Winning Sales Pitches: April Dunford Unleashes the Power of Positioning

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Ben Hillman

Picture yourself navigating the depths of the ocean with endless shades of blue surrounding you as you struggle to differentiate one direction from another.

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Ben Hillman

In front of you appears a friendly diver. This diver leads you to discover the vibrant and colorful coral reefs teeming with life, each species unique and thriving in its specialized niche. The diver continues to lead you onward, unearthing the hidden treasures of the underwater world, transforming your journey into a fascinating exploration of marine biodiversity and aquatic wonders. Now, imagine that the market your business operates in is that vast, murky ocean where countless products and services compete for attention, making it difficult for potential customers to understand what makes your offering exceptional.

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Ben Hillman

Positioning is the process that transforms the vastness of the market into a vivid, thriving ecosystem where you discover where your product or service can be found and appreciated by your target audience. April Dunford. That nautical mastermind in our metaphor is that guide who can help you navigate the complex waters of SaaS and help you discover your products unique place in the market.

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Ben Hillman

With her extensive experience and deep understanding of the art and science of positioning. April's insights can be the beacon illuminates the true value of your offering and captures the attention of your customers with a winning sales pitch. In today's episode, we dive deep into the world of positioning with April Dunford, exploring her tried and true strategies that have helped countless businesses uncover their competitive advantage.

00:01:49:10 - 00:02:16:11

Ben Hillman

From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode, April Dunford talks to Patrick Campbell about product positioning. They talk about why positioning isn't about market research, how to actualize positioning the structure of a solid sales pitch, enabling your sales team with a new pitch and a Q&A from SaaS stock 2022.

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Ben Hillman

After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for an in-depth field guide focused on how you can implement a winning sales strategy in your business. Then, while you're leaving your five star review of the podcast, tell us what advice April gave you that resonated most.

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Ben Hillman

First up, April talks about why positioning isn't about market research.

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Patrick Campbell

Hey, everyone. I'm Patrick. Chief Strategy Officer over apparel Founder Profile. Well, I have one of my favorite people. We see each other like every other weekend or now weekend.

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April Dunford

Different parts of different conferences.

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Patrick Campbell

It is my favorite thing to be like, Oh, I'm in Toronto and it's like, Oh, hey, what's your favorite flight? Yeah, that type of thing, because they follow each other. But April, why don't you do it yourself? I'm really excited to talk to you, actually.

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April Dunford

Sure. So I'm able. Dunford. My background is I was a repeat vice president of marketing for 25 years. I did seven venture backed startups. Six of those got acquired and about all.

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Patrick Campbell

Because of.

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April Dunford

April. Clearly. And about six years ago or so, I made the switch to consulting. And now what I do is very neatly like I do, I only do positioning work. I work with B2B tech companies, mainly SaaS, but some not, some hardware or whatever. And we work on positioning and how to translate positioning into a sales narrative or a story.

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Patrick Campbell

No, that's cool. And we were just talking actually, because I think that someone April has the book on positioning. I feel like I'm a broken record because everyone talks about your book. And so April's book just basically gushed a little bit about her. But it's not only a great book because it teaches all about positioning and what you should do and how you should structure it, but it's also in like the most straightforward manner.

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Patrick Campbell

Like instead of having to read between the lines and the tealeaves, it's like, Oh, here's the one book you could use to get this right. But I think what's really interesting is, is maybe just without going into the past two episodes of Protect the Hustle, that you've basically explained positioning like what is positioning? What do people get wrong with it, what they need to get right with it.

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Patrick Campbell

Like, let's give us a good overview.

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April Dunford

When I started as a positioning consult, like the funny thing about being the persistent consultant is the conversation I have is I say, Hey, I'm a positioning consult. And the founders would say, Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's like branding, right? And I'm like, No. They say, Oh, it's like messaging. I'm like, No, actually, all of those things kind of come after positioning.

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April Dunford

So positioning defines how your company is the best in the world at delivering some value that a well-defined segment of customers really cares about. And so in my terminology, positioning is really about defining who exactly do we compete with, and that includes status quo, how are we different? What is the value that we can deliver that no other product can?

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April Dunford

What kind of customers really care about that values or what does the best fit customer look like for us? And then what's the market that we intend to win? So the work that I do is all about helping companies get really, really tight on that, which is the foundation of everything good that we do in marketing and sales.

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Patrick Campbell

And one thing that I found interesting is, and correct me if I'm wrong, you don't hammer the market research element of this as much as, Yeah, I know like structure and like why why has that.

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April Dunford

That's just don't be super controversial. Yes. Why are you terrible. Don't start controversial. It's a bit of a cheat. And so I get away with it for a couple of reasons. So one, I'm only working with B to see if it or sorry B to B if it was consumer, then you absolutely would have to do market research beforehand.

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April Dunford

I'd have to interview customers. I have to do all that, not all of you. I only do B to B, I have a big preference for companies that have a sales person involved somewhere in the purchase process. So if there's a salesperson involved somewhere in the purchase process, then we actually know a lot about how customers buy. We know what the status quo is, the account, we know what other solutions end up on the short list.

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April Dunford

We should know if your salespeople are doing their job, why they picked us, why they didn't pick the other folks. How I got to this once the first bunch of workshops that I did, I structured them as this big three month engaging and I'm going to go interview all the customers, do all this stuff. Then I present the research back to the founding that the team and half the people in the room are like, Wow, it's so interesting.

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April Dunford

The other half of the people in a room are looking at me like an idiot and saying like, Dude, we knew that what I decided was really what the issue is, is if you're B2B and there's a sales motion in there somewhere, if I can get the right people in the room, I can pull it out of you because sales knows something, product knows something, marketing knows some customers.

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April Dunford

It says no, something. The founder knows something you don't know. All the all know the same things. So I can get everybody together in the room, I can pull it out. We can skip that. That's controversial. Like the demo, the customer research people would be like.

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Patrick Campbell

I think the only reason it's controversial is because it's probably stage right like those earlier stage rounds. So I have no idea what's going on.

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April Dunford

Earlier stage folks, I disqualify. Like often folks come to me when it's too early to really do positioning word because they're so early in that you know they're new in the market and what they really have is a positioning thesis. They are like, we think this is the market we play and we think this is who we compete with.

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April Dunford

We think this is why people. But you don't know and you haven't sold enough yet to actually see the pattern's in who loves our stuff and why have you come to me and you're too early, I'll disqualify you because I can't pull it out of you because you don't know it yet.

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Patrick Campbell

That makes sense. Yeah. No, I think that's.

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April Dunford

Like a lot of people doing customer research. What they're actually doing is customer discovery.

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Patrick Campbell

Yep. Well, that's the thing too. Like, I talk about personas or ICP is like quite the thing I typically will tell like a series or beyond company is like, you know something about your customer, just get in one place, right? And then we can validate or invalidate anything else. But there's enough there that you should be able to get moving and not worry about like research being the thing that like, stops you from developing your pricing and your package and stuff.

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April Dunford

Can I tell you what I hear a lot? And company will go in to do this positioning thing. And the first step is I'll say, so if your product didn't exist, what would a company do now? What would one of your companies and that is such a contentious question across the executive team, you would not believe how much disagreement there is on that question.

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April Dunford

Some sales, what sales answers there is whenever you lost your last deal to, oh, it's Oracle, it's Oracle, we're dead, right? Meanwhile, they're losing 40% of their deals and 50% of their deals sometimes to excel or the Internet. But sales doesn't consider that competitive. Then you go to product and product says, Oh my God, we have so many competitors.

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April Dunford

All these shit, here they are. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. 9000 deal is a thousand things, right? That they like Google. And then you look over at sales and you say this one, you ever see one of those and a deal sales is like never heard those were like cross marvelous. The customer doesn't know them.

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April Dunford

You don't actually have to position against them. They never end up on a shortlist. Product thinks the list is this log sales thinks the list is this log and the reality is somewhere in the middle. If I'm in there again, I can pull it out of you. So part of the reason why you can't get clear on your positioning, you can't get clear on what you're trying to position against, We don't think Excel.

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April Dunford

Is it the mates? Well, you're not going to try to position. You can use Excel even then you a it after deal to excel.

00:09:39:02 - 00:09:47:20

Ben Hillman

Next April talks about how to actualize positioning.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah this is where I like we were talking before it's like like you said, you're not doing the positioning for them. You're pulling it out, pulling it out, end up working breath, which is just like the one thing not to go into the books. I feel like we've covered actually some position we're against low or no. You've had two other podcasts on this same podcast where we've recorded all about the but that was me and I wasn't hurt.

00:10:07:13 - 00:10:19:22

Patrick Campbell

So that was me going deep on it because I was like, Let me get through the lines here. Who's doing the thing after the exercise right? So we figured out our positioning. We figure out who are against what we're for, all these other pieces. How do I actually actualize that?

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April Dunford

This is the interesting question, because when I started doing this work, I thought, I can get the team together. We'll work through the component pieces of positioning and then, you know, it's your job to go figure out how to build messaging around that, a go figure or whatever. And so I come back to the company like a few weeks later and say, How's it going?

00:10:37:21 - 00:10:57:13

April Dunford

And usually what I get is the messaging looks good, websites all updated and if you walk over to sales, sales are still using the same sales pitch and it's like, what the hell happened over in sales? And sales was in the meeting when we did the new positioning. So why didn't it translate? And basically sales will come back to me and say, we don't actually get how to tell the story.

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April Dunford

I have to add this bit on the end of my workshops where we do the whole positioning thing and then we take it and we put it in a story. And what that story actually is, is sales pitch. We need that in order to test the positioning is actually the best way to test positioning. When I wrote my book, I thought, we know how to build a sales pitch, right?

00:11:15:16 - 00:11:33:04

April Dunford

Everybody knows how to build a sales pitch. It turns out. No, we don't know how to build a sales pitch. In fact, 90%, probably more than that of the companies that I work with. If you look at what sales is doing in a first call with a qualified prospect, it's a product walk through. They're not doing any positioning.

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April Dunford

They're just like feature feature, feature feature, feature, feature, feature feature where what we should be doing is like, think about it this way, beta. BE How does a beta be purchased? Get me Let's say it's accounting software, kind of accounting wakes up and says we need new accounting software. They don't actually do the search themselves. They designate that to somebody on their team.

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April Dunford

You know, you Janet, go figure out what accounting self that person is like. They've never bought accounting software before. They don't know who the vendors are in accounting software. They don't know what half the features are. They go online, there's a thousand different companies. And then what do we do? We put them in the feature walkthrough. Does that help them figure out why pick you over everyone else?

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April Dunford

No.

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Patrick Campbell

They have to come up with their own framework.

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April Dunford

They have to use over their own framework too. Why wouldn't we just give them a framework? Go. We actually eat, sleep and break this shit. Like why would we not say, Look, here's how the market goes. These guys are for really big companies. These guys are for people that care about this. These guys are for people care about this.

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April Dunford

But companies like you, you're asking, you have to worry about these things. That's what we're for. You know, let me give you the demo. Even if we just did that, like again, we're losing 40 to 60% of our deals to no decision. No decision because that person gets in. Does the feature Walter, with like nine companies signs up for a whole bunch of trial versions.

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April Dunford

They're like, How are we going to make a choice here? I don't want to look like a dummy to my boss. I don't want to get fired if I picked the wrong thing. So what do I do? No decision. This is literally the most fearsome competition we have in B2B is the champion of the deal, doesn't know how to make a choice confidently, and instead they kick the can down the road.

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April Dunford

Let's do it next year. Let's pick it next year. So we as like the vendor, we're in the perfect position to actually come in and say, Look, let me tell you how to think about the accounting market and just split it up for them and tell them and they can disagree with you or whatever. But, you know, most of the time no go how?

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April Dunford

Well, because we literally thought about this 10 million thousand times more than the person sitting across from. And yet somehow we expect them to do all that work. We expect them to understand how our features translate to value. We expect them to understand how the whole market gets segmented. How would they do it?

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Patrick Campbell

Because I'm thinking through the last couple of like vendor searches. I've personally done two very distinct ones where I was like the terrible prospect because eventually I was just like, I don't know, we're just not going to make a decision, right? Both are those products or like spaces. I had to come up with the framework. I had to be like, Well, it seems like these guys are good at this.

00:14:02:21 - 00:14:07:08

Patrick Campbell

These guys are good at that, These guys are good at that. But I don't know, like, do I need this?

00:14:07:08 - 00:14:07:19

April Dunford

We're doing.

00:14:07:20 - 00:14:11:08

Patrick Campbell

That. Like, I'm not really sure and the easiest decision was not to make a decision.

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April Dunford

I'll make a decision.

00:14:12:01 - 00:14:20:02

Patrick Campbell

And kind of move on. And then I was like, almost not up in that report, even though in hindsight the business would have been better off by like making a decision, I guess, like why?

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April Dunford

Why is like, I'll tell you why I did. Yeah. Once I know exactly why I did. Let's get deep tell you why. So we've been taught that it is not cool to talk about our competition, right? We don't want to look like we're trashing the competition. That's bad. We've also been taught that a customer won't understand anything. Sorry.

00:14:38:14 - 00:15:01:23

April Dunford

And they're not that they won't understand that a customer will believe anything we say about the market because we're biased, and it turns out that's actually bull crap. So if you look at the research on this just great study I give you a link to, but it's a great study about B2B purchase behavior. They did this big longitudinal study and they looked at enterprise B2B software buyers and they said, What do you actually want in a first sales call?

00:15:01:23 - 00:15:13:11

April Dunford

And the number one thing was perspectives on the market. And the number two thing was how to make choices. They literally want us to do this and we're like, Oh, we can't do that. Oh, we can do that. We're really in trouble. We're buyers.

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Patrick Campbell

There's like we casually well, yeah, it's like we nibble around the edges, which makes it easy.

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April Dunford

But we're like, we don't want to talk about it. So for me, like when I started building sales pitches, when I was early in my career, like I was saying, we do problem solution. But the problem with that is that all my competitors are doing problem solution. It looks just like mine. My page looks just like everybody else's.

00:15:33:20 - 00:15:48:21

April Dunford

And then I got this job at IBM and so at IBM, there's a lot of things they do on sales pitches that I would not recommend you copy. I'll have you know, people in here. But the best thing I thought they did was they never started with features. They never started with the problem. They didn't start with a market trend.

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April Dunford

They started with here's how we see the market. And they would literally draw a market map. The big guys over here and there's this over here, there's this thing over here and there's this thing over here and we're right here discuss. And sometimes a customer would say, Well, I think that's bullshit, you know? And then we have a little back and forth on it, and we're talking about giant deals here.

00:16:05:12 - 00:16:25:07

April Dunford

It's IBM Range. So our typical deal size like 10 million sometimes the whole first call would be just that because the thinking inside there was if I can't give you a line to my point of view on the market, I got nothing to sell you. That was eye opening for me. So then when I left there and I went to my first startup, me and the VP sale, or that my next startup was like startup number four for me.

00:16:25:13 - 00:16:42:02

April Dunford

But being the VP, sales sat down and I said, We should redo this sales pitch stacks, and why don't we try this? We worked this little thing into the beginning and it was literally if it was an hour long sales call, it was 5 minutes at the beginning and then 5 minutes at the beginning, we'd say, Look, you guys are trying to solve this, right?

00:16:42:02 - 00:17:01:22

April Dunford

We know a lot about this. We're in this market. And here's what we see. We see people solve the problem this way, this way or this way. And here's the pluses and minuses and all look creepy. Yeah, we're we're the people that do that and like, double our sales just that little we conversation at the beginning. We're not going to spend all day or blah blah blah about it, but just a little bit.

00:17:02:00 - 00:17:21:09

April Dunford

And you could see customers like leaning in and going, Oh yeah, And you'd be like, Some people do it like this. You're talking to these guys? Yeah, we're talking to them right now. Well, let me tell you what they're all about. And I could position all my competitors. What's my competitor doing feature walk through too scared to position themselves like a do it for them.

00:17:21:09 - 00:17:30:23

Ben Hillman

And now April tells you about the structure of a solid sales pitch.

00:17:30:23 - 00:17:50:06

Patrick Campbell

Well, ironically, what it does is actually builds trust better, because I think that in those markets where it's a feature feature, everyone's doing problem solution. You end up going, Well, I know I need a solution. Let me just go with the person I trust the most, like which is very hit or miss, right? Because some of your ease like that's just literally they don't align with you as the buyer as much.

00:17:50:06 - 00:18:02:02

Patrick Campbell

But I think that if someone did that, and even if I believe there's a little embellishment, they're not completely wrong. Like this is something. So I feel like I could trust them. I guess my question then is so it's not problem solution. What is that structure? What is that outline?

00:18:02:11 - 00:18:04:06

April Dunford

I did talk on this this morning.

00:18:04:12 - 00:18:06:16

Patrick Campbell

I think I was doing a talk on it's borrow to no.

00:18:06:16 - 00:18:23:16

April Dunford

One I was today it was already like I see the record today. Here's how it works there's in my opinion good sales pitch has two parts. First part is the setup. Second part is the follow through. The setup is where we talk about the market. Second part is where we talk about our stuff. In the setup, there's three pieces.

00:18:23:22 - 00:18:42:23

April Dunford

The first piece is what we call the insight piece. So this is like the problem inside the problem. This is like the thing that I know because I'm in this space. It's why we built the thing the way we built it. The second step on that is here are the alternate solutions we could use and the pluses and minuses of both.

00:18:42:23 - 00:19:03:20

April Dunford

And we can do discovery. This is a conversation with the customer and then the the result of that is step three, which is well, so if we know this about the problem and we know the pluses, what works and what doesn't work in the market today, a perfect solution for you would look like this. And there's this moment in the sales call where they're either right or they're not.

00:19:04:02 - 00:19:19:16

April Dunford

And if they're right, then you go, great, Let me show you how we do that. So I can give you example if you want. You want example is a company internal or called level jump. I love them. They just got acquired by Salesforce. What they do is sales enablement software. So software to train salespeople, they sell to the head of sales enablement of fast growing tech companies.

00:19:19:16 - 00:19:40:00

April Dunford

That's the thing. They only have one big differentiator feature, which is they're built on top of Salesforce, and all their competitors were ten times their size, way more funding and everything else. None of them are. What's the value of being built on top of Salesforce? The value is you can actually measure the results of your sales enablement programs with sales data.

00:19:40:03 - 00:19:56:11

April Dunford

That's the itself. That's it. Right now, these when they do the pitch, their set up goes like this. We start with the insight. So here's their insight sitting across from the head of sales enablement. So instead of just jumping into the feature feature thing, they go, Hey, is that a sales enablement? Disney wants really important, right? You know why it's really important?

00:19:56:18 - 00:20:14:06

April Dunford

Because every day your reps now make a call. It cost you money every day your apps not getting first call cost of money, right? That's the insight. And then I say, okay, look, there's lots of ways to solve this problem. There's all these guys. They're basically a CMS. You could tell who's looking at what, but does that let you measure the result of that?

00:20:14:07 - 00:20:33:16

April Dunford

No, it doesn't. Or you could use these guys and they're basically an elemis Does that lets you measure the results? No. So here's step three. In a perfect world, if you wanted to prove to your boss whether or not your sales enablement stuff is working, you'd want to show the change in sales results. Right? And if you say, Right, I got you, I got you.

00:20:33:16 - 00:20:47:21

April Dunford

Because I'm the only guy that can do like I got you and I haven't even pitch myself yet. So then I go, okay, great. And if you lean over and you go, Yeah, yeah, man, yeah, I want that. Then you go, Great. Let me show you how we do. That is the thing. Here's how you measure it. You say, you know, and that's it.

00:20:47:21 - 00:20:54:00

April Dunford

All I got to do, if you lean over and said, Right, all I got to do is show that my stuff meets that criteria and I'm done.

00:20:54:05 - 00:20:57:10

Patrick Campbell

This is where the positioning is so important to get out of, find that thing.

00:20:57:10 - 00:21:14:02

April Dunford

Well, that the positioning is the input to that. I can't tell that story unless I have that. Until I have that. So what we did with Level Joan, for example, was we went through, okay, we'll go to you compete with how do we categorize that? These guys are a CMS, these guys are an alum asked, Well, what do you have that they don't have?

00:21:14:02 - 00:21:29:23

April Dunford

Well, you've got this built on top of Salesforce. How does that translate to value? Oh, it means I can measure their you know, I can tell whether or not my sales enablement stuff is working. Who cares? A lot about that? Well, my fast growing company, I'm hiring a lot of salespeople. I care a lot about that. So then we say, all right, well, what's the insight there?

00:21:29:23 - 00:21:42:01

April Dunford

The insight is everyday reps are making quota cost you money, man. That's bad. Then, you know, and then I build the rest of the sales pitch from that so that the building blocks are all in your positioning. Then I could just map it to this sales pitch structure.

00:21:42:02 - 00:21:53:04

Patrick Campbell

When they say no, like when they're like, Oh, I don't really find it, is it how much do you try to teach them or is it just kind of like, okay, great, Well, if you don't value this is our thing, right? Like, you should go talk to these folks, right?

00:21:53:14 - 00:22:24:17

April Dunford

It's a good question. If I'm doing that set up heart rate, I am teaching them like that is very much a teaching thing. I'm teaching them how to think about the market. I'm teaching them the pluses and minuses of my competitive things. But like let's use level general as an example. Sometimes they get a head of sales enablement that actually does not want to measure their results because they secretly think they really suck at sales enablement and they don't want their boss to know because maybe they're going to get fired and that this will basically, if I get to that part where I'm like, You want to measure this, right?

00:22:24:20 - 00:22:26:09

April Dunford

And they go, They're disqualified.

00:22:26:11 - 00:22:27:02

Patrick Campbell

So move on to that.

00:22:27:05 - 00:22:31:22

April Dunford

They don't care about my value, so I got nothing to sell you. It's I don't care about that. I got nothing to sell.

00:22:31:22 - 00:22:33:15

Patrick Campbell

It's not worth trying to force now.

00:22:33:16 - 00:22:38:16

April Dunford

No. If you if you didn't understand that there, that it's like there's something about you that's fundamentally disqualifying.

00:22:38:23 - 00:22:58:08

Patrick Campbell

So I guess interesting side question. There was this big wave. I can't remember who wrote the medium article, but it was talking about Zora Sale pens, sales pitch, and maybe you don't want to talk about a specific name, but like it was all about, Oh, is this is a very insight laden pitch. Because what Zora basically did and it's not just them like Drift did it, Salesforce does it, etc. It was very like.

00:22:58:14 - 00:23:00:02

April Dunford

Salesforce does not do that. They don't.

00:23:00:02 - 00:23:01:12

Patrick Campbell

Do it. Okay. You know where I'm going.

00:23:01:13 - 00:23:06:00

April Dunford

So I know exactly like I think that's what Salesforce does is exactly like that.

00:23:06:01 - 00:23:11:07

Patrick Campbell

And like that. They go very market marketing, like the world's going to recurring revenue, blah blah.

00:23:11:13 - 00:23:24:15

April Dunford

They start with the trend. Yeah. So they pick a trend in the market. Yeah. And then they position essentially the whole market as the old saying Got it. And where the new thing got it.

00:23:24:23 - 00:23:25:18

Patrick Campbell

So what's the problem?

00:23:26:02 - 00:23:41:17

April Dunford

Well, there's a lot of problems with that. Like what if there's a lot of new things and mostly like, you know, like if I was level Joan and I tried to position seismic who's just raise 200 billion as the old thing, That's stupid. The customer will look at you and say, That's stupid, buddy. That ain't the whole thing with you guys at the same age.

00:23:42:01 - 00:23:43:05

Patrick Campbell

So is it is it just.

00:23:43:05 - 00:24:02:03

April Dunford

A that's one thing. So I'm not actually giving them a way to think about the market. Like it's too simplistic. So, you know, I can do that in a VC pitch because the time frames are longer. So I can see in a VC pitch, I can say, Look, this trend is coming and it's going to decimate the market and everyone goes away except me.

00:24:02:06 - 00:24:22:09

April Dunford

And I can make a case for that because I'm talking about ten years from now. But if I'm sitting in with a customer and the customer's got seismic at high spot and level, jump on a short list already and none of those companies are legacy. And you're saying their legacy, their world like that does sound stupid. So one, it's too simplistic, like old versus new.

00:24:22:10 - 00:24:42:06

April Dunford

Here's the second thing. Those other companies are bigger than level job. They actually look like a safer bet. And so if I go in there and say the world is changing, everyone goes away except does, you're making new sound kind of risky or like so new in itself does not have value. Do you find some companies will say they think new means risky.

00:24:42:06 - 00:25:01:10

April Dunford

New means, not very mature. New means, not very many features, new mean like it's a new in itself is not inherently valuable. So in that sales pitch, there's actually no concept of value, which is bananas, right? Like, like if like nowhere in that sales pitch do you talk about the value of what you do other than saying we're valuable because we're new?

00:25:01:16 - 00:25:04:06

April Dunford

Guess so. It's kind of a bullshit sales pitch, to be honest.

00:25:04:06 - 00:25:23:13

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, it's kind of interesting though, because I'm curious how you think about this, because the one thing I could say about their sales pitch is I think you're totally right. Do you think your feedback changes with the context? Like if they were to add the value piece and have the insight piece or is it change if we keep in mind like they were trying to go to like Fort.

00:25:23:21 - 00:25:31:01

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. And be like, hey, yeah, yeah. Well you've been doing for 40 years is really cute. Yeah. Yeah. But like, this is the new world.

00:25:31:01 - 00:25:31:12

April Dunford

Yes.

00:25:31:12 - 00:25:32:01

Patrick Campbell

Is that.

00:25:32:04 - 00:25:53:09

April Dunford

Does that. Yes. Okay. So I think there are cases where the inside is the traceroute. It's a trend that you don't see. Right. So the insight pieces, hey, you know, we've been doing this forever and this actually has created a new problem. It's a problem inside the problem. And the customer might go, Whoa, we haven't thought about that.

00:25:53:09 - 00:26:09:20

April Dunford

Yeah, well, let's think about it. If we believe that, then let's look at how you solve the problem. All this versus this difference is that I think you still want to paint a picture of the 100 market up, but you still want to be a figure of the market, but then you want to get to look like. So if you believe all of that, what is a perfect solution for you look like?

00:26:09:20 - 00:26:30:01

April Dunford

Well, it should tick these boxes, right? Yeah, I think that's a really good in saying so. So occasionally that pitch will work because the trend is the insight, but most of the time it's not like most of the time your competitors are also aware of that trend and your competitors are also talking about that trend. And your pitch looks exactly like everybody else's.

00:26:31:16 - 00:26:41:02

Ben Hillman

Next April explains how to enable your sales team with a new pitch.

00:26:41:02 - 00:26:57:16

Patrick Campbell

I think that's a really that's a good insight, mainly because I think you a lot of tech pitches end up being old world New world or New world. They're not wrong. It's just it's incomplete. So like going that next level down I think is super, super crucial. Right? I guess we have the setup and then we have kind of the what did you call.

00:26:57:16 - 00:26:58:04

April Dunford

The volleys.

00:26:58:04 - 00:27:16:05

Patrick Campbell

Or the follow through? We set the sale. Do you think that that sales pitch is almost like centrally controlled, like this version, control on it, etc.? Because how do we stop the problem of every salesperson going, Yeah, I know better. This worked for the last three pitches. I'm not going to use those slides and that's my line. Is it just training the Jesus moments?

00:27:16:05 - 00:27:17:19

Patrick Campbell

Like talk to us through the practical?

00:27:17:19 - 00:27:38:08

April Dunford

It's a lot of those things in the companies that I work with. We will work on the positioning first, and when we work on the positioning, sales is involved in that. So we have sales, product, marketing, customer success, cross-functional team. We work on that together and then together we'll work on that sales pitch. So here's what the sales pitch looks like and then there's a very specific way you want to roll this out.

00:27:38:09 - 00:27:55:00

April Dunford

Trust me, because I've done this so much. First thing is sales has to be involved in building it like sales leadership. If they're not sales will never adopt it. That's rule number one. Second thing is when you go roll it out to the sales team, you cannot just heave it over to sales, say, Hey, try this thing out.

00:27:55:03 - 00:28:09:15

April Dunford

Do what salespeople hate new sales pitches. They hate them even if it's way better. They hate them because they're comfortable with the old sales pitch. They've got all their little cadences and everything. They love the old sales pitch. You come with a new sales pitch, even if it's perfect, they're going to be like, No, we don't like that.

00:28:09:16 - 00:28:27:23

April Dunford

Here's how you do it. This very practical advice Pick your best salesperson. Your best salesperson. You force them. You say, Look, sorry, too bad for you. This week we're teaching near the new sales pitch. You never know what you want to do. And too bad you take the what your best salesperson, you train them on that thing like, and they have to pitch to you until they're feeling comfortable.

00:28:27:23 - 00:28:49:17

April Dunford

And then you let them go pitch qualified prospect with you listening in. So usually we do this with head of marketing, head of sales, this good salesperson. We do a bunch of those pitches and usually what happens is it needs a bit of tuning. But after your best salesperson has done six, seven pitches with that, almost always just what happens is they'll say, You know what?

00:28:49:18 - 00:29:05:21

April Dunford

This is good. This is good. You guys can stop listening in on this. We're done. Like I'm I'm good with this deck. Importantly, I'm not going back to the old deck We call that past. So now the thing has been has been approved. Then I take that rep. I feel now like I record on gun calls or whatever.

00:29:05:21 - 00:29:27:03

April Dunford

Like here's my best salesperson doing it. Then I take that sales person to go back and train everybody else on the sales team because sales only wanted to listen to sales. And if your best salesperson comes in and says, Trust me people, this works better than the old one, You just got to get used to it. The rest of your sales team will listen and then somebody has to kind of crack the whip and say, This is the deck.

00:29:27:03 - 00:29:41:09

April Dunford

We all do it the same. Like I worked at companies where we certified everybody. Like every six months. You had to go in and do pitch certification and you had to come and pitch me. And if I said you had failed, you had to go away and come back and do it again. Did you kind of get a get in there?

00:29:41:09 - 00:29:49:16

April Dunford

Otherwise what? You'll get the message will drift and you'll end up with, you know, every salesperson for themselves. And they're all telling a different story. And that's how the market gets confused.

00:29:49:23 - 00:30:00:05

Patrick Campbell

And then just holding accountability through chorus, gong, etc., Just make sure they're doing it. How much leeway do you have on Oh, they added this in there, they added that, and they're like, What do you what do you think is a good guidance?

00:30:00:07 - 00:30:17:12

April Dunford

So there's a bunch of things that I think you can be really flexible on in a in a sales pitch like this. So the exact words they use don't really matter. Like if they don't like that word, they can use another word. But I think the steps matter more. And then there's some things that you can be infinitely flexible on, right?

00:30:17:12 - 00:30:32:10

April Dunford

Like there's a there's a spot, a good sales pitch for proof, for example. So you say this is a value we could deliver. Here's the features that enable that value. And then there's a spot where you say, Here's the proof. We can do what we say we can do sometimes as a case study or whatever. That could be anything.

00:30:32:14 - 00:30:48:08

April Dunford

If I'm pitching a bank, I want the case study to be a big I'm pitching an insurance company, or what the case study be is that you can let your reps go notes on that and fool around with whatever they want. How your reps handle objections. For example, is wide open and there'll be objections that come up in the call and they can handle that however they want.

00:30:48:12 - 00:31:17:07

April Dunford

You can have a specific spot in the deck where you say there's three objections and you really want to handle this somewhere in this pitch. I don't care where you do it, you can do it here or there or whatever. So they can have a lot of flexibility on that stuff. But that set up thing like you really want to nail that setup because if you don't mail the set up that I haven't accomplished this thing that I want to accomplish, which is I haven't given the buyer a picture of the whole market and I'm likely to lose them the no decision if I don't do that.

00:31:17:09 - 00:31:27:01

April Dunford

So you got to do that. And then I got to say, here's the value, here's how we do it. Here's the value, here's how we do it. Instead of just all bunch of features, I'm barfing them out and I'm not telling you why the features matter.

00:31:27:07 - 00:31:35:16

Patrick Campbell

Who are all the company is that we should go waste their AI's time to see what really good pitch stacks up. Like you mentioned a few, but like who should be sign up for football?

00:31:35:16 - 00:31:58:13

April Dunford

It's a good question. My experience with this is most mature sales organizations, meaning they've got more than 40 or 50 sales reps, have a very structured way of doing a sales pitch and is funny and they'll get that from the VP sales or whatever, and usually is because they've been trained somewhere else where that. So if you go into like really, really big companies, they actually do a really good job of this stuff.

00:31:58:15 - 00:32:12:10

April Dunford

The smaller companies don't. So generally listening in on sales calls and other companies your size is not going to give you, they're just going to be feature walk through all that stuff. But if you listen, I was like Salesforce. I wasn't in Salesforce call in a while. But the last time I listened to a Salesforce call, it was beautiful.

00:32:12:14 - 00:32:13:13

April Dunford

It was exactly that.

00:32:13:13 - 00:32:16:01

Patrick Campbell

Structure math to go sign up for Salesforce again.

00:32:16:05 - 00:32:19:07

April Dunford

No, no, I should do and see if that's true. Yeah.

00:32:19:07 - 00:32:21:10

Patrick Campbell

Where do people go wrong with this elsewhere?

00:32:21:10 - 00:32:38:22

April Dunford

There's a bunch of ways people go wrong, like the way that people most frequently go wrong with this is it turns in this a little marketing project in the marketing department, and that never words marketing builds this thing and they build a sales pitch. Then they give it over to sales, and sales goes, Oh, that's very nice. And they stick it under their chair and they never do it.

00:32:39:00 - 00:32:57:05

April Dunford

Having that discipline to say, We're going to do this, we're going to do it with sales, everybody all together, and then, you know, we're going to pick it and we're going to stick it the other way. It goes wrong is the same way people go wrong. On positioning is they get bored of their story even though they still really like let's not officially, let's change it because we're just bored of it and we think we should.

00:32:57:05 - 00:33:07:14

April Dunford

It's like the new VP marketing shows up, it says, Let's do a rebrand and there's no reason to do a revamp. You just to the colors of the box or something. We will do the same thing with the narrative because they're just bored of it.

00:33:07:15 - 00:33:08:23

Patrick Campbell

I may get mine too.

00:33:09:05 - 00:33:30:01

April Dunford

Yeah. And so and I think, you know, if it's working, if nothing is changing your positioning, nothing should be changing in your sales narrative, you know, and nothing should be changing in your positioning unless there's something change in the market, like different competitors, different differentiated value. Something's happened, Someone's got up to you, you've done something new, maybe you made a new acquisition, maybe released a new feature.

00:33:30:01 - 00:33:38:18

April Dunford

If we change the positioning, then we got to go back and look at the narrative. But if nothing stays on positioning, nothing should change in the narrative. Pick it, stick it, and then have the discipline to just keep running it.

00:33:38:22 - 00:33:42:08

Patrick Campbell

What else should we know about this? I recovered a lot on this thing, and.

00:33:42:22 - 00:33:50:08

April Dunford

I think I may. I'm write a book about this one. Yeah. They follow up. Yeah. The barb. Yeah. So maybe next year at this time, we could talk about that.

00:33:50:08 - 00:33:54:15

Patrick Campbell

I'll have you on again.

00:33:54:15 - 00:34:04:19

Ben Hillman

And now Patrick and April Field Q&A from SaaS start 2022.

00:34:04:19 - 00:34:08:11

Patrick Campbell

How much discovery is happening in the setup part, this part yet.

00:34:08:13 - 00:34:29:21

April Dunford

I think the setup is the perfect place to do discovery. It should be discovery. And so where the discovery happens is in that discussion of alternative ways of solving the problem and the pluses and minuses of that, it's a perfect setup for doing discovery because in that you could say, Look, we're in this market, we work with companies like you, and here's what we see.

00:34:29:21 - 00:34:45:08

April Dunford

We see they start with a share drive and that doesn't work because, you know, eventually you don't know who's using why and what's going on. Do you guys use a share drive? How long you've been using the share drive is a pain in the ass. Yeah. Oh, you don't do that anymore. Well, most people would graduate from that and then they go to a CMS.

00:34:45:12 - 00:35:03:15

April Dunford

You guys ever try that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. How that work was good. Was bad. So it should be a back and forth. And what you're doing is discovery around what have they already tried, what is a real pain and what is it and what resonates with them and what doesn't. While you're also establishing your credibility like we get to, we've seen companies just like you.

00:35:03:15 - 00:35:21:04

April Dunford

We know what this looks like. It's actually a really good way to do discovery as opposed to what most salespeople would do is they just come in cold. We don't even know what that conversation is about yet. And then it's like therapy. Tell me your problems. And you're like, What problems? Right? We didn't even we didn't even put a boundary around the discussion.

00:35:21:12 - 00:35:37:00

April Dunford

And so the problem with that kind of discovery is sometimes we get offended. That has nothing to do with my market, my solution, or why are we wasting time on this and then I'm going to bring them back. Instead. It's like I set them up with the insight. It's like, Hey, today we're here to talk about sales enablement.

00:35:37:00 - 00:35:53:04

April Dunford

This is what I see in sales enablement. Then we do the discovery bit like, Oh, are you using a share drive? How does that work? Oh, are you using this? Or who else do you look at right now? All we would consider these guys like that because they approached the problem this way and so they're good at this about it that do you think that they agree with that have you looked at their stuff already?

00:35:53:09 - 00:36:13:14

April Dunford

Like does that make sense in discovery? Discovery should be about waken the customer to their problem that maybe they were completely conscious that they had right. And good discovery. Does that done well? This discussion of alternatives, solutions and the pluses and minuses, they're a really great place to do discovery.

00:36:13:14 - 00:36:14:03

Patrick Campbell

It's quarter.

00:36:14:07 - 00:36:19:07

April Dunford

And the house of Brits how to organize us is covered all is nicely.

00:36:19:18 - 00:36:21:09

Patrick Campbell

Saying this is interesting Customer.

00:36:21:09 - 00:36:22:07

April Dunford

Well it's pretty close.

00:36:22:12 - 00:36:23:05

Patrick Campbell

But how do you.

00:36:23:05 - 00:36:24:12

April Dunford

Actually initiate the first.

00:36:24:12 - 00:36:25:19

Patrick Campbell

Callback that they're waiting?

00:36:25:20 - 00:36:27:10

April Dunford

How fast kind of not to pop.

00:36:27:14 - 00:36:29:09

Patrick Campbell

So how to actually get the person.

00:36:29:09 - 00:36:35:07

April Dunford

On the phone, how to get them on the phone in the first place. There's a totally different discussion in my mind's eye since actually.

00:36:35:07 - 00:36:37:10

Patrick Campbell

There's a six hour demand gen conversation.

00:36:37:10 - 00:36:56:23

April Dunford

Yeah. So this is this is a totally different thing. So and I have customers talk to me like a lot of my customers talk to me about this, and they'll be like, Well, okay, we have this positioning, so should we be using that in our outbound inside sales rep script to try to hook a customer. And I'm like, not really right?

00:36:57:03 - 00:37:16:18

April Dunford

Like not really because. All we're trying to do is Hochman like, So if I'm doing outbound stuff and are trying to do demand gen, I'm trying to get you to agree to do that first call, I got to think about what can entice you to say yes to that. And my experience with that is every company is very, very, very different.

00:37:17:00 - 00:37:36:09

April Dunford

I had some at one the last company where I was an actual employee, we were selling to the head of omnichannel at large large retailers, and we did stuff on LinkedIn where we reach out to the head of omnichannel and our pitch was, Hey, you know, I and we'd have it too. That looked like the CEO doing the outreach.

00:37:36:14 - 00:37:53:15

April Dunford

So the CEO would reach out and say, Hey, I'm so-and-so. And our CEO used to run a big e-commerce brands. He's a little bit famous, right? He would reach out on LinkedIn and say, Hey, you know, like, I've got this new company, whatever. I see you run omni channel at Macy's or whatever. If you give me 15 minutes, I'd love to show you what we're doing.

00:37:53:15 - 00:38:10:20

April Dunford

And then he'd name one of their existing customers that would usually get us the meeting, and then we'd booked a meeting. But before the meeting we would do a qualifying call with that person. So we'd be looking for do they have the budget? Are they the right person in the organization? Do we need invite somebody else? And then we would get them on that thing.

00:38:11:02 - 00:38:32:19

April Dunford

But every company is totally different. How you get that hook to get them in like level job, you know what they used to do for about a scrape. They had a guy they would look through. They had a target account list of fast growing tech companies they were going after, and then they would look on LinkedIn and they'd look for salespeople that basically got fired, like salespeople that came in, didn't work out and came out.

00:38:32:20 - 00:38:53:02

April Dunford

And then they would take the names of those salespeople and put it in the subject line. And then they would send it to the head of sales enablement and say, Re Joe Blow, John Brown. And so everybody opens that email because they're like, What is going on? And then they this happen, right? And then they'd open the email and then they'd say, Hey, like, you know, I see all this.

00:38:53:02 - 00:39:07:11

April Dunford

The other qualifier was you needed to have X number of open headcount for sales which was a qualifier to say, Hey, we see you got ten open headcount for new sales reps, want to make sure that those sales reps don't fail like Joe Blow and John, whatever. That's what we do. Give us a half hour. We'll teach you that.

00:39:07:23 - 00:39:28:19

Patrick Campbell

We would do very, very similar. We would if they're unprofitable, we would. There is a huge script that would run. They would calculate how much money they were losing to churn and if they were not profitable based on their like SEO data, we could calculate like their size and stuff like that. And we would point you're losing $14.2 thousand a month or whatever it is you're going to open.

00:39:28:19 - 00:39:31:10

Patrick Campbell

That barrel is going to open that, right? We push it.

00:39:31:10 - 00:39:33:06

April Dunford

A little far. And some places were.

00:39:33:06 - 00:39:39:19

Patrick Campbell

Experimenting subject lines, but like that, personalization type data, like the names I would I would all thousand percent open.

00:39:39:19 - 00:39:57:17

April Dunford

That that was what to say about what's going on and it's not going to be good. Absolutely. So I think you have to figure out what's hope. Like, you got to kind of crawl inside the mind of the champion in your account and see what makes them open an email and what makes them say, okay, this is a fair exchange of value.

00:39:57:17 - 00:40:11:18

April Dunford

Like, I'll take this meeting is I'm going to get something out of this even if I don't want to, because I hate sales pitches in our city or stupid sales pitch. But I want to hear where I'm losing that whatever thing I want to hear. Like your I am. I do have an open head count and I am kind of in trouble if they all turn.

00:40:11:18 - 00:40:14:15

April Dunford

L like the last two guys did. Yeah. I'll give you a half an hour for that.

00:40:14:22 - 00:40:16:22

Patrick Campbell

How does this connect with product? Let grow.

00:40:17:01 - 00:40:40:04

April Dunford

A lot of the companies that I work with do have product led growth. Like there's a product only motion at some point in the funnel, but then their sales at some point. If you're a strictly zero touch sales model, generally I don't work with those companies because unless you have very, very good data about how customers make decisions, otherwise, we don't have enough to do the positioning work.

00:40:40:08 - 00:41:10:16

April Dunford

But if you have a salesperson involved somewhere, even if it's later on, those companies tend to know a lot about how customers make decisions and we have enough to work on there. So for example, one of my clients is posting you know, Postman is a API development platform, so they are very proud of like roles, like, you know, they start with individual people inside the organization, but they will watch until there's a certain number of individual people using the stuff and then their sales reps will come in over top and try to sell them an enterprise wide license.

00:41:10:23 - 00:41:27:13

April Dunford

That positioning that happens in that call is super, super important. If there's a sales person somewhere and they're like, What's that salesperson doing and how are they Like product led growth doesn't just mean, Oh, everybody's just going to pick my stuff. Because they did a little trial with mayor, they would use my thing like, doesn't always happen like that.

00:41:27:13 - 00:41:34:19

April Dunford

Like if it was all that easy, like me sitting on a beach drinking out of a coconut instead of doing a podcast number. Well, today.

00:41:34:19 - 00:41:36:19

Patrick Campbell

The beach is overrated. I can't speak for.

00:41:36:19 - 00:41:37:01

April Dunford

That as.

00:41:37:23 - 00:41:39:22

Patrick Campbell

We both are beach bound. It's overrated.

00:41:40:04 - 00:41:43:09

April Dunford

Noosa aren't very decent.

00:41:43:09 - 00:41:51:11

Patrick Campbell

See results for you. Why is there on reposition of you? Yeah. How long does it take to see results from repositioning work?

00:41:51:16 - 00:42:21:22

April Dunford

Oh, so this is like the bane of my existence, right? Because the background was a VP marketing. Most of the companies I worked at were very enterprise software like larger deal sizes. And so our sales cycle would be six months, eight months, sometimes a year. How do I know if this new positioning is working or not? In general, I think that the earliest signal you get is it feels better in a first sales call and you can actually feel it and what your benchmark is doubled pitch.

00:42:22:03 - 00:42:40:23

April Dunford

So all you're going for is a pitch that's better than the old pitch that we know. We've made some progress. I don't know if it's the best pitch. I don't know if it's perfect pitch, but you can generally see it and I guarantee your best rep knows it. So if I'm doing the testing with my best sales rep and we're doing a few calls, if the your best sales rep says no, you know what, though?

00:42:40:23 - 00:42:58:14

April Dunford

The pitch was better. We feel that's a fail. We fail. But if we do a bunch and the rep is comfortable with the thing and they've done it about, usually the rebel come back and say, I got that. That's way more excitement than I typically see in this call. Your best sales rep is actually a really good judge of whether this story is working better.

00:42:58:19 - 00:43:16:18

April Dunford

That's why I like to do it. In a live sales call rather than let's make some messaging and a B tested on a Wednesday, because now I'm testing all kinds of stuff. Now I'm testing wording. And what's that? Traffic and font and all this other crap. Whereas a live sales call, I can tell like is a customer go on weed.

00:43:16:18 - 00:43:29:17

April Dunford

So your word and like, how does that work? Are they getting frustrated because they don't get it, you know, or are they kind of leaning in and going, Well, it's amazing. If you do a dozen sales calls, you a feel whether it's better for sure your best rep will know.

00:43:30:01 - 00:43:31:19

Patrick Campbell

Yes, sir. For a side buyer.

00:43:31:19 - 00:43:36:10

April Dunford

Chow aisle two Palm feeds bird watchers. So it was more and warm.

00:43:36:12 - 00:43:43:20

Patrick Campbell

The fact that if any of you are we are scored we read their cries to itself. Whole story and now there is a lot of reaction.

00:43:43:21 - 00:43:44:09

April Dunford

About to.

00:43:44:09 - 00:43:47:01

Patrick Campbell

The the SaaS way of sale and out.

00:43:47:11 - 00:43:49:00

April Dunford

Of it to all to meet them.

00:43:49:06 - 00:43:49:15

Patrick Campbell

And.

00:43:49:18 - 00:43:50:13

April Dunford

Say awards are.

00:43:50:20 - 00:43:51:17

Patrick Campbell

As I see your.

00:43:51:17 - 00:43:57:08

April Dunford

Question one more time how are you going out there golfing to BAFTAs for sell by channel like a retailer for.

00:43:57:13 - 00:44:01:06

Patrick Campbell

DNA? How do you convince reseller partners to take the pitch?

00:44:01:06 - 00:44:21:21

April Dunford

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I think enabling a reseller partner is a bit like enabling your own sales force so you don't actually serve with all your partners. You start with a partner that's the most committed, and then you go to the part of this, the most committed, and you say, Look, we have this thing and, you know, we think this is going to work, but work with us on this and let's validate it.

00:44:21:21 - 00:44:34:00

April Dunford

So give me your best sales rep. Yeah, let's go in. Let's try it. If you know, if we pitch it a whole bunch of time and your best sales rep says, this is shit, and though all pitches better five, we're going to leave you alone. Do the whole bit. We actually want you to sell more. So let's go ahead.

00:44:34:01 - 00:44:35:18

April Dunford

And then once you got your best partner working.

00:44:35:18 - 00:44:36:10

Patrick Campbell

Hey, that's all.

00:44:36:17 - 00:44:42:01

April Dunford

Doing this right? And you go to the other ones and say, Oh, these guys are doing in their own fire like, we already know this word.

00:44:42:01 - 00:44:42:22

Patrick Campbell

Do you want more money?

00:44:42:23 - 00:44:57:18

April Dunford

Yeah, right. Would do like more money because they're making way more money with this, then it's easier to do the other ones. Especially against the peppers right. And saying, hey, you're off the favorite for support. They're good at here's what they're good at. Or are you sweet? That whole thing about it, how single could you not ever agree that?

00:44:58:14 - 00:44:59:06

April Dunford

That's a good point.

00:44:59:06 - 00:45:07:12

Patrick Campbell

So positioning against or in the context of competitors, are you doing that just in the sales pitch? Is that in other collateral versus pages? What are we.

00:45:07:12 - 00:45:30:19

April Dunford

Doing? Yeah. So if you're doing this well, there's loads of ways you can leverage this in your marketing. So I've seen people basically take that exact same sales pitch structure and do it in an explainer video. Explainer video works really well. I've seen people build a buyer's guide. This in my opinion, this is the thing that is most under use and yet always works.

00:45:30:19 - 00:45:38:15

April Dunford

Piece of marketing collateral for B2B, especially if it's enterprise is a buyer's guide. Or is there why everybody does it? Everyone but a buyer's guide can totally do that.

00:45:38:15 - 00:45:46:02

Patrick Campbell

Maybe it's because most companies, probably most companies of the size here are enterprise companies. Therefore they don't know what those things.

00:45:46:02 - 00:45:48:19

April Dunford

On the buyer's guide you can do in our buyer's guide, I.

00:45:49:02 - 00:45:50:13

Patrick Campbell

Mean, these are contact you have.

00:45:50:13 - 00:45:51:03

April Dunford

It's always.

00:45:51:03 - 00:45:53:13

Patrick Campbell

Going out in terms of maybe not volume, but just.

00:45:53:14 - 00:46:09:19

April Dunford

The words I like that was like my secret weapon. Every time you hire me as the VP marketing, I would show up, okay, I've got this great idea. Let's do a buyer's guide. You know, what's on fire drill or is this over genius? Like, dude, I did it. Every single member of the buyer's guide is one. The other thing is, gosh, was getting late in the day.

00:46:09:20 - 00:46:10:11

Patrick Campbell

That's okay.

00:46:10:16 - 00:46:32:15

April Dunford

Postmen. We did the positioning stuff and then the CEO from Postman wrote a long blog post about here's how we see the market. And they sort of had this galvanizing idea. He called it an API First World and he was like, here for the API First World looks like. And we think this right? So he sort of wrote this big long blog post and then they built a graphic novel.

00:46:32:16 - 00:46:34:21

April Dunford

So look it up. Postman Graphic novel.

00:46:34:21 - 00:46:38:05

Patrick Campbell

Super Mario Brothers is Yeah, as my joke.

00:46:38:05 - 00:47:00:08

April Dunford

It like there's a lot of things you could do. He actually took that positioning and they represented the positioning in this really beautiful product graphic. So they built a picture basically that said, Here's all the things we do inside this box and here's other companies that do all those piece things, and here's all the stuff we don't do outside the box and here's all the vendors there.

00:47:00:09 - 00:47:04:00

April Dunford

So we compete with these people and not with these people is a genius piece of content.

00:47:04:00 - 00:47:08:20

Patrick Campbell

It's also like, if you're going to do this, you're going to have to support all this, which those partners appreciate. That's smart.

00:47:09:03 - 00:47:29:07

April Dunford

Yeah. So just try and Dites I think there's a lot of ways that you can that this story can get represented in your marketing material if you're willing to be really creative about it and you keep an and you're thinking about this idea like, my customers don't understand this market, so what can I do to help them understand the market?

00:47:29:16 - 00:47:36:20

April Dunford

Explainer, video buyer's Guide, whatever graphics you like, I think there's lots of things you could do.

00:47:36:20 - 00:48:05:13

Ben Hillman

It's a massive thank you to April Dunford for doing this podcast. Now you have what it takes to craft a winning sales pitch. Today we talked about why positioning isn't about market research, how to actualize positioning the structure of a solid sales pitch, enabling your sales team with a new pitch and a Q&A from SaaSt Oct 2020 to make sure to give the Hustle a five star review and tell us what lesson April taught you from today's episode.

00:48:05:13 - 00:48:14:20

Ben Hillman

Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Paddle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.