can Tell (23:18) - – When Great Storytelling Backfires (28:53) - – Positioning Multi-Product Companies (32:34) - – When and Why to Reposition (36:22) - – Bringing It All Together in Sales Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Today's episode is brought to you by Knak.Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time.It's the only way you can truly “own” your audience.But when it comes to building the emails - if you've ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever. That's why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks.Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak.Tired of ‘hoping' the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first.Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak.And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time.See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five. Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five.***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser built world-class GTM teams at Stripe, Google, and, most recently, Vercel, where she serves as COO and oversees marketing, sales, customer success, revenue operations, and field engineering. She transformed Stripe's early sales organization from the ground up and advises founders on GTM strategy.We discuss:1. Why GTM is becoming more strategically important in the AI era2. The rise of the GTM engineer3. A primer on segmentation4. How to build a sales org that engineers and product teams respect5. The changing calculus of build vs. buy for go-to-market tools in the AI era6. Why most customers buy to avoid pain rather than to gain upside—Brought to you by:Datadog—Now home to Eppo, the leading experimentation and feature flagging platform: https://www.datadoghq.com/lennyLovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI: https://lovable.dev/Stripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue: https://stripe.com/—Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-the-best-gtm-teams-do-differently—My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/179503137/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation—Where to find Jeanne DeWitt Grosser:• X: https://x.com/jdewitt29• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannedewitt—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Jeanne DeWitt Grosser(05:26) Defining go-to-market(08:43) The evolution of go-to-market roles(11:23) The rise of the go-to-market engineer(14:21) Implementing AI in sales processes(15:28) Optimizing sales with AI agents(23:47) Defining sales roles: SDRs and AEs(26:04) When to hire a GTM engineer(29:04) Hiring and scaling sales teams(30:50) The ideal go-to-market engineer(34:24) The go-to-market tool stack(40:39) Advice on building a great sales bot(44:34) Vercel's unfair advantage(46:37) Go-to-market as a product(47:04) Innovative sales tactics at Stripe(52:38) Effective go-to-market tactics(01:00:37) Segmentation strategies(01:09:31) Building a sales org that engineers love(01:14:00) Thoughts on PLG and pricing(01:16:44) Sales compensation and hiring(01:19:24) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Vercel: https://vercel.com• Stripe: https://stripe.com• Rosalind Franklin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin• Ben Salzman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensalzman• SDK: https://ai-sdk.dev/docs/introduction• Gong: https://www.gong.io• Lyft: https://www.lyft.com• Instacart: https://www.instacart.com• DoorDash: https://www.instacart.com• “Sell the alpha, not the feature”: The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR | Jen Abel: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-enterprise-sales-playbook-1m-to-10m-arr• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• Kate Jensen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateearle• Lessons from scaling Stripe | Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-scaling-stripe-tactics• Atlassian: atlassian.com—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

In this episode, Rick speaks with Himanshu Saxena, founder of First Principles, a consultancy and fellowship program focused on helping founders sharpen their messaging through simplicity and structured storytelling. Himanshu shares lessons from building and scaling products across multiple industries and explains why most startups fail to communicate value clearly. He breaks down how frameworks like April Dunford's positioning and Donald Miller's story loop guide effective copy and website strategy, especially for technical founders. Listeners gain insights into using conversations, communities, and AI tools to refine messaging, test content, and build stronger distribution channels. This episode delivers practical guidance for anyone aiming to simplify communication and improve marketing clarity.  

Jen Abel is GM of Enterprise at State Affairs and co-founded Jellyfish, a consultancy that helps founders learn zero-to-one enterprise sales. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met on learning enterprise sales, and in this follow-up to our first chat two years ago (covering the zero to $1 million ARR founder-led sales phase), we focus on the skills founders need to learn to go from $1M to $10M ARR.We discuss:1. Why the “mid-market” doesn't exist2. Why tier-one logos like Stripe and Tesla counterintuitively make the best early customers3. The dangers of pricing your product at $10K-$20K4. Why you need to vision-cast instead of problem-solve to win enterprise deals5. Why services are the fastest way to get your foot in the door with enterprises6. How to find and work with design partners7. When to hire your first salesperson and what profile to look for—Brought to you by:WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUsLovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AICoda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Where to find Jen Abel:• X: https://x.com/jjen_abel• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/earlystagesales• Website: https://www.jjellyfish.com—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Welcome back, Jen!(04:38) The myth of the mid-market(08:08) Targeting tier-one logos(10:50) Vision-casting vs. problem-selling(15:35) The importance of high ACVs(20:45)  Don't play the small business game with an enterprise company(25:09) Design partners: the double-edged sword(28:11) Finding the right company(36:55) Enterprise sales: the art of the deal(43:21) The problem with channel partnerships(44:41) Quick summary(50:24) Hiring the right enterprise salespeople(56:49) Structuring sales compensation(01:01:01) Building relationships in enterprise sales(01:02:07) The art of cold outreach(01:07:31) Outbound tooling and AI(01:14:08) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• The ultimate guide to founder-led sales | Jen Abel (co-founder of JJELLYFISH): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/master-founder-led-sales-jen-abel• Mario meme: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/missing-meme-led-me-woman-johann-van-tonder-im6df• Kathy Sierra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra• Cursor: https://cursor.com• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell• Justin Lawson on X: https://x.com/jjustin_lawson• Stripe: https://stripe.com• Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-product-at-stripe-jeff-weinstein• He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor on the future of careers, coding, agents, and more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/he-saved-openai-bret-taylor• OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai• Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next• Linear: https://linear.app• Linear's secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linears-secret-to-building-beloved-b2b-products-nan-yu• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com• Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com• How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-palantir-nabeel-qureshi• McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com• Deloitte: https://www.deloitte.com• Accenture: https://www.accenture.com• Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-a-world-class-sales-org• Peter Dedene on X: https://x.com/peterdedene• Hang Huang on X: https://x.com/HH_HangHuang• Hugo Alves on X: https://x.com/Ugo_alves• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• Clay: https://www.clay.com• Apollo: https://www.apollo.io• Jason Lemkin on X: https://x.com/jasonlk• Gavin Baker on X: https://x.com/GavinSBaker• Jason Cohen on X: https://x.com/asmartbear• Baywatch on Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Baywatch/0NU9YS8WWRNQO1NZD5DOQ3I8W6• Playground: https://www.tryplayground.com• ClassDojo: https://www.classdojo.com• Jason Lemkin's post about Replit: https://x.com/jasonlk/status/1946069562723897802—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

In this episode of OnBase, host Chris Moody sits down with Madhup Mishra to explore how AI is collapsing traditional go-to-market funnels and reshaping product marketing as we know it. From redefining buyer journeys to measuring real engagement, Madhup offers a candid, strategic look at what it takes to win in an AI-driven world.He shares his philosophy of “clarity through confusion,” explains how product marketing has evolved from storytelling to enablement, and offers insights into building trust and advocacy with increasingly skeptical, data-driven buyers.Listeners will come away with a modern blueprint for product launches, buyer enablement, and authentic community building, all while balancing automation with the human touch.Key TakeawaysAI is Collapsing the Funnel: Traditional marketing funnels are giving way to nonlinear, AI-powered buyer journeys, where time-to-value and hands-on validation matter more than nurture sequences.Product-Led Growth is Accelerating: Buyers expect to experience value immediately—the product must now tell its own story, not just the sales team.From Persuasion to Enablement: Marketers must help buyers make confident decisions, not just convince them with clever messaging.Advocacy is the New SEO: Developers and customers who share their experiences online are now fueling AI search recommendations. Building authentic advocacy impacts discoverability and trust.Measure Engagement, Not Just Activity: Pipeline matters, but depth of engagement—expansion, demos, and authentic community chatter—is the real measure of success.AI Must Be Purposeful: Don't launch “AI for AI's sake.” The best AI products solve real, high-friction problems and integrate naturally into customer workflows.Quotes“Advocacy isn't optional anymore. If your community isn't talking about you, AI search engines will recommend your competitors instead.”Tech recommendationsGong – For sales insights and understanding customer conversations.Amplitude – For in-product analytics and mapping the customer journey.Resource RecommendationsBooks:Obviously Awesome by April Dunford – A masterclass in product positioning.Shout-OutsSimon Sinek, Author and Inspirational speaker on business leadership for inspiring purpose-first leadership.April Dunford, Positioning Consultant, Speaker, and Author for redefining how companies position their products.Ethan Mollick, Associate Professor at The Wharton School for his thought leadership on AI and business innovation.About the GuestMadhup leads Product Marketing for SmartBear, creating product and solutions messaging, positioning, and sales enablement, and launching new products. He deeply understands SmartBear's core developer and development team audience and can strategically communicate the impact of its products throughout the software development lifecycle. With over two decades of technology experience in companies like Hitachi Vantara, Volt Active Data, HPE SimpliVity, Dell, and Dell-EMC, Madhup has held a variety of roles in product management, sales engineering, and product marketing. Madhup lives in Central Massachusetts with his lovely wife, their son, and their dog. In his free time, he loves to travel, bike, and run.Connect with Madhup.

In Part 2 of our series of conversations about positioning, Brendon and Nihal talk about how we handle positioning deliverables and what exactly the final product should look like. And, we talk a lot more about B2B marketing guru April Dunford.

Emily Kramer (Founder of MKT1 and the Dear Marketers podcast) has led marketing teams at Asana, Carta, and Astro (acquired by Slack).After working in-house, she became an advisor, consulting with B2B startup founders on marketing approaches across growth stages, audiences, and GTM motions.She's seen it all.We chatted about positioning fundamentals, product vs. content marketing, the growing founder-influencer trend, and her personally coined Fuel and Engine Framework that identifies which part of a broken marketing machine needs fixing.In this episode:(00:00) Intro(01:38) How Will AI Change Startup Marketing and Advising?(07:53) The First Steps to Startup Marketing(14:56) Join Emily at Ahrefs Evolve(15:35) The 12 Marketing Advantages Framework(16:43) Getting Your Messaging and Positioning Right(22:40) The Fuel and Engine Framework(28:59) The 30% Juice Rule for Startups (DEBUNKED)(34:57) The Difference Between Product Marketing and Content Marketing(40:11) Examples of Ultra-Successful Campaigns & Measuring the ROI(49:13) Category Creation vs Roles(51:28) The Rise of Ecosystem Marketing(59:34) Is SEO Dying?(01:01:21) Founders as Influencers(01:07:57) The Shortcut to Building Brand Influence(01:14:10) OutroWe hope you enjoyed this episode of the Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like, subscribe, and tell a friend.—Where to find Emily:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilykramer/Website: https://www.mkt1.co/Where to find Tim:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/X: https://x.com/timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/—Referenced in this episode:

Today, we're talking with Lanie Schenkelberg, former product manager and current VP of Product Marketing at Inovalon. In this episode, we discuss: The 4 essential elements of compelling product storytelling How to spot weak messaging - and what strong positioning really looks like How Lanie's team led a storytelling overhaul that contributed to Inovalon's growth Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laineschenkelberg/ Inovalon: https://www.inovalon.com/ Resources Make it Punchy, By Emma Stratton: https://punchy.co/make-it-punchy-book/ Obviously Awesome Positioning, April Dunford: https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005 Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:48 The Importance of Messaging and Storytelling in Product 03:01 How to go from Product Management to Marketing 06:10 Understanding the Customer's Big Win 12:45 The Hero Story Format 15:12 The Role of Positioning and Differentiation in Product Marketing 21:23 How Lanie Scaled Positioning at Inovalon 31:29 Outro Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchPod.byLogRocket)! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr). Special Guest: Lanie Schenkelberg.

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky are the co-creators of the Design Sprint (the famous five-day product innovation process) and authors of the bestselling book Sprint. After decades of working with over 300 startups in the earliest stages, they discovered that most startups fail not because they can't build, but because they build the wrong thing. The very beginning of a startup is your highest-leverage moment, and most teams waste months or years by skipping a few critical early questions. Jake and John developed the Foundation Sprint to help startups validate ideas and compress months of work into just two days.What you'll learn:1. The step-by-step Foundation Sprint process that compresses three or four months of validation into two days—including templates you can use immediately2. Why differentiation is the #1 predictor of startup success (with the 2x2 framework that you can use with your team)3. The three fundamental questions every founder should answer before writing a line of code4. The “note and vote” technique that eliminates groupthink and gets honest answers from your colleagues5. The seven “magic lenses” for choosing between multiple product ideas6. The biggest mistake engineers make when building with AI tools7. The paradox of speed: why “building nothing first” can get you to product-market fit faster—Brought to you by:Brex—The banking solution for startups: https://www.brex.com/product/business-account?ref_code=bmk_dp_brand1H25_ln_new_fsParagon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want: https://www.useparagon.com/lennyCoda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace: https://coda.io/lenny—Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-foundation-sprint-jake-knapp-and-john-zeratsky—Where to find Jake Knapp:• X: https://twitter.com/jakek• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-knapp/• Website: https://jakeknapp.com/—Where to find John Zeratsky:• X: https://twitter.com/jazer• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnzeratsky/• Website: https://johnzeratsky.com/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky(04:41) Origins of the Design Sprint(11:06) The Foundation Sprint process(14:40) Phase one: The basics(16:57) Case study: Latchet(28:50) Phase two: Differentiation(36:24) The importance of differentiation(40:15) Thoughts on price differentiation(43:37) Case study: Mellow(46:04) Custom differentiators(49:30) The mini manifesto(52:02) Phase three: Approach to the project(54:50) Magic lenses activity(01:02:39) Prototyping and testing(01:10:00) Real-world examples and success stories(01:15:15) Motivation behind The Foundation Sprint(01:17:15) The outcome of the sprint: The founding hypothesis(01:19:28) The Design Sprint(01:28:19) The role of AI in prototyping(01:36:50) Final thoughts and resources—Referenced:• Introducing the Foundation Sprint: From the creators of the Design Sprint: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/introducing-the-foundation-sprint• Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-time-for-what-matters-jake• Eli Blee-Goldman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-blee-goldman/• Character Capital: https://www.character.vc/• Character Labs: https://www.character.vc/labs• Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/• Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/• Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/naming-expert-david-placek• Sonos: https://www.sonos.com/• Vercel: https://vercel.com/• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/• April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/april-dunford-on-product-positioning• Positioning: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/positioning• 10 things we know to be true: https://about.google/company-info/philosophy/• Gandalf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf• Frodo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Baggins• Mordor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordor• 35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond | Bob Baxley: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/35-years-of-product-design-wisdom-bob-baxley• The Primal Mark: How the Beginning Shapes the End in the Development of Creative Ideas: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/primal-mark-how-beginning-shapes-end-development-creative-ideas• Base44: https://base44.com/• Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-base44-bootstrapped-startup-success-story-maor-shlomo• Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/• Blue Bottle Coffee: https://bluebottlecoffee.com• Reclaim: https://reclaim.ai/• The official Foundation Sprint + Design Sprint template: https://www.character.vc/miro-template• Rippling: https://www.rippling.com/• Latchet: https://latchet.com/• Mellow: http://getmellow.com/• AxionOrbital: https://axionorbital.space/—Recommended books:• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-audiobook/dp/B019R2DQIY• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Click: How to Make What People Want: https://www.amazon.com/Click-Make-What-People-Want/dp/1668072114Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

B2B CMOs know positioning matters—but too often, it vanishes when sales starts talking.   In this episode, positioning guru April Dunford pulls back the curtain on the disconnect between marketing and sales and shares exactly how to build a sales pitch that wins. Drawing from her book Sales Pitch and decades of experience, April shares a battle-tested framework for building pitches that set the context, overcome indecision, and spotlight your unique value—without overwhelming buyers or falling into feature hell.  Key Mistakes:  Mistake #1: Treating positioning as marketing-only  Mistake #2: Assuming sales will “get it” if you hand them positioning docs  Mistake #3: Building sales pitches without a clear, compelling structure In this episode: Why positioning is the starting point for every winning pitch  How marketing can frame the problem so sales doesn't chase the wrong story  Why leading with your company history stalls momentum  What smart pitch sequencing sounds like in action

Krithika Shankarraman was the first marketing hire at OpenAI and Stripe and led marketing at Retool. At OpenAI, she established marketing foundations for ChatGPT for consumers and enterprises, as well as their developer API platform. While at Stripe, she spent over eight years building and scaling their marketing function from scratch. An engineer turned marketer, Krithika brings a uniquely analytical approach to marketing. She currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at Thrive Capital, where she helps portfolio companies on all things marketing.What you will learn:1. Why do most marketing playbooks often fail, and what's a better way?2. Which marketing lever should I pull first?3. Why is trying to be better than competitors usually a losing strategy?4. How do I craft positioning that actually converts?5. What makes messaging stick with developers, enterprises, and consumers?6. What pricing experiments actually move revenue?7. What is working at OpenAI really like?8. Why does consistency and quality matter more than speed?—Brought to you by:Eppo — Run reliable, impactful experimentsAirtable ProductCentral—Launch to new heights with a unified system for product developmentLinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business—Where to find Krithika Shankarraman:• X: https://x.com/krithix• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krithix/• Website: https://krithix.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Krithika(04:22) Early marketing lessons from OpenAI(11:17) Diagnosing marketing needs(15:06) The DATE framework and why being cheaper is a race to the bottom(17:11) Marketing strategies at Retool(22:29) Insights from marketing at Stripe(32:33) The importance of consistent marketing communication(39:55) Criteria for hiring a marketing expert(41:43) “Capital M” vs. “lowercase m” marketing(43:05) ChatGPT vs. Claude: market dominance(45:31) The future of AI and its societal impact(47:09) Work-life balance(48:41) Transitioning to Thrive(52:35) Career advice for marketers(55:00) The importance of taste and creativity in the AI era(01:00:04) AI product pricing(01:03:21) AI tools in marketing(01:05:17) Failure corner(01:08:46) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• OpenAI: https://openai.com/• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Retool: https://retool.com/• Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/• Sam Altman talks about his business model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLnyjxgFxew• The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan• Pricing your SaaS product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy• Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/• Stripe Connect: https://stripe.com/connect• John Collison on X: https://x.com/collision• Patrick Collison on X: https://x.com/patrickc• Cristina Cordova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinajcordova/• Hackpad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackpad• Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history | Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-wiz-raaz-herzberg• Wiz: https://www.wiz.io/• Thrive Capital: https://thrivecap.com/• Brian Chesky's new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach• Claude: https://claude.ai/new• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Lessons from scaling Stripe | Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-scaling-stripe-tactics• Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• Tobi Lütke's leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook• OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai• April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/april-dunford-on-product-positioning• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/• Some people think AI writing has a tell—the em dash. Writers disagree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/04/09/ai-em-dash-writing-punctuation-chatgpt/—Recommended books:• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It: https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005• Circe: https://www.amazon.com/Circe-Madeline-Miller/dp/0316556327/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

This episode is presented by:AppUnite: The right dev partner can make or break your product. AppUnite embeds with your team to build apps that scale. - https://bit.ly/3QOKHtTFullstory: Behavioral data that empowers - https://fullstory.com/valueApril Dunford, author and globally recognized expert on product positioning, reflects on her unconventional journey from aspiring doctor to tech executive to in-demand consultant. In this episode, she shares what made her finally walk away from VP marketing roles, how she reinvented her career in her late 40s, and why teaching, not advising, is at the heart of her business today.April opens up about:The burnout and politics that pushed her to “fire herself” and leave startup lifeHow imposter syndrome nearly kept her from recognizing her true superpowerWhat she learned from one of her toughest client sessionsThings to listen for:(00:00) The challenges of a VP of Marketing role(08:14) Breaking into product marketing(09:25) Thank you to our sponsors, AppUnite & Fullstory (12:01) Navigating career decisions and public speaking(19:33) Transitioning to consulting(31:38) The importance of disqualifying bad clients(33:39) Handling political traps in big companies(38:45) Transitioning from startups to big corporations(42:14) The importance of management training(45:47) Navigating layoffs and job security(54:59) Managing up and leadership skillsResources:Connect with April:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/April's official website: https://www.aprildunford.com/ April's newsletter: https://www.aprildunford.com/newsletter April's podcast: https://www.positioning.show/ Connect with Andrew:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcapland/ Substack: https://media.deliveringvalue.coHire Andrew as your coach: https://deliveringvalue.co/coaching

April Dunford unpacks the proven frameworks behind her bestsellers Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch to help you craft positioning that sells. Whether you're scaling a growth-stage startup or leading a legacy tech brand, you'll leave this episode with the tools to own your space in the market—and tell your brand story in a way only you can. Improve your storytelling immediately with my The ABTs of Agile Communications™ quick online course to learn the agile narrative framework that all influential business communication is built on.  Grab your copy of The Narrative Gym for Business, a short guide on crafting ABTs for all of your communications.  Read Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System™ to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand.    #StoryOn!   ≈Park

Georgiana (Gia) Laudi is co-founder and chief strategist at Forget The Funnel. She's author of the book "Forget The Funnel" that's about Customer-Led Growth and a customer-led approach for driving predictable, recurring revenue.Here's what we cover:I have to ask why did Gia and April Dunford bash Voice of Customer (VoC) on April's podcast because I'm honestly curious;How to pick the right insights and turn those into positioning and messaging;How to create your messaging guide;How often should you conduct customer research.Gia on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudiForget The Funnel: forgetthefunnel.comFor more content, subscribe to Building With Buyers on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review if you're lovin' the show. Music by my talented daughter.Anna on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠furmanovmarketing.com

Most teams are messing up their opportunity to scale their product into higher-value deals—without even realizing it.They're following someone else's Product-Led Sales playbook. ICPs are fuzzy. Qualification is weak. Sales motions aren't landing.Some teams are stuck in the messy middle: a PLG motion that's working (sort of), but sales is jumping in too early—or not at all. Customers are confused. Deals stall.Others know it's time to evolve beyond pure PLG—but aren't sure how to layer in sales without breaking what's already working.In this episode of The Forget the Funnel Podcast, Georgiana Laudi and April Dunford break down the real meaning of product-led sales, and the common mistakes that keep even experienced teams stuck—like unclear ICPs, poor qualification, and misapplied sales motions. Whether you're adding sales to a PLG motion, or trying to make your sales-led org more product-led, this episode will help you avoid costly missteps and find clarity fast.What you'll learn:Why PLG alone isn't enough to close bigger dealsThe real role of sales in a product-led motion (and how to get it right)How to identify product-qualified accounts and avoid jumping the gunWhat's in the episode:(00:00) What is product-led sales, really?(03:00) Why your users ≠ your buyers—and why that matters(06:00) The shadow IT opportunity most teams miss(09:30) Postman's evolution from PLG to strategic sales(14:00) The biggest misstep: Sales jumping in too early(20:00) What smart outbound looks like today(25:00) Faux freemium and low-risk PLG experiments(30:00) How to know when your product is ready to support salesLinks & ResourcesLenny's newsletter on GTM motions of 30 startups Explore April's workCheck out April's books Follow Georgiana on LinkedInForget The Funnel Podcast Forget The Funnel on YouTube As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel's website

Too many SaaS founders and GMT leaders confuse positioning with messaging—and it's holding back their growth. If you've ever struggled with homepage copy, sales messaging, or team alignment, this episode is for you.Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel) and April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) break down why messaging can't work without clear positioning—and how this confusion leads to weak differentiation, internal misalignment, and wasted marketing and product growth efforts.If your SaaS messaging feels scattered or ineffective, your positioning might be the real problem. Listen in to learn how to fix it.Positioning ≠ Messaging – Positioning defines who you compete against, what makes you different, and why customers choose you. Messaging is how you communicate that in different contexts.Why SaaS Teams Get This Wrong – Many founders try to “fix” messaging when the real issue is unclear positioning.The Problem with Guessing – How teams waste time on tactics instead of using customer insights to drive strategy.Why a Messaging Document is Non-Negotiable – April shares why teams without one end up in a game of "broken telephone."The PLG vs. Sales-Led Divide – Gia explains why positioning is different for self-serve SaaS vs. sales-led B2B and how each model should approach it.Why Homepage Teardowns Are Mostly BS – And what actually makes a homepage (or any messaging) effective.00:03:10 – Why Founders Confuse Positioning & Messaging (And Why It's a Problem)00:06:45 – The Core Components of Strong Positioning00:12:00 – The Messaging Mistake That Creates Internal Chaos00:24:30 – How PLG & Sales-Led SaaS Should Approach Positioning Differently00:30:00 – The Problem with Homepage Teardowns & Why Context Matters00:43:20 – How to Stop Guessing & Get Positioning RightApril's books: Obviously Awesome (on positioning) & Sales Pitch (on sales narratives)April's podcast: The Positioning Show with April DunfordForget The Funnel: Book & Consulting – Helping PLG SaaS teams build growth strategies based on customer insights, not guesswork. Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/ Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/

In today's episode, I explore the crucial distinction between positioning your product's value and handling objections. I explain why understanding the buyer personas in a B2B deal is essential to tailor messaging for champions versus other stakeholders. I also highlight scenarios where objection handling can transform into a core value driver under certain market conditions. You will learn: (00:00) Why Value and Objection Handling Aren't the Same* Value drives purchase decisions, while objection handling removes potential blockers.* Focusing on core value themes helps customers remember what sets your product apart.(04:56) Turning Features into Meaningful Value* Product capabilities only matter when translated into business outcomes customers care about.* Asking “so what?” ensures features connect to tangible benefits.(07:24) Objections: Identifying, Anticipating, and Handling Them* Objections often arise from non-buying stakeholders like IT, legal, and end users.* Objection handling should occur after establishing value, not before.(14:18) Understanding the Roles in a B2B Buying Committee* Champions push deals forward, while other personas can stall or block decisions.* Equipping champions to navigate internal objections increases deal success rates.(20:49) When Objection Handling Becomes a Value Driver* Poor competitor performance can turn typical objections into selling points.* Listening to customer frustrations reveals opportunities for repositioning. —Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQ—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4aqyDqI Subscribe on YouTube:

In this special recap, we dive into what it really means to be a product marketer in the ever-evolving B2B SaaS space—from defining the role to gaining the trust of executives and product teams. Hear first-hand advice on establishing boundaries, shaping product roadmaps, and showcasing your unique value. Tune in to discover how you can go from feeling misunderstood to being the unignorable voice in your organization.Why product marketing often feels misunderstood—and how to change that.The “secret sauce” to defining your role so everyone, from sales to CEOs, sees your impact.Strategies for sitting in a “neutral” spot on the org chart (and why it's a dream setup).Insider tips for positioning your product before it's built—so buyers are ready to say “yes.”How to set healthy boundaries with tasks that aren't in your zone of genius.This episode is featuring episodes clips from Tamara Grominsky, Dave Gerhardt, and April Dunford.Give it a listen prior to season 4 launching in 2 weeks! Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In today's episode, I dive into the art of transforming competitor strengths into weaknesses, a practice which I sometimes call “marketing jiu-jitsu.” You will learn: * How competitor strengths can double as weaknesses in different markets.* Opportunities for challenger brands to carve out niche markets.* The differences between platform and tool positioning and their respective advantages.* Competing with legacy brands.* Competing against free or low-cost products.* Appealing to end users versus decision-makers.* Using manager-level value propositions to win deals against free tools.* Focusing on high-value market segments to avoid a race to the bottom.* Examples of successful positioning from companies like Salesforce, IBM, and Snowflake.—If you want to skip ahead: (00:37) Marketing Jiu-Jitsu(01:51) Empowering End Users vs. IT(05:01) Market Leadership vs. Challenger Strategies(09:54) Niche Market Strategies and CRM Examples(13:26) Platform vs. Tool(21:05) Competing Against Free and Low-Cost Products(26:43) Focusing on High-Value Segments—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQ—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4aqyDqI Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing: https://www.SuccessWithStories.com

Are you building a B2B SaaS andaiming to hit 10M ARR? Then this episode is a must-listen! In this podcast, we talk about how to scale a B2B SaaS business to 10 million in annual revenue (ARR). The episode includes tips from 20 experts in the field, offering useful advice for SaaS founders. Sponsored by Reditus, a platform that helpsmanage affiliate programs for B2B SaaS companies, this episode pulls together key lessons from earlier episodes to guide founders aiming for this big milestone.Key Timecodes(1:07) -Episode 1: Scaling beyond founder-led sales(2:17) -Episode 2: Building a sustainable SaaS business with Ferdinand Goetzen(3:19) -Episode 3: Tim Schumacher's B2B SaaS growth playbook(4:30) -Episode 4: Affiliate marketing for B2B SaaS with Joran Hofman(5:40) -Episode 5: Molding a go-to-market team into a revenue factory with Jacco van der Kooij(6:53) -Episode 6: Leveraging customer success for growth with Mike Dry(8:00) -Episode 7: Building and scaling a micro SaaS with Alex Urquhart(9:53) -Episode 8: Mastering message market fit with Diane Wiredu(11:36) -Episode 9: From agency to SaaS with Chris Out(12:32) -Episode 10: Starting and growing a B2B podcast with Tom Hunt(14:57) -Episode 11: Going global with Gilles Bertaux(17:08) -Episode 12: Path to a successful SaaS exit with Ryan Allis(18:08) -Episode 13: Hiring your first marketing leader with Andrew Davis(20:21) -Episode 14: Building SaaS without big VC funding with Greg Head(22:20) -Episode 15: Leveraging social media for growth with Chris Cunningham(24:43) -Episode 16: Growing a SaaS affiliate program with Adam Glazer(26:27) -Episode 17: Building a brand strategy with Angeley Mullins(28:56) -Episode 18: Positioning for explosive growth with April Dunford(30:10) -Episode 19: Building a profitable SaaS SEO strategy with Sam Dunning(33:20) -Episode 20: Building brand authority with Melissa Rosenthal

Are you building a B2B SaaS andaiming to hit 10K MRR? Then this episode is a must-listen! In this special episode, we've gathered insights from 20 experienced guests from Season 5 of the "Grow Your B2B SaaS" podcast. Each guest shares their top advice to help founders like you reach the crucial milestone of 10K MRR. Hosted by Joran Hofman, founder of Reditus, this episode is packed with practical strategies forscaling your SaaS business in a sustainable way. Get ready for a wealth of expert tips you won't want to miss!Key Timecodes(0:00) - Episode Introduction: Are you growing a B2B SaaS and looking to hit 10K MRR?(1:11) -Episode 1: Kevin Tye on scaling beyond founder-led sales.(2:16) -Episode 2: Ferdinand Goetzen on building a sustainable SaaS business.(3:12) -Episode 3: Tim Schumacher's playbook for early-stage SaaS growth.(4:13) -Episode 4: Joran Hofman on affiliate marketing for B2B SaaS.(5:19) -Episode 5: Jacco van der Kooij on molding a go-to-market team.(6:21) -Episode 6: Mike Dry on leveraging customer success for growth.(7:33) -Episode 7: Alex Urquhart on building and scaling a micro SaaS.(8:30) -Episode 8: Diane Wiredu on mastering message market fit.(9:23) -Episode 9: Chris Out on transitioning from agency to SaaS.(10:14) -Episode 10: Tom Hunt on starting and growing a B2B podcast.(11:05) -Episode 11: Gilles Bertaux on going global with your SaaS.(12:58) -Episode 12: Ryan Allis on outbound strategies for SaaS growth.(14:09) -Episode 13: Andrew Davis on hiring your first marketing leader.(15:26) -Episode 14: Greg Head on building SaaS without big VC funding.(16:22) -Episode 15: Chris Cunningham on leveraging social media for growth.(17:31) -Episode 16: Adam Glazer on setting up a SaaS affiliate program.(18:47) -Episode 17: Angeley Mullins on AI tools for efficiency.(19:57) -Episode 18: April Dunford on positioning for explosive growth.(21:01) -Episode 19: Sam Dunning on building a profitable SaaS SEO strategy.(22:26) -Episode 20: Melissa Rosenthal on building brand authority.

In today's episode, I explore the frustrating yet common issue of competitors making false or exaggerated claims about their products. In this episode, I answer the question: When you want to discuss your differentiated product or service, what do you do if you've got a competitor who lies that they too have the same product or service, when in fact they don't? You will learn: * The misconception that competitors can easily replicate differentiated features.* How architectural and resource constraints make copying features harder than it seems.* Competitors often stretch the truth or outright lie about capabilities.* Focusing on the value delivered by features rather than just the features themselves.* Using proof points, data, and examples to expose dishonest competitors.* Real-world examples of combating competitors who misrepresent themselves.* The reputational risks for companies that stretch the truth.* Turning dishonest competition into an opportunity to gain trust and loyalty—If you want to skip ahead: (00:00) Welcome to Season Three!(04:12) The Myth of Easy Feature Copying(09:30) Why Competitors Appear to Copy You(13:55) Handling Competitor Lies(16:40) Focus on Value, Not Just Features(19:20) Educate Buyers to Expose Competitor Lies(22:10) Prove Your Claims with Data—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQ—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4aqyDqI Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing:

How do you position your B2B SaaS for explosive growth? In this exciting episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast, host Joran Hofman sits down with April Dunford, the founder of Ambient Strategy and a leading expert in brand positioning. April shares valuable insights on why positioning is crucial for success in the B2B SaaS world. Positioning is often confused with branding and messaging, but it's far more important and foundational. It's about clearly defining why your product is the best at delivering value to a specific group of customers. Positioning helps you understand your competitors, highlight your unique features, and make it clear why your solution stands out in the market. Tune in to learn how effective positioning can drive massive growth for your SaaS business. Key Timecodes (0:00) - Introduction: Understanding Competition and Positioning (0:58) - Guest Introduction: Featuring April Dunford (1:42) - Defining Positioning vs. Messaging and Branding (3:18) - Importance of Clear Positioning (4:18) - Positioning as a Foundation for Marketing and Sales (6:01) - Differentiating Positioning from Branding (6:59) - Positioning in Practice: Impact and Implementation (9:23) - Common Mistakes in SaaS Positioning (12:34) - Misunderstanding Competition: The Intern Analogy (14:28) - Importance of Positioning in B2B (20:18) - Sales Pitch and Positioning: April's Process (24:08) - Testing Positioning with Sales Pitches (27:44) - Cross-functional Team Importance in Positioning (30:40) - Workshop Style for Positioning Process (34:32) - Challenges in Implementing Positioning (36:53) - Future of Positioning in Crowded Markets (39:07) - Advice for Early-stage SaaS Companies (41:39) - Advice for Scaling SaaS Companies (44:06) - How to Contact April Dunford

The Knowledge Project closes 2024 with a look back at some of the best conversations of the year. Featuring interviews from some of our most downloaded episodes ever, this collection of conversations offers a variety of insights into finances and investing, improving your communication, marketing and positioning, business frameworks, health and nutrition, and how to beat death. This conversation features segments from finance expert and writer Morgan Housel, non-verbal psychologist Blake Eastman, marketing and positioning expert April Dunford, blueberry billionaire John Bragg, parenting extraordinaire Becky Kennedy, a billion dollar CEO Brad Jacobs, nutrition guru Rhonda Patrick, and the guy who is beating death, Bryan Johnson. Newsletter - The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it's completely free. Learn more and sign up at https://fs.blog/newsletter/ -- Upgrade — If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/membership/⁠⁠ and get your own private feed. -- Follow me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://beacons.ai/shaneparrish⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tkppodcast 00:00 - Intro 02:11 - Transform your finances (Morgan Housel) 12:00 - Transform your communication (Blake Eastman) 21:58 - Transform how you sell yourself (April Dunford) 32:51 - Transform your business philosophy (John Bragg) 44:24 - Transform your emotions and attitude (Becky Kennedy) 57:34 - Transform your business tactics (Brad Jacobs) 01:07:20 - Transform your nutrition (Dr. Rhonda Patrick) 01:17:57 - Transform your lifespan (Bryan Johnson)

In this episode of Rocketship.FM, world-renowned positioning and marketing expert April Dunford joins us to share her insights on crafting sales pitches that close deals and win markets. Drawing from her book Sales Pitch, April dives into the art of creating a compelling narrative that helps your customers confidently choose your product over competitors—and the dreaded "do nothing." In this recording of her keynote talk from INDUSTRY: The Product Conference in 2023, April breaks down her proven step-by-step framework for building a pitch that communicates your differentiated value, positions your product as the clear solution, and guides prospects through the buying journey. From the role of discovery and demos to understanding why “do nothing” is your fiercest competitor, she covers everything you need to transform your pitch into a powerful storytelling tool. Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or sales leader, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you stand out in any crowded market.

Jen Abel is the co-founder of JJELLYFISH, where she and her team have worked with over 300 early-stage founders to learn how to sell, do early customer discovery, and set up a repeatable sales motion on the way to their first $1M ARR. In our conversation, Jen shares:• Why founder-led sales is so crucial early on• The sales process, step by step• How to craft effective outreach messages• Where to find leads• What three channels work best for outreach• What to say on your first call• How to maintain momentum• Strategies for navigating procurement and closing deals• Common pitfalls in the sales process and how to avoid them—Brought to you by:• Brave Search—A smarter way to search• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security• Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/master-founder-led-sales-jen-abel—Where to find Jen Abel:• X: https://x.com/jjen_abel• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/earlystagesale—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Jen's background(02:20) The importance of founder-led sales(08:24) The steps of a sales cycle(12:01) Tactics for effective cold outreach(16:47) Conversion rate vs. win rate(20:20) The time it takes to find product-market fit(23:06) Identifying and engaging prospects(30:58) Nailing the first phone call(34:14) Buying vs. selling(38:08) Testing the questions to ask(41:57) Avoiding common sales questions and securing the second call(43:08) Co-authoring with customers(45:06) Time-boxing service contracts(49:20) Why you should avoid demos on the first call(51:05) Dealing with procurement(54:22) The power of enterprise sales(58:14) Getting a signature(01:00:15) Choosing a focus and overcoming sales challenges(01:02:19) General timelines(01:04:27) Final thoughts and advice(01:13:32) Working with Jen—Referenced:• Wiz: https://www.wiz.io/• JJELLYFISH: https://www.jjellyfish.com/• Clay: https://www.clay.com/• A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/finding-product-market-fit• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• GitHub: https://github.com/• Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/• Christine Cacioppo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ccacioppo/• Glengarry Glen Ross: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Pitch-Craft-Story-Stand-ebook/dp/B0CHY6BNDN• Sprig: https://sprig.com/• Zip: https://zip.co/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Sales Technology Podcast, host David Dulany sits down with April Dunford, renowned author of “Obviously Awesome” and “Sales Pitch!”.  April shares her journey from VP of Marketing and Sales to a sought-after consultant specializing in positioning and sales pitches for B2B tech companies. She dives deep into the critical difference between positioning and pitching, explaining how companies can bridge the gap to create compelling, value-driven sales pitches that resonate with buyers. With actionable tips and engaging anecdotes, this episode is a must-listen for SDRs, Sales Reps, Marketers, and Founders looking to refine their messaging and guide their prospects through an information-overloaded marketplace. Tune in to learn how to simplify your pitch, align cross-functional teams, and close deals with confidence.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-sales-technology-podcast--1947957/support.

Georgiana is a strategic advisor, author and speaker who's passionate about turning customer value into revenue-generating outcomes. Marketing online since 2000, she began her track record as a marketing executive and product growth advisor in 2010 working with high-growth, B2B SaaS like Unbounce, Sprout Social, Bitly, Appcues, SparkToro, Invoice Simple and more. Questions and topics we covered in this interview include: The origins of Forget The Funnel (and why funnels are bad for business) What Customer-Led Growth is and why it comes before all other growth models (like product-led, sales-led, marketing-led, or community-led) How do marketers begin to learn from their customers?  What's the best way to collect product feedback? What's the best way to implement that feedback? + How does marketing champion and facilitate this process with other departments? You're a prolific advisor to several big name startups, what does it take to become one? Georgiana's advice on how to become a startup advisor And more! Important Links You can say hello to Georgiana on LinkedIn here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/ You can find me on LinkedIn here- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennysoto  Get her book on Customer-Led Growth™ here - https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/customer-led-growth/book Check out her podcast with cofounder Claire Suellentrop here - https://pod.link/1713510690 Past guests of The People of Digital Marketing include April Dunford, Amanda Goetz, Melissa Rosenthal, Bill Macaitis, Miruna Dragomir, Andrew Capland, Erik Newton, Andy Crestodina, Sarah Bedrick, Michael Wieder, Dan McGaw, Kathleen Booth, Foti Panagiotakopoulos, Tommy Walker, Lea Pica, Maya Grossman, Sara Pion, Margaret Kelsey, and more. Music for this podcast comes from www.davidcuttermusic.com 

In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Lilly Garrett, who shares her entrepreneurial journey that led her to building Maixia Marketing. She discusses the innovative strategies she has led that fueled significant growth at multiple early stage startups. Lilly emphasizes the critical role of data-driven decision-making and effective marketing foundations. Tune in for valuable insights on building a successful business from the ground up.   Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Lilly Garrett believes the hardest things in growing a small business are team building, marketing foundations, data management,and the art of prioritization.  What business book has helped you the most? Lilly Garrett's favorite business book that has helped her the most is "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Lilly Garrett recommends the following podcasts and online learning resources to help grow a small business: April Dunford, she has a blog and podcast all about positioning, it's a must read/listen for all businesses! What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Lilly Garrett recommends using Pocus, if you're sales-led and Slack for all internal comms.  What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Lilly Garrett would advise herself on day one of starting out in business to ensure you've validated as well as you possibly can (read The Mom Test) ensure to record more data asap, and collect feedback consistently, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer insights from the beginning. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Success in business often boils down to effective marketing and understanding your customers — Lilly Garrett Don't underestimate the power of a strong team; collaboration fuels innovation — Lilly Garrett Embrace challenges as opportunities to learn and grow; every setback is a stepping stone to success — Lilly Garrett      

In today's episode, I explore product differentiation and the common misconception that some products have no unique value. I also explore the potential root causes when companies fail to see their own differentiation. You will learn: * The myth of having no product differentiation and what it means for B2B technology companies.* The importance of understanding competitive alternatives and translating capabilities into customer value.* Why a lack of differentiation leads to poor sales and business growth issues.* How irrational buyer decisions are influenced by the need to avoid risks.* The concept of "value blindness" and its impact on the marketing team.* The dangers of focusing solely on losses while ignoring the importance of analyzing wins.* How "product pessimism" can spread within teams and damage overall morale.* The significance of cross-functional collaboration in aligning a company's positioning strategy.—If you want to skip ahead: 02:30 - Question of Differentiation in B2B Products 04:29 - The Stakes of Differentiation in Buyer Decisions 06:39 - Recognizing Value in a Product 09:25 - Addressing Misconceptions About Differentiation 12:50 - Understanding True Competitive Alternatives 17:44 - The Importance of Analyzing Wins 22:47 - The Role of Segmentation in Positioning—Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQ—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website: https://www.positioning.show/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3PFHcWx Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4aqyDqI Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@positioningshow —This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing:

Do you sell products in the B2B market? Looking for a model to clearly differentiate your product's value? To discover a 5-step process for developing powerful B2B product positioning, I interview April Dunford.Guest: April Dunford | Show Notes: socialmediaexaminer.com/635Review our show on Apple Podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In today's episode, Georgiana Laudi and I explore the failings of traditional sales funnels and why companies should instead focus on a customer-led approach to growth.My guest, Georgiana Laudi, is the ultimate marketing guru with a passion for turning customer value into cash for SaaS companies. She helps SaaS leaders grow smarter through her consultancy, Forget the Funnel. You will learn: * Why traditional funnels are lazy and ineffective for understanding customers.* The concept of customer-led growth and how it differs from funnel-based approaches.* The importance of mapping critical moments of value in the customer journey.* The pitfalls of ignoring pre- and post-funnel customer experiences.* How to align teams around a profound understanding of customer needs.* The role of KPIs in tracking customer success, not just business success.* Why optimizing customer onboarding can lead to dramatic improvements in growth.—If you want to skip ahead: 02:30 - Why Funnels Don't Work06:45 - Introducing Customer-Led Growth12:30 - Mapping Customer Journeys17:15 - Jobs to Be Done: A Game Changer23:10 - The Importance of Onboarding28:00 - Measuring Success: KPIs That Matter35:30 - How to Focus on the Right Customers—Learn more about Georgiana Laudi and her Forget the Funnel team: https://forgetthefunnel.com/ Connect with Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/ —Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford April's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@positioningshow—Mentioned in this episode: * Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop's book, Forget the Funnel: A Customer-Led Approach for Driving Predictable, Recurring Revenue: https://amzn.to/3QOTP2z * The Jobs-to-Be-Done methodology. —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzCGoogle Play:

What if people aren't buying your product or service because their idea of what it does is wrong? In this episode, Shane asks April Dunford to reveal all her secrets about what makes good and bad product positioning, how a startup should differ in its communications from a big company, and the difference between B2B and B2C positioning. Dunford also shares how a startup can better identify pain points their customers face, how to write the best sales page copy, and the best way to objectively evaluate a product's positioning. If you're an executive at a company, this episode will make you reflect on your current marketing and sales pipelines and ask, “Are we doing this right?” If you're a designer, engineer, or marketer at a company, this episode will teach you the secrets to selling a product that will help get you promoted and earn trust within your organization. Dunford spent the first 25 years of her career as a startup executive running marketing, product, and sales teams positioning products acquired by companies like IBM and Siebel Systems. Since then, she's worked with over 200 companies as a consultant, developing a system to better position technology products and companies. She studied Engineering at the University of Waterloo and is most recently the author of Sales Pitch. Watch the episode on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/theknowledgeproject/videos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Newsletter - I share timeless insights and ideas you can use at work and home. Join over 600k others every Sunday and subscribe to Brain Food. Try it: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/newsletter/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ My Book! Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results is out now - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/clear/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://beacons.ai/shaneparrish⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/membership/ (00:00) Intro (02:07) Positioning, explained (16:47) Why is positioning important? (20:40) B2B vs. B2C positioning (29:03) When re-positioning a product failed (32:31) How to identify customer's pain points (34:35) How to position a product on a sales page (38:06) How technology has changed positioning (41:40) How to evaluate product positioning (45:43) Who's in charge of positioning at a company? (50:27) On storytelling (56:35) Should a company have a point of view on the market? (1:00:21) Dealing with gatekeepers in B2B marketing (1:03:02) Mistakes people make with positioning (1:05:21) What schools get wrong about marketing (1:08:59) Secrets of B2B decision-making (1:11:18) On success

Matt Dixon is one of the world's foremost experts in sales and the author of The Challenger Sale, which sold over a million copies worldwide and was a #1 Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His most recent book, The JOLT Effect, focuses on overcoming customer indecision—one of the biggest challenges to closing deals. Outside of writing, Matt co-founded DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy helping organizations understand customer behavior, and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, with more than 20 print and online articles to his credit. In our conversation, we discuss:• Why 40% to 60% of qualified sales opportunities are lost due to customer indecision• Why dialing up FOMO doesn't work, and what to do instead• The “pings and echoes” technique to catch issues early• The JOLT method for overcoming indecision• Key lessons from The Challenger Sale• Practical examples of how to apply these principles to close more deals—Brought to you by:• Enterpret—Transform customer feedback into product growth• Webflow—The web experience platform• Heap—Cross-platform product analytics that converts, engages, and retains customers—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/close-more-deals-matt-dixon—Where to find Matt Dixon:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewxdixon• Website: https://www.jolteffect.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Matt's background(01:57) The research behind Matt's books(06:08) Insights from The JOLT Effect(10:15) FOMO vs. FOMU(18:18) An example of selling software(26:04) The JOLT method Step 1: Judge their level of indecision(29:41) The “pings and echoes” technique(34:49) Step 2: Offer a recommendation(38:36) Step 3: Limit the exploration(41:43) Step 4: Take risk off the table(45:58) When to hit the pause button with a customer(47:27) Insights from The Challenger Sale(49:07) An example of a challenger sale(55:23) Where to find Matt—Referenced:• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation: https://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Sale-Control-Customer-Conversation/dp/0670922854• The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision: https://www.amazon.com/JOLT-Effect-Performers-Overcome-Indecision/dp/0593538102• Gartner acquires CEB: https://www.gartner.com/en/about/acquisitions/history/ceb-acquisition• Tiger King on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81115994• Why sourdough went viral: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/08/04/why-sourdough-went-viral• Neil Rackham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Rackham• Status quo bias in decision-making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias• Omission bias: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/omission-bias• Gartner Magic Quadrant & Critical Capabilities: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/magic-quadrant• Dunning-Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect• Stop Losing Sales to Customer Indecision: https://hbr.org/2022/06/stop-losing-sales-to-customer-indecision• Dentsply Sirona: https://www.dentsplysirona.com/• “We happy?” Briefcase scene from Tarantino's Pulp Fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGchDuOpbhE• Nupro Freedom Cordless Prophy System: https://www.dentsplysirona.com/en-us/discover/discover-by-category/preventive/hygiene-handpieces.html—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe