Pessimism, Positioning, and How to Build a Better Sales Pitch
My conversation with positioning expert and best-selling author April Dunford
You Should Know April Dunford
You can do a lot of stuff right and still not grow.
It’s not enough to dial in your ideal customer profile, be in a hot end-market, or build a great product. Getting that stuff helps, for sure. But if you can’t describe what you do and why your thing is better than what people are using today, you’ll always struggle to land new customers.
Let’s face it. When it comes to growth, clarity matters.
There’s one woman who B2B companies turn to when they need to create the kind of clarity that growth depends on:
, author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch, two of the best books ever written about how to pull the magic out of your product and talk about it so people get it.If you’re going to read one book on product positioning, Obviously Awesome is the book. It walks you through how to place your product within a context that helps buyers understand what you sell - and almost magically causes them to prefer it over the other potentially-superior but far-more-difficult to understand competitors out there. April built a big consulting business off the back of Obviously Awesome. And following the success of the book, she started spending most of her time holding weeklong workshops that helped companies distill the value in what they sold and unjack their messaging. (Note: She’s worked with several of my portfolio companies, and I highly recommend hiring her if you get the chance.)
But a few years after Obviously Awesome, April started noticing a pattern in her client work. Specifically, she started to notice what didn’t happen after her positioning workshops wrapped up. April had assumed that once clients had their positioning mapped out and agreed-to, they’d be comfortable picking it up and running with it. Surely that newfound commercial clarity would find its way into her clients’ marketing and sales pitches, right? They’d be in a serious rush to get that goodness in front of customers, wouldn’t they?
Positioning Is Half The Battle
Well, as it turns out, no. Not exactly. The leap from a well-written positioning document to a story that the whole sales team actually uses in front of customers was bigger than April had anticipated. Just as her positioning framework gave her clients the step-by-step approach they needed to organize where they fit in and how they stood out, they also needed a framework that helped them tell that story - naturally, consistently, and authentically.
That’s what her second book, Sales Pitch, is all about. It shines a light on the problems with most of the “all about me” sales pitches out there and shows you how to translate good positioning into a customer-facing sales narrative that meets buyers where they are. This isn’t just theory. The book is a step-by-step template for what to say and how to say it when you’re talking about what your company sells. And if you follow its advice, good things will start to happen when you and your team are in front of customers.
Sales Pitch also finishes the job that Obviously Awesome started. When combined, the two books will show you how to be dangerous in front of anyone you’re trying to commercially impress - online or in-person. Follow April’s approach, and you’ll be able to isolate what makes you special, articulate it clearly without being self-obsessed, simplify the market for people, and leave them with the feeling that everyone in sales and marketing is going for:
“…I kinda wanna work with those guys.”
A few weeks ago, April joined me for a very special recording of the Private Equity Funcast. You can watch the whole episode here on YouTube or listen to it wherever you audio-only people get your podcasts.
Here are the highlights from our conversation.
What I Learned From April
Product Pessimism Is Poison
Product pessimism is a big problem for lots of companies out there. What is product pessimism, you ask? It’s an unhealthy obsession with all the ways that you fall short of the competition. And it can be absolute poison for a growing company.
You see, too many teams out there focus way too much on the features they lack - instead of zooming in on who loves them and how they can go recreate that love.
The good news is, there’s an antidote for product pessimism. Here’s April’s take on why product pessimism is such a big deal, and how you can engineer a cure when you see it taking hold within your company.
Buyers Want Two Things From Your Sales Pitch
The research is clear: The person who agreed to show up to your sales pitch is looking for two things: (1) Perspective on the market and (2) help navigating their options. So... are you giving the people what they want?
April and I talk about what the research behind what buyers are looking for, why delivering on these two simple asks is so hard for most companies, and how you can start tweaking your pitch to a be a little less clever and a little more clear in the clip below.
What Customers Care About Is (Kind Of) Up To You
Here's a secret. The person thinking about buying your product doesn't actually know what they need. They're still getting a sense of things. And they're open to learning what to look for - if you're willing to teach them.
That willingness to teach is THE missing ingredient in 95% of the sales pitches out there. It's not enough to know your product inside and out. You need to come with a clear point-of-view on what options are out there, how people can decide between them, where your product fits, and who it's best for.
Once you have that, selling gets really simple. Once you have that, all you need to do is (i) get them to agree to your framework, and (ii) prove you can deliver what they need. That's it.
April and I spent a LOT of our time together unpacking the subtle art of influencing purchase criteria. Here’s her crash course on the right way to think about your purchase criteria - and how, with a little bravery, you can start to co-create their shopping list alongside them.
Note: If you like what you see here and you’re just getting to know April, I recommend picking up her books, following her on LinkedIn, checking out her writing here on Substack, and listening to her fantastic podcast. If you want to work with April, you can contact her via her website.