Differentiate or Die: Positioning: In-house or Outside Agency?

Bob McDonald: Welcome to another session of Differentiate or Die, the keys to creating powerful B2B tech positioning stories. I’m your host, Bob McDonald, and I’m here with Bob Wright, founder of Firebrick Consulting. Today’s topic: why not just do positioning in-house? Bob, I’m just going to lay that right out on the table. I’m sure all your clients have a moment before they engage with you where they’re asking, why aren’t we just doing this in-house?

Bob Wright: I’d ask that same question if I were a CEO running a tech company: I hire these smart people, smart marketing execs — shouldn’t this be their job? Our viewpoint is that positioning is so important that it actually is not a marketing initiative. It should be a CEO initiative, because if you do positioning right, it provides the essential North Star for the CEO to make decisions about product strategy, market strategy, people and all parts of the company. You hire a smart CFO, and they’ll engage tax specialists if they have thorny tax issues. You hire a very smart engineering manager, and they’ll hire a UI specialist. You hire a smart marketing person, and they’ll hire a positioning specialist — if you believe positioning is the secret weapon for separating from the pack, accelerating traction and attaining a leadership position in your category.

Bob McDonald: And bringing in an outside firm to facilitate and collaborate on the process lets all the executives, including the marketing executive, have a strong voice in it, rather than getting lost in the details of facilitating.

Bob Wright: Yes. I asked one of our really top-notch CMOs, “Why did you choose to do this with a specialized expert at Firebrick instead of in-house?” He said, “Because I wanted a seat at the table. If I’m up there facilitating the positioning conversation, I’m already seen as having a particular point of view.”

Four reasons to hire an outside specialist

Bob Wright: I really think there are four reasons companies hire an outside specialist for positioning. Number one, they need fresh thinking. After a while working at a company, you just can’t see it anymore. You’re too close to it, too embedded in the business. You need an outside perspective. Second, if you see a market window of opportunity and you know it’s going to close, you want the absolute best positioning to make sure you nail that window. So why not hire somebody who’s done this 450 times, versus a CMO who’s probably done it 12 or 15 times at most? Third, the CMO job is so big today. A lot of companies hire us because they need it done, and done fast — in six to eight weeks, not three, four, five or six months. We’re the accelerant. And the fourth reason is alignment. It’s a lot easier for me to ask stupid questions, and a lot easier for me to drive alignment across the entire executive team around a positioning strategy, than if you tried to do that internally. So: fresh thinking and outside perspective, getting it done fast, and driving alignment.

How fast the process works

Bob McDonald: A couple of follow-ups. In terms of speed, give listeners an idea of this accelerated process. The way Firebrick orchestrates it, how quickly can a project happen?

Bob Wright: Generally, we can deliver a market-ready, customer-facing, differentiated, impactful positioning story in six to eight weeks. There’s a preparation phase where we inhale all the information about the company and immerse ourselves in it. But the real accelerant is a two-day workshop where we put the executives in what we call our Firebrick — really an alchemical process. In those two days we walk through our entire process: Where’s the revenue coming from? Who are the buyers? What will our next set of buyers look like? What problem can we own? What does the category look like? What are we going to make the fight about and differentiate on? By the second day, we have alignment across the entire executive team on all the positioning elements, and usually a rough first draft of the positioning story. In the following weeks we finalize the story, and in six to eight weeks it’s ready to test and operationalize.

Bob McDonald: Let’s emphasize one other thing: Firebrick isn’t coming in with an outside prescription of what to do. Firebrick comes in to collaborate with the company on developing the positioning story.

Bob Wright: I never come into a workshop with an idea of what the positioning strategy or elements should be. I facilitate all these workshops, and my job is to see the muse. It’s there in the room somewhere, and my job is to pull out the different viewpoints across the company. For example, ask what’s so different about our product, and you’ll get five different answers. Who are our buyers? Let’s get on the same page. What’s the problem we really own? Then I take this idea and that idea — oh, we can combine that with this — and boom, we can up-level it significantly, do the reframe, and deliver a really strong, differentiated positioning conversation and storyline for the company.

Bob McDonald: And the Firebrick team also contributes ideas to that mix, correct?

Bob Wright: We bring a team of five to every engagement. We have multi-time CMOs; we’re all operational execs who’ve had real jobs. So we bring not only the best practices of a very specialized expertise — positioning over 450 times — but also the expertise of some of the most seasoned Silicon Valley veterans. The combination of our expertise, the knowledge in our process and the knowledge in the room is a great combination for delivering a significantly up-leveled, larger story that the company can live into.

Bob McDonald: Bob, thanks for sharing these thoughts on why engaging an outside firm for positioning can be so valuable. Please join us for additional sessions of Differentiate or Die with Bob Wright, founder of Firebrick Consulting.