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We are a podcast for product marketers and B2B SaaS who feel misunderstood of what they do.
From someone who truly gets what you do.
And basically help you feel less like a misfit to be an unenormable in your role.
Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of Word on Marketers.
Before we get introduced to our amazing guests,
it's another season and you need to make sure that the right misfits are under the right mic.
So
I'll get started.
Gabougeau,
sales deck intern.
I just do sales deck until I die and I'll pass it off to my co-host.
Now the sales water boy.
Let's pass it over to Eric.
Yeah and we're now for the third season.
We've got promotions.
I am Eric Holland,
the Franken-manager.
Thank you.
So if you're in product marketing,
I hope you heard of her because otherwise,
we care about you.
You need to get out of your house and really push your learnings.
But we're very happy of introducing
April Dunford.
April Dunford is known as the queen of positioning,
practical positioning for startups.
She worked at household names like IBM.
She also wrote two amazing books.
And
I'm trying not to fangirl a bit here because obviously awesome was what made me love product marketing,
what introduced me to practical positioning,
and of course,
sales pitch and everything else you're doing.
So
April, we're very excited to having you on the show.
Well,
I'm very happy to be on the show.
So thank you for having me.
And a quick side note,
sales pitch made me realize that we're not marketers.
So this little preview of our show right there.
we have one question that we ask every single guest it's very we like to kick off every episode this way and since gab has just the powerful mustache and the french
canadian accent we let him do the honors thank you april are product marketers actually marketers why or why not i feel like there's an answer that i'm
supposed to be given here,
given the t-shirts and the name of the show and all the rest of it.
But I'm going to give you my actual take on this.
I think product marketers are marketers.
I think we could dig into that,
but I'm going to say,
yes,
they're marketers.
What's your point of view on that answer?
Curious to hear more behind it.
Well,
so here's the thing.
I think product marketing,
like I...
started out working at tiny little startups.
And a lot of times in a tiny little startup,
there is no product marketer,
right?
There isn't a person with that title,
but we are still doing product marketing and that function is getting done in the marketing department.
So when I think about things that a product marketer is typically responsible for,
positioning being one of those,
that positioning stuff is typically happening in the marketing department.
So even if we don't have product marketing as a function,
we do have product marketing stuff going.
Like,
so for example,
product marketers are often the person that is working in between product and marketing to help us build content and help us understand what are the value of certain features?
How do we understand these features from a customer's perspective?
That's product marketing.
If a product marketer doesn't exist,
then somebody in marketing is going to be doing that.
Same thing with
Things like sales support.
A lot of the companies I worked in,
we had a sales team helping with the pitch deck and building the demo and doing things like that.
Again,
if we didn't have a product marketer,
marketing would be doing that stuff until we got big enough that we would hire a product marketer and then product marketer would be doing that stuff.
We got really big.
We'd start splitting off pieces of that as well.
And we'd have sales enablement as a separate function,
which may or may not report to marketing.
But yeah,
that's where I come from on that stuff.
I mean,
I was a product marketer and I didn't grow up to be a product manager.
I grew up to be a VP marketing.
That's a really good point of view.
I guess my question would be for those who aren't.
That sounds like you're like,
yeah,
that's crap.
Well,
anyone who doesn't agree,
I have to think their point of view is crap.
Right.
It doesn't.
If everyone wants to stand in the middle,
we're not we're not doing the right thing.
But
I guess my question would to you would be then the job has to get done.
Right.
And like in my experience in the early startups,
it was actually getting done by the CEO and the CTO.
Oh,
that that is true.
So not necessarily falling in the marketing hands,
but that's that's not really my question.
My question would be more on the lines of like,
OK,
so you're not a disciplined product marketer.
You haven't taken the
April Dunford's class of positioning and you've been tasked to do that work.
As of my opinion,
that's it's similar to like anything else like.
I can hire someone to do my accounting,
but I'd rather have an accountant do my accounting for me than just someone who's good at math.
So that's kind of my take on like,
I don't necessarily think it's a good practice just to let someone do the work if the result's going to be...
Oh,
you mean that like to have someone do the work when there isn't a specialist there?
Or not even a specialist,
just like,
you know,
from my perspective,
the CEO should be like,
yeah,
you should do this positioning work.
Have you ever done positioning before?
No.
Cool.
Go take this class.
Right.
Or just some indication of that positioning is an actual expertise.
Like it is a skill set and a muscle that needs to be flexed.
And that goes to other things like pricing and so on and so forth.
But yeah,
I mean,
you're preaching to the choir there.
Like like what we like,
you know,
when we if we think about how this gets done in a startup,
like the CEO might be doing positioning.
But,
but.
But generally,
the founder or the CEO has no idea what that word actually means.
And their perception of what they're doing is often that
I'm not doing positioning.
I'm thinking about market strategy.
I'm thinking about,
and actually,
they wouldn't even call it market strategy.
They call it the business strategy.
How are we going to win in the market?
And that is like...
you want the CEO to have a perspective on that.
And I think you'd die if the CEO didn't have a perspective on that.
The CEO is also thinking about division and,
you know,
where the thing's going to go longer term.
And they're out,
if they're venture-backed,
they're out pitching to investors to try to get investment,
and they're trying to figure that out too.
And so what you'll see in,
like,
in little startups,
where there isn't a very senior person in marketing,
so we don't have a vice president of marketing,
maybe we got a director level person or somebody who's focused strictly on lead gen and they're not really focused on anything else,
then who's gonna do it?
It's gonna end up being the CEO or the founder or whoever.
If you've got a senior person in marketing though and they're not involved in positioning,
I would be squinting my eyes at them and saying,
how'd you get that job?
because
I'm not sure anybody,
once they've got to a vice president level or certainly not a CMO,
is going to not understand that we can't build campaigns on top of positioning that isn't solid.
Now,
is the CEO going to have an opinion about that?
Absolutely.
And in fact,
I would never attempt to do positioning without having the CEO involved.
That would be crazy,
in my opinion.
So obviously they're going to be involved.
but
You know,
it doesn't mean that the CEO cooks it up in a vacuum and then throws it over the wall to the rest of us.
If that's happening,
then we're,
you know,
we might be in trouble there,
too.
Clarifying question.
So we all know if you walk up on that PMA stage,
you're going to give this talk,
April.
And people are like,
oh,
my gosh,
I'm inspired.
But
I'm not April.
I can't walk into my CEO's Zoom call and be like,
hey.
you and I partner together and work on this positioning because for maybe some founding PMMs,
they might not have that April Dunford level of influence or that authority.
So that how,
if I'm a founding PMM and I'm at an early stage startup,
like I'm curious,
like from your experience,
like how did you build that influence to help navigate that conversation with your CEO before you were the April Dunford?
Yeah,
yeah.
Because,
you know,
I was that too,
right?
Like,
nobody cared what I had to say about anything at the beginning.
Even at the end,
to be honest,
like,
you know,
like,
it doesn't get you that far with the founder,
to be honest.
Here's,
here's how I used to look at it.
And this was true even when I just,
even,
you know,
when I wasn't at PMM,
this was true when I was a vice president of marketing,
you know,
like I would get hired to come in and the CEO would be like,
wave that marketing magic wand April and get the leads and the revenue going like this up to the right and,
you know,
and just get it done.
And I would come in and my worry was that I would be building stuff on top of mushy positioning.
which is foolish.
So if I'm out there building campaigns and I'm going to be writing messaging and I'm going to be doing all this other stuff and I'm going to like,
you know,
fix the pitch deck and all the other things I'm going to do,
but we're,
you know,
but we don't really know why we win in the market.
We don't really know who our competitors are.
We don't really understand what our differentiated value is.
And now all that stuff is going to be junk.
So
I would come in and Now,
I can't.
I have never once been successful at coming in,
walking into the CEO's job,
even as the vice president.
I can't walk into the CEO founder and say,
hey,
you know what?
I think this positioning is crap and we should fix it.
It's a bit like waltzing in there and saying their baby is ugly.
You're not going to get very far with that.
So I would never do that.
I mean,
I might've tried to do that when I was junior and stupid.
But you'll quickly discover that nobody has that influence,
right?
Except certain people have that.
You know who has the influence to go in and walk in and tell the CEO their baby's ugly?
The CEO's parent.
April
Dunford.
It's not true.
Like even now as a consultant,
like the companies don't come to me until they've already decided they have a problem.
April doesn't go and convince them they have a problem because that's impossible.
So vice president of sales though,
that's different.
So if the vice president of sales comes in and says,
we can't sell this stuff,
I'm sorry.
The CEO might not love that message,
but they listen because rubber meets the road over in sales.
We don't make our numbers.
We're all going to die.
So what I would do is I would come.
I'm the brand new VP marketing.
And I would walk over to sales and I'd say,
I'm just here.
I'm stupid.
I don't know anything,
but you know,
I'm brand new.
And I would just like to sit around on calls and talk to the reps about what's happening on these calls.
So I'd sit in on the calls and I'd be listening for the signs of weak positioning.
And so the signs of weak positioning is customer prospect gets on the call and the rep is pitching something.
And the prospect is making this face,
you know,
like,
I don't understand thing you're talking about,
man.
Like,
and,
and a lot of times you'd hear this phrase where you'd get on and you'd be like
10 minutes into the call.
And the prospect is like,
no,
no.
Back it up,
back it up.
Go back to the beginning.
What did you say at the beginning?
Like,
cause I'm just,
I'm not quite getting it.
And so you can see this profound confusion,
like where a customer can't even figure out what you are,
like can't even figure out what you are.
So that's one sign.
Second sign you get is this,
where.
prospect comes on and they say,
oh yeah,
yeah.
So you guys are just like Salesforce and you're not,
you're nothing like Salesforce.
Like,
and so they're,
they've put you in a bucket that you don't belong in.
And that's a really big problem.
And then the rep will say,
no,
we're not that.
No,
no,
let's go back to here.
No,
we actually do this other thing.
And it's like this,
you know?
And so,
so that's a sign your positioning sucks.
The other one you'll get is this real pushback,
like not,
not even so much pushback on.
pricing,
but a bit like,
why would I pay for this?
Like I get what it is,
but like,
why would I pay for it?
Can I just do it as a spreadsheet?
Or like I'm using in my accounting package to do it right now.
Can I just do it with that?
And so if I started seeing that stuff,
then I would go and have lunch with the vice president of sales.
And so I'm like,
I'm new here,
but I've been listening on a bunch of calls and I've been talking to your reps.
And here's what I see.
People don't understand what we are.
People are comparing us to the wrong thing.
People really don't understand the value.
Do you see that?
Do you think that's true?
Now,
if this is true,
your vice president of sales sees it.
He sees it every day.
And so when I'm having that lunch,
the vice president of sales is gonna go,
yeah,
man,
this is a problem.
And they'll probably blame it on the product or they'll blame it on something.
They'll say,
oh,
this is just really hard to sell.
Or they'll say,
oh,
the market's really crowded or whatever.
And I'll say,
look,
over in marketing land,
we have this concept and it's called positioning and here's what it is have we ever done a formal positioning process in this company and the answer is almost always no
And I'll say,
I'm not saying the positioning is bad and I don't know what it would look like if it was better,
but I think it's worth,
given what I'm hearing on the sales side,
I think it's worth looking at it.
I think we should just look at it.
Then I would go have the exact same conversation with the person running product.
Same thing.
I'd be like,
hey,
I'm over in sales and here's what I'm seeing.
I'm seeing we get compared to things we shouldn't be compared to.
I'm seeing this,
I'm seeing that.
Do you see that?
I mean,
you spend a lot of time with.
with customers.
Do you see that?
This general confusion about what we are and whatever.
And again,
if it is a problem,
product sees it too.
They might not necessarily think it's positioning.
They might say,
well,
you know,
we have this roadmap and once we get these five things built,
then everything's going to be perfect and whatever.
And I'm like,
yeah,
okay.
But while we're building those things every day,
we have to do deals and we suck at doing deals.
So maybe we could fix this in marketing land.
Sometimes we can fix this by tightening up.
the positioning have we ever done a positioning exercise at this company and the answer is almost always no then i go to the ceo so i go to the ceo and i'm not coming in there saying you got to do this because i said and i'm you know the smartest marketer on the planet i go in and i say look i'm dumb i don't know anything i'm brand new here i don't know a thing but here's what i'm hearing in sales calls i'm
seeing nobody understands our value i'm seeing the sales calls really
rough at the beginning because people really don't understand what we are.
And I'm seeing this,
we're getting compared to people we shouldn't be compared to.
And so before I go and spend a lot of effort doing this,
I think it would make sense to get a little team together,
you,
me,
product,
sales,
let's get together.
And we'll just go through this little exercise and see if we can't tighten up that positioning and make it better.
And what does the CEO say?
They don't say,
oh yeah,
April,
let's do that.
They say,
what does John over in sales think about this?
And I say,
gosh,
I have no idea.
Let's call him.
And then we get John on the phone.
And John says,
yeah,
man,
I've been thinking about this for a long time.
And
I think,
yeah,
it would be a good idea because I already sold him.
And then they call product and I've already sold them too.
She's got her reference call already in the bag.
And then we get everybody together.
Like,
see,
this is the thing.
Like the reality is.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm wrong and I just don't see it.
And so if I can't convince sales and product that there's a positioning problem,
then maybe I'm the problem because I don't understand it.
And so that's what I do.
I don't go to the CEO and try to convince them just because I got some idea that maybe the positioning is bad.
First,
I got to validate,
is it actually bad?
Like,
is it causing us pain in sales?
And if the head of sales says,
no,
that's not the problem,
and I'm probably the problem.
So that's how I do it.
Like I don't get to be.
And again,
even now,
like even in the work I do right now,
working with clients like if the CEO doesn't believe we have a problem,
I cannot fix that.
What I'm hearing here is it's kind of having a secret go to market alignment team to try to understand first,
is there really a problem or is my assumption of us having not a good positioning true?
And then by kind of doing that,
by getting those insights,
you're able to really remove the influence or the hierarchy out of the play.
Yes,
you still have to come back to the CEO,
but you're coming in with an approach where it's more like,
okay,
so we have the data.
We understand that it's problematic.
We got the buy-in of product and sales.
And then we can really come up with,
as you said,
I'm dumb,
I'm new.
Really the approach of an innocence approach of
I'm trying to understand if this is problematic.
And if it is,
this is kind of how we can get out of it.
That's it.
And you don't come in even thinking you got the answer because the reality is you don't,
right?
You don't have the answer yet.
We can't get to the answer until we get a group of people together and we work through it.
So
I, you know,
I'm coming in with this thing,
like,
you know,
I,
you know,
I got a suspicion that the positioning might be bad,
but I don't know.
And if I,
if sales doesn't think it's a problem,
then it isn't,
unfortunately,
right?
It isn't,
it isn't,
or they just not feeling it yet.
Maybe they're going to feel it next quarter,
but it isn't.
and then same thing with product if i can't convince sales and product then maybe i'm wrong and then if i if i do convince sales and product well now i got you know now i got some leverage to go in and talk to the ceo because it's not just my opinion it's half the company sees the problem so
maybe we should try and fix it so i'm i'm i'm gonna follow up real quick because i'm hearing two things here so april by the way i know like you said before this call you're gonna be out of Palm Springs at this talk.
If you ever need replacements to serve in your place,
like I think hear this response and you'd be the judge as to what.
I've done for at this upcoming conference in Palm Springs,
because we might need a vacation too as well.
But two things.
The first one is like being an internal salesperson.
We flashed a book earlier,
sales pitch,
is that you are going to different audiences within your teams here.
And you're like,
I need to understand your point of view and validate if we have a problem.
And the second thing here is that it sounds like this,
a framework just popped into my head when I heard what you were explaining.
And it sounds like VIP,
like,
hey.
Is this a positioning problem?
Is our buyer or internal teams know the value?
Do they know our identity?
Are they willing to pay the price we're stating at?
Because if the price,
if they're like,
I don't know what you do,
I don't know who you are,
how can I justify that price?
So it sounds like that's in a summary what you're highlighting here.
Are we on the right track?
A little bit,
Yeah.
you know,
the pricing one's an interesting one because what you see with weak positioning is not so much that they're like,
well,
I pay a hundred,
but I wouldn't pay 200 for that.
It's more like
I wouldn't pay anything.
Like I don't get the value at all,
man.
Like,
and,
and often it sounds like an objection to pricing.
but what it actually is is an objection to doing anything it's like well why would we stop doing the thing we're doing now and do that thing like i like usually that objection is around value it's like i get that you do this thing i just don't get that it's all that much better than me doing it on a spreadsheet or me doing it with a couple of interns it's that thing so you
know it's not so much a because they're not you know this is like a first call they're not even really thinking about pricing yet if we're talking about enterprise software but they're a They're a bit like...
I don't get it,
man.
That doesn't seem like something anybody would buy.
It's that,
which is truly terrifying when you hear it on a sales call.
But you'd be amazed at how much you hear it when the positioning is mushy.
I love that word,
mushy.
Mushy positioning.
I don't like the look of it,
but I like the sound of it.
Yeah,
like a lot of it is just like,
you know,
it's not like the positioning is not there.
It's there.
It's just not good.
And the not good,
the nature of it's not goodness is usually that it's just kind of sloppy.
It's kind of vague.
It's kind of like I can't,
you know.
It's like a college campus.
What we want is nice,
crisp,
tight positioning,
not too mushy mushy.
Sounds like a college campus at
2 a.m.
on a Saturday night.
Oh,
you guys do that sometimes.
Yeah,
we do.
So question for the group.
I wrote some questions out for April since I heard she has,
you know,
she likes to get out to the college from time to time.
You guys want to split off and have a little fun before we dip back in the serious conversation?
All right.
I'm down.
All right.
So April,
um,
don't expect you to know this from a previous episode,
but we,
we've created a torture chamber for people,
uh,
started with Anthony Pieri and we made him basically pick the most awful buzzwords that you see in,
in B2B sass.
We've modified the torture chamber for you to be a lot less,
uh,
torturous.
And we want to ask you a little bit more about you getting out and
getting your mind off of work and getting creative so we heard that you like to go to the cabin we wanted to ask you some either or questions how does that sound for you really oh okay great we're going to talk about the cat right all right so um you know what i'll i'll tell you this is a good topic because i'm actually building a new one oh really it's my little side project right now but
it's one of these things it's really hard to build something on the water because there's like
conservation authorities and you don't go well and a septic and all this stuff it's like you're out in the wilderness so yeah i'm getting education on like freaking septic systems and stuff that i wish i didn't know about but i'm now becoming an expert in so yeah ask me some great cabin questions i'm
prepared wait is that the behind the scenes is that the behind the scenes reason why you spoke about toilets at your last pma talk is that the context of it no actually
Oh, okay.
But,
you know,
well,
no,
no.
The behind the scenes reasons is,
here's the thing.
I'm trying to teach people a concept,
right?
And the concept is buying is hard.
Making a purchase is hard.
So what I've found with tech people is if you're trying to teach a concept,
it's it doesn't work very well if i immediately give a technical example because technical people will get all hung up on the tech on the technical aspects of it like if i'm talking about positioning and i immediately jump into a database example people say well that's databases and that's because of database databases and so that wouldn't apply to us because we're a data warehouse and that's different than databases and you're like dude it's the same so instead i had to give them an example that's not technical at all.
And that works pretty well.
So I'm talking about
cake versus muffins or cake versus cake pops or whatever.
So the same thing on the sales side,
I'm trying to drive home this idea that buying is hard.
And so I'm like,
well,
what's an example of something that I bought that I thought was going to be really easy.
And then it turned out it was really hard.
And the first thing that popped into my mind was when I was renovating a bathroom and I had to buy a toilet.
Then it turned into like,
it took me a month to buy a fricking toilet.
And I thought I was just going to walk in there and go.
that one.
Anyway,
that's why I use that example.
Because people think the same thing about software,
right?
They think,
well,
how hard is it to buy?
Like we as vendors,
we think people just walk up and go,
oh,
that sounds good.
Give me that one.
But that's not how it works at all.
They're comparing you to like three or four other options.
You all look the same.
And everybody's saying the same stuff.
And so they're trying to make this decision.
It's actually really hard.
And it's not a
$12 price tag or $150 toilet either.
Exactly.
Like these things are expensive and you don't want to buy a bad one,
right?
Because then I got the bloody plumber in every week.
And when it's the last thing I want is toilet problems.
Nobody wants that problem.
I need the thing to work.
It's important.
Talking about mushy positioning.
Software is the same though,
right?
Yep.
software is the same nobody wants to buy the bad thing and then implement it and then go whoopsie that sucks no that doesn't do what we wanted it to do like and you know and unlike buying a toilet like you make a mistake buying b2b software you get fired yep exactly right you're not just sleeping on the couch for a night or two you're
not just or whatever dealing with the smell of whatever i'm unemployed and my toilet smells like shit
Yeah,
that's right.
Your state decision has implications.
Well,
I love that background.
And
I think it's the perfect jump.
It's the cabin part of the program.
All right,
April.
You've got an A or B answer on either of those.
So you've got to pick one or the other.
All right?
It's an either or situation.
So the first one,
camping in a tent or glamping in an Airbnb.
Hmm.
That's an it depends kind of answer.
Well.
Because I don't think glamping is camping.
So if we're actually camping,
then you're in a tent.
All right.
So you like the nature feel.
But I got a cabin,
so I wouldn't call that camping.
Oh,
don't worry.
We'll get- We call that glamping,
and that's what I do.
So you're like,
okay,
I gotcha.
Kayaking down the creek or taking a paddleboard out on the lake?
I do both at my cottage.
I have both.
At the same time?
But the problem with the paddleboard,
like stand-up paddleboard,
is you can only go so far,
you know,
and you're really slow.
And it doesn't go very good if it's really wavy out,
right?
So it has to be nice.
like it's something you do first thing in the morning or in the evening when it's nice and quiet there's not like a thousand boats out whereas kayak can handle all that stuff unless it's like super windy and then it's and then it's hard to kayak but but i would choose kayak it's more practical i i
ride with you to kayak any day april um third question sitting by the campfire and roasting some marshmallows or heading back and grilling up some hot dogs at the barbecue
Oh,
definitely marshmallows.
I thought you were going to say hot dogs.
He doesn't eat hot dogs?
What the hell?
What's wrong with hot dogs,
April?
Little kids eat them.
I'll tell you what's wrong with them.
They're very bad for you.
You don't care about this when you're a little kid.
But when you're older,
you're like,
hot dogs are actually not good.
You should limit your hot dog intake.
They don't put great things in those,
do they?
Yeah.
You know what's crazy about marshmallows?
They're actually not all that bad for you.
Really?
Oh,
yeah,
because there's a sugar in what?
Water?
It's sugar,
but it's actually not even that much sugar.
It's actually mainly,
but you know,
whatever that shit is,
they make marshmallows out of,
but it's kind of like,
it's like nothing.
So eating marshmallows is healthier.
Then you get cookies and you make some more.
Eating marshmallows is way healthier than eating a hot dog.
What do you say?
What do you say eating a marshmallow is healthier than sitting in a desk chair for eight hours.
Or eating a marshmallow is healthier than eating a hot dog.
I think sitting in a desk chair for eight hours is really bad.
Yeah.
So we would eat hot dogs.
Unfortunately,
we're all doing that right now.
Well,
as soon as this call is over,
we're getting up.
We're going to go roast some marshmallows.
Group roast.
Remote roast.
I went for run before this call.
All right.
Well,
we'll move on to the next question.
So would you rather go hiking on a nearby trail or relaxing with a book?
by the lake oh wow uh oh wow both of those things like i'm a big hiker actually well i was telling you before this call that i'm going to palm springs and i was all excited about hiking until i found out it was 110 degrees and then i was like oh maybe not but um you
know so i i'm a big hiker i like a good hike but i also like a good relax the deck chair by the lake reading a book that Like you pretty much just.
My summer vacation is like all of those things.
Depends on the day and time at least probably.
Yeah,
that's right.
What's your book of choice at the cabin in front of the lake?
Well,
you know what?
So I read a lot of business books,
but I don't find business books a very good thing to read when you're on vacation.
Like,
so I'm reading business,
if I'm on the plane,
I'm reading business books.
But when I'm on vacation,
I like to read something that has nothing to do with anything.
And so,
yeah,
I'm going through a bit of a sci-fi phase at the moment.
Oh,
really?
Yeah.
Octavia Butler,
you ever read any of that?
I have not,
but I heard she's a really good author.
So good,
you don't know what you're missing.
So actually somebody bought somebody,
my child,
my daughter,
bought me an Octavia Butler book as a gift.
And holy man,
that was so good.
I went right down the rat hole and I have now officially read
all the octavia butler books how many are there out there right now she's got a few i don't know i think there's at least seven so yeah she died young though anyways but uh yeah octavia butler if you're looking for a good uh kind
of sci-fi sit by the sit by the you know it's not exactly light some of this stuff is pretty dark but it's still good and it's not a business book which i think is a terrible way to spend a summer day
We agree.
We definitely agree.
We can't agree with it.
I think,
I think we can all align on that.
And that will gloss over your previous response about whether product marketers are marketers.
So we'll just focus on that.
Yeah.
April,
you got,
it's game time.
You want to go outdoors and play something like cornhole,
for example,
or hang back inside and do a board game.
we're board game folks at my cottage there's a lot of katan oh my gosh yes this is a very classic cottage afternoon if the weather's bad outside there's like serious katan happening at my college what's your go-to resource you
know i don't know i don't have one like we've had this conversation like do people have like you know real strategies on that and we don't but i'll tell you my daughter is really boss level katan player and she's very competitive and so
like we're gonna play katan we gotta be on it i don't think i'm a particularly good katan player like i'm i came late to katan but uh because my kids got into it and then i got roped into it but um but yeah i just i just try not to die embarrassingly fast it's all about it's all about the hang in there it's all about the brick try to hang in there
Exactly.
We brought it.
We actually rented kind of like a cabin last week when we were the three of us together.
And I brought the game,
but we didn't have the time to play.
And I'll forever,
you know,
judge myself of not having Push It enough for the guys.
I regret it now because this is now the second time in a week that I've heard of this game that I've never heard of before.
So I'm going to say it.
Oh,
you haven't heard of it,
let alone played?
I know.
This ignorant American over here needs to...
Oh no,
speak for yourself.
Speak for yourself.
I played Catan through the pandemic.
I had the video game on my phone.
The hours I logged on it.
I'm like,
I can play that game in my sleep.
This is a very entertaining board game.
All right,
I know what I'm doing this weekend.
We have a master and a padawan.
April,
so you're building your place right now.
You don't have to tell us where you're building it,
but the next question is,
would you build that deep in the woods or right up against the water?
Well,
the Conservation Authority will not let you put it right up against the water.
So it turns out there's a lot of regulations on this,
which I'm learning because I'm building this thing.
But yeah,
in the water,
there needs to be water around because I want to be kayaking and paddle boarding and skiing and all this stuff.
So,
so,
yeah,
you need to be on the water.
But,
you know,
I know a lot of people that have cabins and they're out in the woods and there's no water around.
And then the whole deal is you're in the woods.
But but I grew up around like I grew up on a river like it looks like a lake.
It's a big river.
But I grew up.
on that.
And so,
you know,
I think what you want in a cottage is what you knew,
what your first cottage experiences looked like.
And so
I grew up on the river,
so we're having cabinets going on the river.
Yeah.
I'm with you too.
I need water.
It's so soothing.
It doesn't matter what,
what the occasion.
Yeah.
Water.
All right.
And then last question to wrap up the,
the torture chamber round.
You like to just hang out and watch the birds or wait until nighttime?
and gaze at the stars.
Wow.
Can we do both?
Why don't we do both?
Well,
that's the torture chamber part.
You're forced to pick one.
That's the torture chamber part?
And most people don't even want to pick one in the torture chamber.
We gave you the option of things are so nice,
you want to pick both.
So,
watch the stars or watch the birds.
Maybe stars.
Good star action where I'm at.
because we're really far away from anything and so light pollution yeah no light pollution at all like i can run at night on a full moon and there's a shadow from the moon oh wow peter pan style
people don't believe me when i say you can go for a run at a full moon and it's so bright you can see a shadow go for a run at a full moon and you'll hear that i think of my running light i'm like i have to have a run around so you can just and you'll it's so bright moon is not out it'll be like why are we talking about this cottage shit man like get back awesome
well we will uh we'll let you know we love it we love it yeah they know they're not gonna get this on other podcasts.
So we talked about it.
Just be ready for some outbound emails when this episode hits of like,
hey,
April,
how's your cottage?
By the way,
we have this new B2B software.
Hey,
can we help you with your septic tank?
I don't know.
We've got an AI platform that can get you past all those conservationist stuff.
No,
let me tell you,
that is never going to happen.
That's like saying the AI is going to get you out of jail.
It's not.
There's,
yeah,
the Conservation Authority,
man,
that is serious.
They're serious.
They're not fooling around those people.
Well,
we'll need to bring you back on once you're done and the place is built.
But thanks for letting us and our audience get to know you a little bit better other than your professional life.
Sure.
We spoke about mushy positioning earlier,
and
I have a question on the back of my mind since we started this interview.
What are cardinal sins related to product position that you saw?
And I know that you are very strict in terms of who you're working with.
If these don't have a problem,
let's skip it.
But in terms of elements that make you cringe,
very much in the cardinal sin way of that.
Well,
so there's,
there's a handful of things that'll just really destroy your positioning.
Like,
um,
like weak positioning is usually weak in a certain way.
Like there's,
there's two or three different ways where people get it wrong.
So the most common one is having an overly broad definition of who your ideal customer is.
So,
and this happens really often where people say,
you know,
I'm,
I.
we're trying to tighten up our value proposition and we need the value proposition to work for our target customer.
And I'll say,
that's great.
Who's your target customer?
And they'll say SMBs.
And you're like,
oh,
like dry cleaners?
No,
no,
not dry cleaners.
I'm like.
okay,
like car dealerships.
No,
not car dealerships.
And I'll be like,
okay,
like,
you know,
quick serve restaurants.
No.
And you'll be like,
okay,
you're not selling all SMBs.
And so when they,
and often when you scratch at it,
what they mean by SMBs is like small tech companies.
And that is a tiny slice of the universe of SMBs.
And so it makes it impossible to have really good solid value proposition.
when you're trying to be everything to everybody in this overly broad universe.
So I think that's one positioning thing that people get really bad.
The other one that I think is incredibly common is the company is trying to position against competitors,
but they've got a really broad set of competitors they're trying to position against.
So they'll say,
oh,
you know,
we Googled this and here's our list of competitors.
And there's,
you know.
30 companies on the list.
And you'll be like,
oh man,
like that's a lot.
But then when you talk to the sales teams,
I work mainly with B2B and people in the sales team,
talk to the sales team and you say,
who do you see?
And they'll say,
it's Oracle.
And there's one competitor,
not 59,
there's one.
And the other ones,
we never see them in a deal.
So if we don't see them in a deal,
we don't have to position against them because the customer's not thinking about them.
So we only have to position against what a customer would consider to be.
an alternative approach to the problem,
which is usually whatever the status quo is,
you know,
spreadsheet,
manual labor,
whatever,
pen and paper,
or,
and I should say,
anything that lands on a short list against us.
Not anybody who could compete with us in our fantasy world of competition.
It's anyone who actually does compete with us because a customer considers them and puts them on a short list.
So that's the other thing that people get wrong.
And then again,
it affects your positioning because people will have this really mushy positioning and be like,
why can't you just say what you do?
Like,
why isn't this tighter?
And it'll be because they're trying to position against 59 competitors.
And of course it gets all mushy.
So those are the two things I see a lot.
The one that's really bad that I think is the hardest part of positioning to get right is people are not auctioning.
not actually focused on the value they can deliver for customers.
And instead what they're doing is listing a bunch of features with the assumption that the customer can do the translation between feature and value.
Now,
sometimes the customer can like,
and,
but usually it's when it's a feature that everybody has,
it's really well understood.
You know,
it's kind of table stakes.
And a customer will say,
well,
you got to have this feature.
Otherwise I can't buy you.
And you say,
yep,
I got that feature.
Yep.
We integrate with Oracle.
Yep.
We're SOC 2 compliant.
Yep.
We're whatever.
But this isn't generally differentiating.
So the stuff that you have that makes you really special is generally some capabilities that the other folks don't have.
And you can't assume that I can just say,
hey,
you know,
I have a disadvanced AI thing.
And you can't just assume.
that the customer can understand why that's important or why that matters for them.
And so in something that's really new and interesting or something that's really differentiated from your other competitors,
you're going to have to actually talk about why the feature matters because the customer may never have encountered that feature before.
And so this talking about features versus value thing is also a big mistake.
I think a lot of companies make.
With that point in mind,
is there a right way to
position a platform because the common especially in cyber security what i've seen is that they take all these different products they cobble them together and say we're selling a platform and the u.s the buyer has to buy the platform and yeah so i'm curious your point of view on that well
so it's really interesting because there's a lot of different ways to sell a platform so you can you can have a platform and not actually
try to sell the whole thing all at once because you can turn functionality on and off.
And so sometimes what you'll have is what we call a wedge product into the account.
So,
um,
I mean,
Salesforce,
a good example of this,
at least previous Salesforce,
maybe not where they're at right now,
but if you rolled back five years ago,
if sales,
if you didn't have any Salesforce stuff,
they would just try to sell you the CRM and that's it.
They wouldn't even talk about it.
to you about marketing cloud or service cloud or any of that stuff.
They just sell you sales cloud,
which is the CRM.
And then once they got you,
then they'll try to sell you on everything else.
Now they'll tell you all this stuff is a platform,
but you don't have to buy it all at once.
Now there's other situations where we're selling,
we really do,
we have this platform and we want you by all of it.
at once.
And typically what you're competing against is that,
you know,
we can sell you all of this together at once,
or you can buy from the other vendors,
but the other vendors will,
you know,
they'll do piece parts.
So you'll have this piece and that piece and this piece,
and you'll buy them all separately.
So the,
the,
what you're going to have to sell me on,
if I'm a customer is the value of having all these things together.
So what's the value?
So,
so it's all together.
So what?
And often the so what on that is weak,
right?
So you're going to have to think about it.
The so what might be,
well,
you know,
you could just buy one and the things all play nice together.
And if there's a problem,
we won't point fingers at the other vendors.
We'll solve the problem no matter where it is,
because it's all our platform.
That's okay.
That's all right.
And that might be really valuable to customers because they don't want to,
they've already got a problem with piece parts.
Or you might say it's faster to deploy.
It's easier to deploy than 15 piece parts that you're going to have to manually integrate them,
or maybe you have to pay professional services to integrate them and they don't talk to each other and blah,
blah,
blah.
Don't have that problem with us.
We just get it deployed.
It's all nice.
It all works.
It all plays nice together.
You might actually stress the connective tissue between the things.
So for example,
I worked with a company that their main competitor said they had a platform.
but all they were were a bunch of piece parts stuck together in a box,
right?
And which they had bought through acquisitions.
And none of the things,
it was different sign-ins for each of the tools.
There was no actual connective tissue.
There was no nothing.
And so the folks I was working with actually had a platform,
meaning there's a shared metadata layer across the whole thing.
So you say,
now I can't just go to you and say,
hey,
you want to buy us because we have a a shared metadata layer,
you're going to go,
so what?
Why do I care about a shared metadata layer?
Well,
the reason you care about it is if something happens over here,
the people over here know about it.
And then we had specific examples of change happens over here and this department knows instantly and whatever.
Whereas in the other guys,
they call it a platform,
but that shit's not happening.
So,
you know,
so it's not so much that you have a platform.
It's,
it's so,
it's the so what of the platform?
Like,
why does the platform matter?
Like,
how are you making my life better?
And,
you know,
and the solution to make my life better is having a platform.
But we need to lead with the value,
not the feature.
The feature is
I'm going to sell you these five things together in a package.
So what?
And the so what is,
you know,
all the great things that you get when those things are all together.
So we got to stay focused on that.
Value is important.
I'm not sure exactly how I want to phrase this question,
but I'm going to give it a stab.
So.
You've got like,
like kind of what you said,
you want to make it very tight around the positioning,
not talk necessarily about the whole platform.
If you can get away with that.
How do you like?
I mean,
you are,
but you're going to lead with the value of the platform.
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
So
I guess,
how do you,
do you have any suggestions or tips for people to like have those conversations constructively and really?
you know get people thinking that same train of thought as opposed to any number of people being like hey we should we need to lead with this feature we need to talk about this we need to you know use this jargon language that we only use internally um
yeah got any tips or tricks for for people out there who are dealing with that well again like if you if you look at my process for for doing positioning.
You know,
we start.
by saying,
okay,
if we didn't exist,
what would a customer do?
So let's get clear on who the competition is.
So we say,
okay,
the competition is spreadsheets or,
you know,
piece in a piece,
bunch of little piece part systems together.
And the piece parts look like this.
You know,
we have separate solutions for all these things and we can list that out.
And then we can say,
well,
what have we got that the other guys don't have?
And we can list all the things like,
and you got your...
feature with your jargony thing.
Oh,
we got shared metadata.
Okay.
We're going to put that down on the list that,
you know,
Oh,
we got the AI thing.
Okay,
fine.
We'll put that down on the list,
but then we have to go the next step,
which is the value.
And so I find if you've got a group together and you're working through this process,
we're going to write the feature down.
Like,
it's not like we're ignoring it,
but we want to get to the,
so what of the feature.
And the so what of the feature is,
you know,
we're generally getting down to some simpler language there because we're not saying shared metadata,
shared metadata,
you know.
You know,
we're not even going to say the word metadata because no one cares.
All they care about is what is the shared metadata going to get us.
No,
what it's going to do is,
you know,
we're going to have this or that,
or this is what it enables.
And so usually when we're stuck in this thing where we're getting really into the technical jargon,
it's because we're talking about the feature.
We're not talking about the value.
And so in the work I do,
like,
let's write it down.
It's not like we're going to ignore that feature,
buddy.
It's there.
Here it is.
But I'm going to say,
okay,
we have that.
So what?
We got shared metadata.
So what?
Oh,
so all the things talk to each other.
Okay,
so what?
Why do I care,
right?
And I'm going to keep saying,
so what?
Until we get something where a customer would say,
ooh,
I want that.
Now we've got it.
Now,
if we're talking about jargon,
sometimes what we'll get is,
you know,
like people just get really attached to a jargony phrase.
Like,
Actionable insights.
We're going to deliver actionable insights.
You know,
pineapple.
Today.
Like today.
That same phrase.
You just hit home so hard.
Everybody loves that phrase.
I don't know why it became such a thing.
But,
you know,
actionable insights.
And so usually there's a better way to say that.
Like actionable insight is a pretty vague thing.
Like how do you find an insight?
What do you mean by actionable?
Right?
So whenever it comes up in,
you know,
so let's say I'm doing one of these exercises where saying,
Oh,
you know,
you could do this analysis.
You know,
we've got this,
you know,
multimodal analysis or whatever,
and it'll tell you what's going on and deliver the actionable insight.
And I'll say,
what actionable insight?
Like what insight?
Oh,
it will tell you where this is broken or where this goes wrong or when this is happening.
Ah,
actionable out about it oh well once that you could do this other thing oh well why don't we just say that you know respond faster to incidents it's not actionable insight and it's actually not even the insight that's it's the action that happened after this fact sometimes the insight's important and then you're going to talk about the insight but people it's it's it's lazy right it's like i know what i mean but i can't get the words and so i'm going to just say actionable insight
And I'm going to hope everybody knows what I mean.
But usually you can get at some really plain language around that,
that if you just keep saying,
okay,
what action,
what insight?
Because they're placeholder words for other things.
And we just have to try harder.
You know,
I don't know if you guys have seen,
I don't know how you would have missed it because,
man,
what a book launch.
But you guys have had Emma Stratton on here?
Oh,
yeah.
Oh,
shit.
Man,
I loved it.
I love this book.
I honestly,
I'm so happy.
She wrote this book.
She was telling me about thinking about write this book way back when.
And I was like,
you've got to write that book.
Everybody needs that book.
But she does a really good job on this at,
you know,
taking the jargony thing and having the plain language around it.
I would recommend folks that are fighting this fight.
Go have a look at that.
But in the,
you know,
in the exercises I'm doing,
you know,
on the one hand,
We're not trying to copyright.
And that's one of the rules we have when we're doing a positioning exercise is,
look,
if we all get stuck on the words,
then we're going to be here for months.
And so instead,
what we want to do is we want to get clear on the concept.
And then once we're clear on the concept,
we will allow the copywriters to do their magical jobs in making the concept sing for customers.
And that really helps to help detach people from getting really.
you know,
married to a particular phrase or particular words and say,
look,
like,
we're not copywriters.
Can we all agree?
We're not copywriters.
There's a single copywriter in this room.
So we should not pretend we're copywriters and pretend that we know the best way to say this.
Let's let the copywriters do their jobs later.
But can we all agree this is what we mean?
And so if someone comes with a jargony thing like that,
like actionable insights,
I mean,
I don't know what you mean by that.
And so if I'm in there as the facilitator,
I could be the dummy.
I don't know.
what insight what action and let's get down and maybe what we get to is too wordy and everybody will complain it's who are just fine we'll let the copywriter fix it so let's go back to like what you expect like recap this too so when we say a term like actual insight like and you say concept it's like really one like figuring out that the so what behind it and really what the so what sounds like it's like what you said before it's like hey what is the value that our
target buyer is going to get from it right what is the identity of this too like will we be known for what we are known for and is it enough to get people to change what they're doing
today is that is that what we're getting at when you're kind of explaining that concept yeah yeah like the whole thing we're trying to get at in good positioning is we're trying to make it really easy to answer the question why pick us over the other ways you could solve this problem that's
it that's all we're trying to get at like customers coming in and they're looking at three other things plus today they're using a spreadsheet and whatever and they're coming in and that's the answer they want like
Why pick you over everybody else?
And so in order to do a good job of that,
we have to very clearly articulate what's the value you're going to get from us that you can't get anywhere else.
So we really center everything around that.
I like that.
I don't know exactly how I'd run it now,
but I think you just changed my concept of how I just do positioning in general is like,
how can...
you do it every other different way.
And then what's unique about us?
Like that is just so.
Well,
that's what we should be doing.
Like in this,
in the starting point of a positioning exercise,
we'll start with this.
Like if you didn't exist,
what would you do?
Right?
Like if you didn't exist,
what would a customer do?
And they'll say,
well,
they might just do it manually,
pen and paper,
spreadsheet,
whatever.
Or they might use one of these products or one of these products.
And usually you can bucket those products into different approaches,
right?
So one approach would be put all the piece parts together,
you know,
and so I would be using best of breed point solutions or the other approach might be to pick a platform.
And so I'm going to
I'm not actually competing with products.
I'm competing with different approaches to the problem.
And then I should be able to and this is part of the stuff that I get into in the second book.
I should be able to have a conversation with the customer that says,
look,
like there's different approaches.
We know we're not the only thing there.
There's different approaches to this problem and there's pluses and minuses to each approach.
Like if you don't have a big team or a lot of people or a lot of changes,
maybe the spreadsheet's fine,
but then you start scaling and it ain't fine,
right?
Oh,
well now you're scaling and you got a choice.
You could do it this way or that way.
The great thing about doing the piece part thing is no lock-in.
You're not locked into one vendor.
You can swap something out.
You can swap something in.
That's great.
Like if I was selling piece parts,
I'd be leaning into that.
But if I'm selling the platform,
I'm like,
you know,
what's great about the platform?
Everything integrates shared metadata.
Oh,
what do you get with that?
Well,
there's all the things actually talk to each other and play nice with each other.
And here's a bunch of value you get out of that.
And the things are actually truly integrated.
And so you pick it right.
Like if you're more worried about locking,
you can go this way.
But if you're more worried about achieving this value,
we can get over there.
Well,
then we got something for you.
This is circling back to your concept in sales pitch about the perfect world,
right?
Yeah.
We're there for you.
This is our unique inside of the market.
And if you don't agree,
then you might not be a good fit for us.
I love it.
And this is the reality in B2B.
Like we're not the best fit for everybody.
We're like,
we never are.
Like sometimes pen and paper is fine.
And it was fine when the company started doing it with pen and paper,
but then something happened and it wasn't fine.
And that's why they're talking to you now.
Right?
So
I think we...
We do ourselves a disservice by trying to pretend there's nothing else out in the market,
but customer knows that there's other ways to get it done.
And that's their problem.
Like if they didn't need any insight from you,
then there would be no sales team.
They're coming to you trying to figure out why you and not the other people.
Because I can't tell from looking at your website,
you all look the same.
you know and i can't tell because i got a really specific bunch of requirements that none of you talk about and so the customer is coming and like the two things they want to know is you know i want a perspective on the whole market i want to help and i want help with
the trade-offs like
Each choice has its own unique set of trade-offs.
If you can teach me that,
then I can confidently make a good purchase decision.
That's our job in sales.
So it sounds like,
because I'm going to ask this piece or this clarification,
because a lot of times when people hear sales,
like if you're marketing here sales,
it's like,
well,
go convince them.
Like,
go say this.
But what you're saying here is that when you have a solid positioning,
it takes that lens from convincing to educating.
Yeah,
I'm teaching you.
I'm teaching you how to buy.
That's my job.
My job is to teach you how to confidently pick something that's going to be great for you.
Now I'm
I think ours is the right thing.
That's my point of view.
My point of view is if you're a customer that looks like this,
our thing is perfect.
But if you're not a customer that looks like this,
then we're not.
You should just keep doing it on a spreadsheet or by one of our competitors.
And then when you get bigger,
you'll get to us or something.
You said earlier that no one on this call right now is a copywriter.
And I agree.
But
I think sometimes PMM are getting put into that.
copywriting category or that storytelling category yeah and i know that in your career during one interview process you got asked to do a persuasive writing um exercise and then you started doing it when you were hiring people in the market yeah do you think that pmms by default would be more in the category of copywriters or would be more in the category of storytellers oh
well that's a good question i never really thought about the two as being
different,
like wildly different.
Like in the situation I was talking about earlier,
you know,
I'm imagining myself sitting in a room with the CEO,
the head of product,
the head of sales,
I'm the vice president of marketer.
And it'd be like,
can we agree?
We're not copywriters.
Cause you know,
last thing I want is the CEO thinking he's the perfect person to write copy.
Right.
Um,
often like,
like particularly in smaller companies,
um,
You might have the luxury of having a copywriter or being able to hire a copywriter for some things,
right?
Like potentially the homepage or things that you're going to use a lot.
But there's an incredible amount of writing.
In my experience,
we do an incredible amount of writing in marketing.
And so one of the things I used to hire for was that.
I mean,
there's a lot of things that I can teach you as a.
if I'm the vice president and you come to work for me,
there's a lot of things I can teach you,
but I can't teach you how to write.
That's a hard thing.
If,
if a person is really bad at writing,
it's a really hard thing to kind of teach them that from nothing.
You don't have to be a great writer,
but you at least have to understand a little bit of,
you know,
how to be persuasive in writing.
So I'm an engineer.
I think I'm a terrible writer,
but I write good enough to survive.
in a marketing job.
I've had folks on my team that,
man,
they're not writing good enough to survive in a marketing team.
And I can't teach you that,
particularly because I'm an engineer.
I didn't learn it myself.
So I did use to screen for that.
But I do think that if you've ever worked with a really talented copywriter,
you would see the difference that that
deep expertise on copywriting makes.
And so although I think as product marketers,
you're going to write a lot of stuff because there's just a real big volume of stuff going around and you're not going to have the time to have the copywriter tune everything.
But at the same time,
I think it's,
I think it's wise to understand your limitation and it's,
and it's wise to really understand that there are people that are amazing at this.
And if this is really important copy that we think it's,
you know,
it's really,
really important that this copy really sings and really,
and the homepage is maybe one example of that,
then it is not wasted money to bring in somebody who's amazing at this stuff to tune it.
That was always my attitude of it.
Like I write good enough if we're going to,
you know,
like I would write emails and I would write case studies and I would write.
you know,
white papers and all that kind of stuff.
But if we were doing a big forklift on the homepage,
like
I would be lobbying hard to get somebody who's really good with the words because it's going to look way better than if I do it.
Now that's just me.
Maybe you're better copywriters and you've had better training or whatever.
But for me,
like,
and I would always say it,
I was like,
okay,
we can have the engineer write the homepage.
Or we could have somebody that knows what the hell they're doing.
That's what I say about positioning too.
Like I just think like a good copywriter not only has better training in this stuff and a better background on it,
a lot of them are English majors,
a lot of them are very good at this,
a lot of them have taken a lot of training on it,
and then they've got a good one,
has tons and tons and tons of experience.
It's like the difference between working with me on your positioning or trying to do it in-house.
You can absolutely do it in-house.
But if you come with me,
you're likely to get a better result because I've done it 300 times.
Digging deeper on that example you pulled up,
and now as someone who...
Like your career,
your point of view on positioning.
There's another side of reality for some product marketers that there's an expectation that you should write copy and also know how to build the coding of a website.
And you've seen the job market right now.
And for product,
I'm curious,
like for product marketers who are maybe going through the job search that feel this expectation to do everything.
how might we apply the principles of positioning to what you have seen through Todd and you from past experience as a hiring manager to what they could possibly do today in those conversations when they want to this is there's a great question this is a great question because you
know a lot of us especially in the early parts of our careers like we're kind of asked to be generalists to a kind of an extreme right like I want you to code the website and I want you to do this and I want you to,
you're going to.
do the copywriting thing,
be the website coder,
also be the person that does positioning and sales support and blah,
blah,
all this stuff.
The reality is that most marketers are
T-shaped, right?
Like you know a lot about a few things,
but you got a couple of things that you go deep on.
And I think for your career,
it's important.
to pick those couple of things that you're going to go deep on and really cultivate your skill there.
And then,
and then you can position yourself as that and say,
you know,
so I always came in and I knew copywriting was never going to be my thing,
but I'm good at other things.
So if the job,
if I was having the interview and the job sounded like a ton of copywriting,
and not so much this other stuff that I'm good at,
well,
that's not a good fit for me.
But if I go to the job and I'm like,
hey,
I'm really good at these three things.
And if they say,
well,
can you write?
I'm like,
yeah,
I can write.
But
I'm not saying,
you know,
fire your copywriter and hire me.
But if you say,
can I write stuff?
Yeah,
I can do that.
Can I code the website?
Well,
yeah.
How much coding are we talking about?
Like,
are we just monkeying around a little bit with,
yeah,
okay,
I can do that.
And so there's this
basic level that you're going to need across a whole bunch of things.
But then I think you want to pick the thing that you want to go deep on,
right?
Like if you're really good at lead generation,
like I knew people,
like I had folks when I hired people,
typically
I knew the profile of the job and I had an understanding of,
I need them deep on this,
but they need to be passable at this other stuff.
And I'm trying to find a fit for that.
So if you can indicate the thing that you're deep on,
And that's a fit for the thing that I want somebody on.
Then that's great.
So for example,
I had a,
I had,
I'm thinking about the last time I had a really big team.
Um,
I had a gal on my team and she would be described as a product marketer,
but she would just really great writer.
Like,
like,
and again,
I wouldn't call her a copywriter,
but she was really good at what I would call persuasive writing.
Like if you needed to,
to write a crunchy think piece on something,
she was your gal.
So she was really good at blog posts.
She was really good at white papers,
really good at,
we had a buyer's guide and she like crushed that thing,
a whole bunch of stuff.
She wasn't that great at like email campaigns,
but I had another person who was amazing at email campaigns,
but couldn't write to save her life,
really.
I mean,
she was okay,
but couldn't do all the things.
So I'm trying to piece together a team of these people that each one has kind of a deep specialty in something.
and
but could be passable at all the other things they need to do to get their job done.
Like typically that's what I was looking for inside the team.
I wasn't just like,
oh,
I want a generic product marketer.
Like they come in all flavors.
I'd be like,
well,
I need,
I need a product marketer to really crush this leadership stuff that we want to go do.
Or I need a product marketer who's really going to crush this sales enablement problem I've got right now,
where we,
you know,
we really need to work with the sales team and get this stuff going.
Or,
you know,
we're in the middle of this big positioning.
And I need repositioning.
And I need somebody who really understands that and really understands the change management stuff around that.
It can work well with the product team and work well with the sales team.
And who's got that?
So I think,
you know,
for me,
I went deep on the positioning thing very early in my career,
and that served me very well.
And in interviews,
I sounded very smart about the positioning stuff.
And then they'd say,
well,
can you program the website?
And I'm like,
Yeah,
I can program the stupid website if you want me to do that.
I can do that too.
I got an engineering background.
I can write you SQL queries.
Want to talk about SQL queries?
I'm great at that.
But if we got talking about writing,
I would be asking a lot of questions.
If the job was 99%
writing,
they're going to be doing what they get here.
And it's probably not the right fit for me.
I like that.
Here's the other thing.
Here's the other bit of advice I would give to product marketers.
Do not oversell yourself.
in places where you're not that great.
Nothing good comes from that.
Like you want to actually be honest about where you're deep and where you're not.
And you might lose some jobs that you thought looked good,
but I'm telling you,
you won't regret that because the worst thing is you oversell yourself in a certain area and then you come in and then you can't live up to those expectations.
You're going to get canned and that sucks.
I love it.
Such a good tip.
This is something that we spoke about and it's always narrowing down,
right?
Marketing is a very big umbrella.
Product marketing is still very misunderstood,
hence why we have this podcast.
So the more you understand what is your superpower and how can you position yourself,
the better it will be not only for your career,
but for your objectives and making sure that you're putting your best work out there.
April,
before we hop off,
we already spoke about your books already.
What are other ways that people can engage,
follow your work?
and any other spaces that people should know about that they don't know to engage with you.
Yeah,
like I'm not very active on any social media except LinkedIn.
And I'm not even particularly active on LinkedIn,
to be honest.
So,
but you can follow me on LinkedIn and occasionally I drop a pithy note.
I think if you're just getting started,
the books are a good starting point,
particularly,
obviously awesome.
I would read that book first.
I think that's a good starting point.
And then if you want to go...
deep on this,
like you're in the middle of doing positioning work and you want to go deep on it.
Two resources.
One,
I have a podcast.
It's called Positioning with April Dunford.
And I do a bunch of solo episodes there where we're going deep on a particular topic related to positioning.
So that's a good resource.
And then
I also have a newsletter.
Again,
I'm mainly writing something when the urge strikes me or if there's something interesting that's come up with a client.
And then I'm like,
oh,
to teach people this.
But I think that's a good resource too.
The idea there is the same as the podcast.
I'm going to pick a particular aspect of positioning and go really deep on it.
And you can find out all about those on my website,
which is AprilDunford.com.
Love it.
Amazing.
It was awesome having you on the show.
Thank you very much.
Well,
thanks for having me.
This was great.
Thank you,
April.
That's another episode of We're
Not
Marketers. Catch you next time.
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