#IanMannReviews | Position your product as though your business depends on it - because it does

Obviously Awesome: How to nail product positioning so customers get It, buy It, love It. By April Dunford

This practical book deals thoroughly and accessibly with the much-overlooked issue of positioning your product or even your company. All too often people focus on the product's qualities and features, which they erroneously imagine is good enough to take care of positioning. It isn't, and author Dunford explains why.

Consider this: In 2007 a non-descript white man with a long-sleeved t-shirt and cap, was standing next to a refuse bin in the metro station in Washington. He took out his fiddle and played for 45 minutes. His open instrument case in front of him collected $32.17 from 27 of the 1,097 people who passed by, most of whom were educated and relatively affluent.

The same man had performed much the same music in packed concert theatres where people paid about $300 a seat. His name is Joshua Bell, widely considered one of the best classical musicians in the US.

Even a world-class product, poorly positioned, can fail. Products are unlikely to appear exceptional if they are not within their best frame of reference. Finding the right frame of reference is "positioning".

Poor positioning requires that your prospects work harder just to establish whether you are even worth paying attention to. It is easy for products to get lost in the noise or, perhaps even worse, to be completely misunderstood and framed in ways that make them unappealing, and unremarkable.

There are a number of traps a would-be positioner can fall into. The most common one is probably the belief there is only one way to think about your product. A low-carb bran muffin can be another one of baked goods, or it could be the far more appealing "healthy, quick breakfast on the run".

Dunford explains:

"We generally fail to consider other—potentially better—ways to position our products because we simply aren't positioning them deliberately."

Deliberate, competent positioning takes into account the customer's point of view on the problem you solve, and the alternative ways you solve that problem. Positioning also requires that you make clear the ways in which you are uniquely different from alternatives, so that you are even more valuable to your customers.

Through identifying these (and other relevant factors), you will have identified the best market for your product, and now you need to bring proof of your assertions. "Your value needs to be provable in an objective and demonstrable way."

Your ideal customer

The more relevant you are, the more obvious this is, the more accurately you have identified your ideal customer.

Why not go as wide as you can and catch customers in all places and at all levels? Surely shooting with a shotgun will yield more than a rifle? Not so. "You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you cannot go south at the same time."

Your sales and marketing efforts will need to focus on the customers who are most likely to buy from you. Through a careful process of identifying your positioning, you have identified the customers who care the most about the value your product delivers. "Your target market is the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your offerings," Dunford explains.

There are two points that should be clarified in this process. The first is how you position your product for customers and for investors. Investors are investing in what your company will produce in the future. Your customers are buying a solution for a problem that they have right now. They need very different positionings.

The second point is clarifying whether the positioning is for your product, your company or both. If the company has a single product offering like Lion Match, Coke, or Salesforce (in its first decade,) the positioning is one and the same. If there are multiple products in the company's offering, the positioning will need to be different.

Positioning is far too important to be left to the marketing or sales department. It is imperative that the positioning of a new product is clearly understood by all, and agreed to by all. The message's power is easily diluted by a cacophony of mixed messages.

There are three primary approaches to positioning, and selecting the right one for you increases your chances of success.

The first is going "Head to Head" with offerings in an existing market. Here you are not trying to change the playing field. Rather you are attempting to win at the game in the way it is currently played.

The advantage is that you don't have to educate your customers: they understand all there is to understand. They can easily make a buying decision and you hope it is for your product.

If you are a small business or a start-up, the Head to Head approach is rarely a good idea for many obvious reasons. They have had more experience, probably have deeper pockets, have already earned trust, and more.

More suitable is to be the "big fish in a small pond". Here you are attempting to win a subsegment of an existing market, about which the incumbent is not highly concerned. It may also allow you a foothold that could grow. A market can be sub-segmented into industry, geography, customer size, or a host of other criteria.

Consider an example Dunford uses. You can't beat Coke for the cola market, but you could do something Coke doesn't do and wouldn't do – make a cola for dogs that smells like bones. That would alienate Coke's customers and the size of the dog coke drinking market doesn't bother Coke.

Dominating a piece of the market is generally a better positioning.

 Or you could "create a new game". This is more difficult because you have to spark demand for a product that doesn't exist. "We saw new markets emerge as cellular networks increased their speeds and coverage, making it possible to do things on a smartphone we couldn't before," Dunfort explains.

This is the most difficult type of positioning, primarily because it requires that you "educate" the customer. You need a product that is new and different from what exists in other market categories. And you will have to convince the customer that a smartphone (for example) is not just a bigger version, with a larger screen, of what they currently use.

Now you can translate your positioning into a sales story that is told with no variation, by all salespeople, particularly on their first encounter with the prospective customer. "Cash flow is critical to small businesses where the unexpected is common. In a perfect world, small businesses could get the money they need quickly based on business they have already closed. Our "Financialhelper" product offers invoice financing so small businesses can grow."

This book is an easily accessible guide from a very experienced professional that will take you through the positioning process in 10 steps.

The bottom line? You must position your product as though your company depends on it, because it does.

Readability                Light -+-- Serious

Insights                          High -+---- Low

Practical                        High +---- Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on strategy and implementation, is the author of "Strategy that Works" and a public speaker. Views expressed are his own.