April Dunford is the founder of Ambient Strategy, a consulting firm that helps technology companies grow. She has led marketing, product, and sales teams at companies like IBM, Siebel, and Sybase. April's work is focused on early and growth-stage startups—recognizing that weak positioning can be the difference between success and failure. She also works with large global companies, helping them develop deeper positioning expertise in their product and marketing teams. April's best-selling book, Obviously Awesome, captures her ideas about positioning and provides a methodology that any startup can follow. Today, April is focused on giving back as much as she can. She mentors and advises dozens of startups and is an enthusiastic board member at a handful of startups. April resides in Toronto, Canada, where she enjoys spending time with her kids and small dog in a cabin in the woods.
Today, April joins me to discuss positioning for B2B tech companies. She explains how to position a product to the current market, rather than the company’s vision of the future. She discusses what product managers need to understand about their vision and the current market to craft a successful position. She explains why product positioning is most important in B2B and why positioning is different from messaging. We discuss the importance of positioning to improve marketing and sales performance and why you need to continually refine and evolve positioning over time. April also suggests the best way to develop a positioning thesis and calculate the value it will deliver to the customer.
“The best way to test positioning if you're B2B and you have a sales team is to take that positioning and translate it into a sales pitch, then test it out on qualified prospects in a sales call.” - April Dunford
This week on Innovation Talks:
Connect with April Dunford:
This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | GooglePlay | Stitcher | Spotify | iHeart
Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more listeners, like you.
For additional information around new product development or corporate innovation, sign up for Sopheon’s newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly! The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.