Positioning shapes everything about your business.
How?
Let’s make a simple thought experiment.
Imagine you have a new business.
You want to sell a service — sales training.
One way to position it could be “training for sales teams in B2B software companies.”
And that would define your:
- Product: You have to tailor the training content for B2B software sales teams.
- Competition: You have to analyze who offers training for B2B software sales and what they offer to differentiate against that.
- Messaging: Your messaging should attract B2B software sales leaders who want to improve their team’s performance.
- Pricing: You have to charge a high price to signal quality and pay for coaches experienced in B2B software sales.
- Marketing: You have to focus on channels where you can reach B2B software sales leaders (or HR departments). You’ll have to spend more to get one customer, but one customer would be worth a lot.
This is clear.
Now, another way to position the same business could be “prospecting training for sales professionals.”
And that would change everything:
- Product: Now you provide a different value. So you have to tailor the training content to prospecting.
- Competition: Now you have different competitors. So you have to analyze who provides sales training for individual sales professionals to differentiate against that.
- Messaging: Now you want to talk to a different audience and sell them a different value. So your messaging should attract sales professionals who need to improve their prospecting skills.
- Pricing: Now you target individuals instead of B2B. So you have to charge a lower price and go for volume.
- Marketing: Now your target customers might be using different channels. So you have to focus on those to reach sales professionals. You won’t have to spend a lot to get one customer, but one customer would be worth a little.
So what does this show us?
Both businesses could be successful.
But they are totally different.
And one might have a higher chance of success than the other.
This thought experiment shows us two things:
- Positioning is one of the most important decisions about your business. It changes everything. And if that’s wrong, everything else will be harder. It affects your chances of success.
- Having the right positioning is not enough. You have to translate it to other elements of the business (messaging, marketing, sales, etc.). Only then you can get results.
So to grow your business further, think about these two things:
Does your current positioning maximize the value of your business?
If so, do you translate it to other parts of your business effectively?
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