Differentiate or Die: Is your positioning winning or losing?

Bob McDonald: Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Welcome to another session of Differentiate or Die, the keys to creating powerful B2B tech positioning stories, with Bob Wright, founder of Firebrick Consulting. Our topic today, Bob: how should I measure the success of positioning? People invest not only time but money in these efforts, so how should we measure it on the other side?

A rallying cry for the company

Bob Wright: That’s a great question, because positioning requires a tangible investment of time and money, and if it’s done right, it should make a tangible impact on the company. I know positioning is working when, first, everybody is echoing and communicating a single, consistent message. Positioning becomes a rallying cry for the company. The company is excited and enthused, and the salespeople in particular now have confidence: they have a story that’s going to work and engage their target buyers in a new way.

Measuring impact on sales cycles

Bob Wright: Specifically, here’s how I measure positioning at the sales cycle level. Am I collapsing the length of the sales cycle — say, from nine months to six months? Does the positioning improve the win-loss ratio — do I move from five-to-one to two-to-one? Another measure: am I engaging executive-level buyers? Many clients come to us because they’re too low in sales cycles and need positioning that helps them get to the executive level, so I look at how many sales cycles now start at the executive level. Another is CLV or ASP. For example, a CEO client texted me the other day, so enthused: “We just signed two of the three biggest deals in our company’s history, and it’s due to this positioning. We have a much larger story, it commands a much larger value proposition, and we’re able to command a premium price.”

Bob McDonald: It’s interesting you bring that up, because I know this is something you were very passionate about when you created the Firebrick methodology: it all has to be about driving revenue.

Bob Wright: Completely. That’s why we say Firebrick is all about driving revenue for B2B tech companies. If you do positioning right, it makes a significant impact on market traction and sales cycles. But it also helps from a valuation perspective and strategically in the market category. So I know positioning is successful if, number one, it’s making an impact on the company’s quarterly sales goals, and also, over time, on the market category. Am I moving up and to the right in the Magic Quadrant? Am I owning the buying criteria and shifting them in my favor? And am I increasing the valuation of the company? Good positioning has a measurable impact internally, as a rallying cry that gets the company and customers enthused, at the sales cycle level, and finally at the market category level.

Consistency and transformation

Bob McDonald: To come back to your first point, about consistency of the message throughout the organization: there’s an interesting benefit to the Firebrick process. The positioning workshop in particular lays the groundwork for that consistency later, when the positioning is introduced to the company and operationalized. Can you talk about that?

Bob Wright: One of the biggest things that kills positioning is when not everybody is on the same page and you’re echoing inconsistent messages to the marketplace. Nothing will kill a positioning faster. One of the most powerful measurable impacts of our process is getting everybody on the same page. But I actually consider positioning a transformative process. A client of ours used to describe their company as a little network monitoring company, but we created such a powerful, big-picture conversation for them to live into that the CEO turned to me and said, “We will never look at our company the same way again.” That’s when I know positioning is making a big impact on a company.

Bob McDonald: Bob, thanks for giving us some insight into how we should measure the success of positioning. Join us for more sessions of Differentiate or Die.