How to successfully launch and activate new positioning

How do you get new initiatives to stick in your company? Whether it's new processes or new positioning, how you activate and sustain it is as important if not more important than creating it in the first place.

Great CMO Coffee Talk session last week focused on activation - internally and externally. If you are in the CMO Coffee Talk community, don't miss shared case studies as well as Bob's positioning frameworks in the #swipe-file channel in Slack.

Chat highlights from both sessions are below.

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Messaging and positioning isn’t only impactful, it’s a lot of fun. And the process of pulling it together educates everyone in the marketing team on products, customers, and competitors.

One of the things I love about Coffee Talk, so much super practical and actionable information

Tech companies are in love with our features!

Exec buyers don’t care about how your product works! And they don’t want another tech vendor.

Positioning = strategy.? The Board should know about it.

Board relationships are always tricky. Often the exec team/cmo/ceo will present the new positioning at a board meeting as information. Sometimes we interview board members as part of our Discovery process, to get them involved. I would CAUTION inviting a board member to a positioning workshop because this may dampen true conversation from the exec team.

The biggest issue I have faced in rolling out new, business-issue focused positioning is getting the sellers to stop jumping to product features when they talk to prospects. I’ve had to work heavily with sales enablement to up-level sellers understanding of the business processes in the finance department (our buying center).

Rolling out a positioning is not a moment in time. It’s building momentum over a period time.

Question: How would you help in situations where a marketing leader needs positioning but doesn’t have executive buy in and is not well-positioned him/herself to get it yet?

It was interesting she had a branding and positioning initiative going on at the same time. The positioning informed the brand. But sometimes, I have seen companies begin the branding process first. Then do the positioning process.? Either way, they need to be connected and supportive. But branding IS different than positioning

I would always recommend external research in the Discovery process.

Always positioning first.? Then rebrand starting with persona to align with positioning and values of the company.

Typically, we talk to 8-10 customers - customers that look like your “next set of customers” and also interview market analysts - at a minimum

Pitch certification is soooo important!

Awesome work! Love this! So important especially in the era of AI as buyer expectations/behaviors and innovation advances quickly! There’s so much leapfrogging in the market, startups to well established. Even Google’s $175B search ad business is at risk.

As a CMO she knew how to read the room and when to speak.? A key attribute of leadership in that seat.

Lots of AI-washing in the market today.

How did you go about the ongoing ‘audit’. What actions did you take when you found stuff off message, was it to go to leadership or to the person. Did everyone then adjust or was that an ongoing challenge.

Again - there is a big difference between a branding and a positioning process. Branding is the tone, visual identity, the tag line - positioning is shaping a category and accelerating revenue

Some of our clients take the new positioning story through a formal focus group validation process - blind, with prospects… this is before the story is launched.

100% that the CEO has to be bought in. And it’s helpful if the rest of the exec team sees the need for it too.

You need a hard working positioning for shitty product to mind trick the market into buying it.? The real work of a CMO!

Tell the ELT to talk to your former employer where you went through this process and it worked.? The CEO hired you for your success and potential impact on the business.

I love this discussion!?Here's a GPT that we can use to do a quick check on defensibility of positioning and help with aligning the exec team, based on how much value we offer (compared to competitors) and how different we are. I shared this back in Jan. Use if helpful and as you see fit,?https://chat.openai.com/g/g-91b7gp5jK-competitive-defensibility-analyzer

You can use the GPT, if you have the $20/mon chatgpt subscription. Here's the approach, just for your reference, https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/lizaadams_ai-artificialintelligence-generativeai-activity-7077718135037952000-xi5x?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

I’m sorry, but if the board has to intervene, then there is a bigger problem in c-suite, especially with the CEO.

The voice of the market…remember you are the Chief MARKET officer.

Positioning training is not just for Sales.? It’s a company-wide motion.? From the receptionist through to the Board.? No ifs, ands, or buts.? One company, one voice.

Right people, right seat, right time, right bus!

Sales leaders make or break this.

Instilling positioning company-wide is a change management strategy.? Involve your L&OD folks early.? They can help explode the momentum.

Positioning is rented, not owned. Need to keep paying

Build the positioning statements into the template for your internal briefing documents: creative briefs, product innovation briefs etc.

Its always key to validate with your “next set of customers” which look very different than customers you have sold in the past.

Sell the problem, not the product. This is key to breakthrough positioning.

Product-centric positioning - Tech companies LOVE their features - Exec buyers don’t care.

There is a difference between Branding vs. Positioning

Something I always run into internally is varied definitions of positioning? vs. messaging vs. brand. Even at that company we worked on together!

Branding is tone, expression, visual identity and tag line. Positioning is shaping a category and driving revenue traction

Good Positioning becomes a North Star for the company

Sell the problem, NOT the product

To the Board - she showed the background positioning strategy (shift from cyber ratings to Cyber Insurance company) - and the actual positioning storyline

Q - Did you go to existing customers to beta-test the positioning you initially came up with?

Did the conversations with your clients revealed gaps and new opportunities that your company could offer? Was that the source of the re-positioning?

Big question: It’s one thing to get investment to do the positioning work, it’s another to get the investment to action on it. How did your conversations go to get the investment to overhaul all your brand assets, sales enablement, etc. I? often get stuck with the magical thinking here. “We gave you $xxx to update our positioning. Why isn’t the website already updated? What do you mean you need 6 months to activate?”

CEO needs to lead it, IMO. If they don’t own the narrative, the company won’t really get behind it.

An oldie but a goodie https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0

And then you need to get the CEO to STICK TO IT and not shift it the moment you miss a quarter

Take the exec team through a positioning process. They are involved in the crafting of the story. Then they OWN the positioning. It’s not a Marketing positioning.

Fully agree. Working w/ a client and they launched a new business segment and it isn’t even in their earning calls and / or media. The President of the BU overlooked the fact that the CEO isn’t even talking about the business. So, we fixed that problem re: getting the CEO on board.

Branding vs. Positioning. She made the decision that the positioning would inform the branding. Sometimes, I have seen CMO’s start with branding? - that informs the positioning - either way, they need to be synchronized

I once worked at a startup where I knew when my CEO’s daughter had a soccer game, because he’d try to shift our persona to his friend’s job rather than the people who would actually buy the product

Positioning should always inform branding in my mind

An internal launch is just as critical as the external launch. Thus, I appreciate this slide.

I love this line: Introduce Features as “Magic Gifts” for Overcoming Obstacles to the Promised Land

Activation is not a point in time. But activation over a period of time…

Did you use sales calls to ensure that the farther you get away from the initial activation that the messaging stays on message vs. revert back to “old way”?

Great example of how a CMO is more like a GM - driving revenue and managing costs (PL Management). These stats help land CMOs on boards in my opinion.

Q - how did you "police" and "garbage collect" on all the old positioning docs, presentations, sales enablement..?

More recently, in cyber I have found that RSA Conf is overrated, and overly expensive.? Too many marketing/sales and not enough buyers… especially AT the event vs those who are just “in town for” the conference.

Ah - good idea: a new CMS where "good" and "right" can reside.

One CEO told the sales team if anyone changed a single thing in the new sales deck, they were FIRED!

Have you guys seen Symplexity?? @Mark Ogne is building it, cool tool to keep messages consistent across a broad GTM team (direct, partner ecosystems, etc.) https://www.symplexity.ai/

Totally. Appreciate the solidarity, not the toxicity.

Having sales present the pitch is always a great approach. Way more credibility.

But the sales team is tired of using the company colors and the logo isn’t big enough

This is a KEY point…. They need to use the new messaging/positioning, but also need the flexibility to customize.

Worst thing that can happen is when sales delivers a presentation they preface by telling the audience “these are the marketing slides!”

Yes! The SE’s are in so many deals. They know what resonates with prospects - and keep positioning grounded in reality!

Just did a Voice of Customer/Customer Listening workshop last week. A useful refresher. Golden rules: 1. Know who your customers are. 2. Listen to them.

It’s one thing to tailor the deck, and I agree but It’s a completely different thing to calculate how many of the salespeople actually understand the nuance of the position pivot and can be successful at doing that. Nearly 0% without outside assist.

Good metrics for positioning: Better Win/loss ratio, higher ASP, analysts picking up your viewpoint

Once we did a HUGE repositioning, flew the whole sales team to Boston to roll it out, did role-plays, new decks, etc. At the exec team meeting the day after the two-day event, the CEO decided that our personas were wrong and we needed to focus on the one that had no budget

Positioning needs to be the “north star” in the sense that no matter what team you’re on, and what specifically you’re working on, you can all see and follow the north star so that you know how your piece contributes to the more meaningful whole.

To do this it is essential it is to be very good at evangelism, and it’s important for the leaders to understand that evangelism is something that is never “done.”? It needs to be a constant.

John Doerr, the champion of OKR’s, likes to explain that “we need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.”

Stopping a couple of companies from trying to create a whole new (bogus) category is one of the career achievements I’m proudest of

I would also say getting peer validation (in many spaces) is also just as crucial. You need the pain but you want to see people you know telling you (versus case studies) that they were successful

Position consistency is critical. Super hard to balance complex interactions of challenges/solutions, buyer personas, stage… the reality of the situation is harder than training.

Sales improv is needed to comport to real life examples.

What, our 104th feature is 10% better than everyone else’s. That doesn’t work?

Stagnant growth and/or retention issues CAN sometimes be an indication that positioning is off. I usually look to my happiest customers to uncover whether the value we are delivering to the happiest folks is aligned with our positioning to determine if a change is needed