Anatomy of a Successful Positioning Refresh: Best Practices, Templates & More

Incredible CMO Coffee Talk discussion last Friday about positioning with Bob Wright and Jaime Punishill , not just about conceptual/strategic best practices but also h ow a successful corporate positioning refresh actually happens.

This included who's involved, what the process looks like, what a successful roll-out includes (internally and externally) and much more.

If you are in the CMO Coffee Talk community, don't miss Bob and Jaime's best practices deck as well as some of Bob's additional positioning tools in the #swipefile channel in Slack.

And if you are a B2B CMO or head of marketing and want to join a community of 2,300+ of your peers, let me know or click here to learn more and sign up.

Chat highlights from both sessions last Friday are below.

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Winston Churchill: The definition of success is moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Quote of the day, "You're not familiar with winning."

SaaS is like a bathtub— plug any leaks and accelerate LTV!

Well, we had a discussion last week with CEO, CRO and it turns out the CEO/CRO think AE’s should fill 75% of their Pipeline, the CRO’s Regional VPs think it should be more like 25%.?We invested for the first model, not the 2nd.

A camel is a horse designed by committee

North Jersey Septic: “Were #1 in the #2 business.”

This is the least understood aspect of marketing (outside of marketing), and suffers most from group think.

As they say, if you can’t handle everyone having an opinion about how you should do your job, be an engineer, not a marketer :-)

Ya’d kinda sorta think that would be a good question to ask when we’re interviewing a new RVP (and several are new).?Guess we didn’t.?Light bulbs were going on in the meeting.?I give the CRO huge kudos for even asking the question.

I just finished a 4 month piece of work on a complete redesign of our corporate narrative, differentiators, messaging architecture etc. Included our senior leadership team from the beginning in every workshop. PAINFUL but we finished with complete alignment.

Going from a single product to multi is so hard

commitment of budget and time (engagement)

everyone using a different deck - it seems you NEVER dig yourself out of that…??

when your CEO feels your positioning is already locked in, and everyone else understands it and speaks the same way…. But, not so much.?Hard to get buy in.

Joining a $5m startup with 4 products (3 too many) is also hard ;)

It’s amazing how often people confuse positioning for taglines…even after you tell them the difference

I’m calling it “The P-word” at work, so tired of everyone want to call everything a platform

“Platform” is the new “Solution”

Important point - CEO owns this and drives it post work.?Without that, you're sunk.

YES!?If CEO pays for it, it’s a great idea.?If Marketing does, it’s a fluffy marketing effort.

I just asked GPT 4 for a traditional positioning statement for ncino!?For financial institutions seeking to revolutionize the way they operate and deliver value to their customers, nCino provides a powerful, cloud-based platform that combines automation, compliance, and innovation. With our platform, financial institutions can streamline their processes, reduce risk, and improve customer experience. At nCino, we are committed to empowering financial institutions to make a positive impact on people's lives and the communities they serve. Together, let's transform the financial industry and shape the future of banking.

I paid for it, BUT it is now in the 2024 goals that the whole company rally around and embeds the positioning into their functions

I think its good for product alignment too

Customer inputs?

Ah budget, I remember that.

Was there a triggering event or business problem that created the commitment to this across the exec team?

CEO must own this. I’ve done brand work for over a decade and repositioned 4 different companies and never would do it without CEO riding shotgun with me. Also got the ELT involved in every one of them. Brand position is the greatest competitive advantage.

Interesting to have OKRs around org around appropriate adoption of brand ..

Vs. marketing only OKR to “roll out” new positioning/brand

At a previous 700M consulting firm we made sure ELT had individual OKRs that aligned to brand and we embedded into our annual enterprise objectives

Even if everyone says the same thing, there will always be differences in credibility.

My CEO asked me to review a competitor’s new website for “inspiration” not realizing it was a literal rewrite of our own website ??

Yeah its the click deeper you have to have and defend

But that then opens up folks to understand why category building is important, and expensive/difficult

you cant have a strategy of differentiation with a measurement system based on sameness.

has there ever been a session on vocabulary? Platform, Solution, etc? Lot of opinions about scope of each, when to use … for example, my POV is that if you are not building a public API/marketplace .. then you are not building a platform. Obviously, highly debatable

Interesting choice - personally I always tried to avoid the “yes everyone says the same but *WE* are real/better” - the “click deeper” approach is both really hard and often becomes a “he said she said”

The competition always does it so much better than us, right?

I also nominate “ecosystem” to the vocab discussion

On the defining moment that made everyone agree to the process - Its interesting that the realization was to bring in someone else to lead marketing, it brings me back to the book “what got you here wont get you there”.

For us we also did a full audit of the competitive messaging, creative etc. so when we finalized our narrative we also new it would be competitive in SEO and new we could own it.

we dont have to make it a better thing. If I give you 5 questions to ask potential providers about their “platform” it will be obvious that it isnt

Suite of Platforms providing Solutions for the Ecosystem

they just need they needed to take marketing more seriously and differently. They didnt know what that meant.

We ended up with the word pioneer in a positioning exercise a year ago with story brand. It just didn’t “stick"

It’s important that he took the exec team through a PROCESS. The process gave the execs to share their opinions, thoughts, ideas about Positioning - and through the process, we drove alignment on the strategy, positioning elements and storyline.

FWIW - love the HBR Corporate Brand Matrix … emphasizes both internal and external audiences … to help internal audiences in particular understand the difference between elements meant for the market and elements meant for the company

For us we co-created the marchitecture with Product Management. We had a lot of education to do to ensure they understood it wasn’t the same thing as the product taxonomy.

Oh… the “eye chart” vs the “but this doesn’t contain all our features” PM vs Marketing discussions. Going through that now.

The key for marketecture is to define who the target audience of this marketecture- needs to be super simple and straightforward in its visual layout. Can’t be an engineering visual

We are first presenting at each team meetings, we are then partnering with sales enablement and our L&D team to create trainings on this

My challenge is more with enabling messaging across a broad marketing team with field marketers in each business unit, etc.?Thoughts on how to enable consistent messaging and positioning when you have multiple business units that need to translate this messaging to their audiences (by industry, region, etc)

I’d recommend driving on your website.?Once that represents what you want and folks love it - everyone starts asking why the local field stuff doesn’t map to it.?Much more carrot than stick.

What was the team — I find getting buy in within the team sometimes the hardest … and often a CEO may think that if it’s not totally revolutionary it’s not enough (all the while revolution may not actually be what the customer / market seek)

The workshop teams typically included CEO, CRO, President, Co-founders of the acquisition, CPO, Sales manager or top SE and product marketing

we had CEO, CPO, Platform Head, Evangelist, Product Mkt Lead, some key sales leaders, our President, and a few key influencers and SMEs was the workshop list. We had a smaller core team working through some of the key issues

I’ve especially had this problem with employees who have been with the company for awhile. They have a talk track that works for them and it’s so hard to get them to change (regardless of certifications, etc).

For SEO, you have to build a bridge b/w the new & old, also category comparison can be a great way to incorporate those old keywords

Positioning should not be hijacked by SEO

We did a video contest - give the company pitch in 2 minutes or less with prizes.?CEO, CRO judging.

“There are always going to be reps that have their own slides from 50 years ago.”?CLASSIC

Also get your talent leaders the necessary tools to activate the brand. They’re talking to candidates daily and are your greatest advocates for reinforcing your brand narrative in the market

Have a sales and product “content amnesty day” to see what they are using and offer one-time forgiveness. May find some good stuff out there too…

It’s also helpful to have the exec team bought into the positioning and take the leadership to impart the importance of staying on message.

Sometimes we ask our reps to overcomplicate and lose clarity.

I also appreciate that PPT cannot be the only enablement tool.?Training videos and other formats/channels internally are needed to make the messaging stick.?I need to do more of that

Sales is not gonna go thru the full narrative

I’ve experienced it with some vendors trying to sell to me! :)

At one company, I had all my RVPs have a “swear jar” in their offices and anytime they heard someone use outdated brand positioning would have to drop a $1 in the jar. The funds were eventually used toward a team outing each quarter. So it wasn’t totally punitive. ;)

In my experience you need to "bond on the problem" before you can propose a solution.?In fact, problem stories (not solution stories) can be powerful in doing this. ?If a prospect resonates on the problems you describe - you can use this for discovery and, hopefully, get them to articulate how they actually name/describe the problem internally which can be powerful in the rest of the selling process.

A lot of our stories - these are the new set of questions that need to be answered to solve the XYZ problem

Whether we like it or not…that deck (or 10-year-deck) is the ONLY thing that member of the sales team use. Love the point about adding question - even in notes - to the deck.

It’s also helps the prospect feel like “hey, you get me”

It’s never not a good time for positioning

“Not a marketing exercise, it’s a company exercise”

not a marketing exercise.....it's a company exercise?Love that - best way to get alignement

We have done a good job of this in the past, getting execs and the whole company certified on the story. But, I’ve found significant challenge maintaining elements of this as we move from narrative to disco, to demo, to proposal versions. Other challenges that arise is executive vs. champion versions.

How have others here who didn’t have the ‘mandate’ or even recognition that a company needs to go through a company positioning exercise w/ external help get their exec team onboard?

And then what is the timeline to get this rolled out with a steel thread into everything - website, campaigns, paid media, customer stories, etc...

That’s an amazing culture. I’ve had CEOs say “do this! I will commit! We will all disagree and commit!” only to turn around once positioning was codified & decide to change everything

Raskin on How to adapt strategic narrative to different personas: https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7031662716410896384/?origin=SHARED_BY_YOUR_NETWORK

Exactly. Most important thing is participation and buy-in from all key areas. This can’t be a Marketing thing.

Hallelujah. Own it or get rid of it.

Where is the revenue growth from the company coming from in the next 12-18 months (identify target buyer), What is the trigger event that caused these buyers to raise their hand and initiate a project (problem solved) how does this buyer win? How do we make them a hero? (Aspirations), whet do we want to make the fight about (our true differentiators) - and why should any one care? What category are we playing in? What corner of the room can we “own”?

Kind of like a Miyagi. “Walk on road. Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish, just like grape.”

The question is - when do you do this and do it well, what happens is that your competition starts copying you, your messaging, etc. What do you do next? How long before you have to revisit? Markets are moving fast and doing this exercise is not trivial and less trivial is getting your whole company behind it.

Ever gone through positioning with ELT, create messaging, then have the Board reject it and have to start all over again? Asking for a friend.

Branding is different from Positioning

Any insight or research on CEO's that want to leverage popular consumer terms for B2B brand (which causes SEO and other issues)?

Branding is the corporate identity, tone, experience vs. positioning is shaping a category and driving revenue traction - they both must fit together

Would love to hear/see how you plan to bring the new story to life.....now that you have the new positioning defined.

I always have an education about positioning vs. branding vs. messaging in every workshop - there is so much confusion about these disciplines and their role

If you are really clear about the timeline, you can rule like an iron fist. People just like to be clear on what they need to do, and by when.

FOFU/FOMU is low. Fear of F’ing Up/Fear of Messing Up. Informed risk taker.

Investors think they are good at messaging

They are not

Investors think they are good at everything. Somehow, they’re only good at a subset ??

More precisely, investors may or may not be good at messaging, but the messaging that moves an investor to invest is not the messaging that moves a prospect to buy.

I always find going back to the why (the scientific part — customer feedback and message testing, pre and post, open ended and prompted) helps get people over the line. And transparency along the way.

let's test the waters......YES get that baby in the market and see what is sticking

Company messaging shouldn’t be PERSONAL anyway, lol.

Positioning / Messaging / Branding, same battles…

Customer testing and validation are key. Gets away from personal opinions.

Strong believer in having people hear positioning for the first time. Never have a big reveal. Bring them along through the process.

Grass roots buy-in is key

Wynter is quite a good tool to test

I love to use the “testing.” I used that so much running into my focus groups when redoing the vPro strategic narrative

in that “bringing them along”, I think like I’m running for office. What states will I have in my corner? What states can I not carry? What are the swing states that influence others? I focus a lot on involving swing states in the process.

Customer context is key. It’s what sales needs for conversations.

At least you know what the objections are — waaaay early. Sometimes there’s legit feedback, and thank God you found out early. And if not relevant, at least you know the objections. Huge.

often the best feedback comes from the dissenters or skeptics

You can walk into positioning fatigue

What are your sacred cows? is a great interview question to ask when meeting with execs at a company you’re considering joining. ??

Positioning metrics I see: win/loss ratio, higher ASP, urgency - length of sales cycle is collapsing, what % of sales cycles did we engage at the exec level, are the market analysts picking up our “language” and viewpoint?

Marketers don’t amplify messages so much as they amplify companies, so getting the whole company in tune is massive.

?I can tell there’s no buy-in on the positioning work that’s been done so far, so the internal adoption/head-nodding is a great measure.

Customers know you for the old positioning, so sometimes fresh prospects are better for testing

Hallelujah on involving sales. Also, they can help you get the rest of the co on board.

Not just sales but the top sales people need to be there.

Product too!!!

that's a great point to not have marketing present it.?that's billiant

I think you have to be a bit careful with the top sales people

Pick the right ones. Some are never gonna change what they do

Even at the VERY beginning, before you start, lock arms with your sales counterpart. Get them in a bear hug on this.

Have customer success at the table. They’re closet to customers.

Getting CEO to focus for that long…ooophf.?

The process is more important than the end product. With the wrong process, the best positioning won’t be accepted.

Typically, we run the process and workshop with the executive team - CEO/COO/CPO/CRO, product marketing, etc

The messaging in this example can be very powerful as you spin it to the risk of not using the platform. Seems like there is a competitive risk when your competitors are preparing for the future with nCino and you don't have a banking digital forward strategy.

The important thing is a process. Take the exec team through a process. And making sure the CEO sponsors the initiative

Typically, your 4 slides: the problem slide, the principles (buying criteria), the pillars (differentiators) and the marketecture slides

And one more slide: customer examples

Couple ideas- create a message map for your content team to use that is a summary of the positionoing

For sales reverse the positioning into good questions to ask

One issue with early stage startups that have not really zeroed on on PMF is that by the time we finish up the positioning, it’s changed again!

Use the customer conf to light a fire under a new story

use the customer event as a sounding board to understand more —

All events and company launches are just points in time. The beauty of marketing is that it is always living and can therefore be updated