What is a Positioning Statement?

A well-crafted positioning statement brings together your overall value proposition with your positioning for a product. This is accomplished in a few concise statements. These are high-level statements. As you write them, don’t get down in the weeds about what you are planning.

You can think of it as kind of an elevator pitch you would be able to use to give a clear idea of your goals in just a snapshot. It’s quick, but it’s also comprehensive.

A Good Positioning Statement Framework

We can thank Geoffrey Moore and his book Crossing the Chasm for this useful template:

     Statement                                                              Description

FOR <target market>                      A concise definition of the market segment

WHO HAVE <this problem>     The problem statement indicating the underserved need or market gap

OUR PRODUCT IS <solution category>          A generic name to help categorize the solution to the market

THAT PROVIDES <key benefits>            Key benefit(s) and the value provided

UNLIKE <reference competition>         Defines the primary alternative market solution(s)

OUR SOLUTION <key advantages>       Identifies how this product differentiates from the competition in a way that creates value                                                                             

Four Essentials for a Useful Positioning Statement

You want your positioning statement to be as useful as possible, so make sure it contains these four elements:

• Make sure it identifies the overall purpose of the product. What is the added value to be gained and what market gap does it fill? How is it better than current solutions?

• Be sure it contains enough information that those unfamiliar with the product can “get it” in a brief conversation.

• Use analogies to other existing solutions to further understanding and create an image for your reader.

• Keep your focus on benefits and value. Don’t dwell on features and other specifics.

Other Forms for Your Positioning Statement

Two common forms that can help galvanize understanding are the Simile and the User-Story Format.

The Simile approach is probably the easiest way to telegraph your positioning statement. In essence, you compare your solution to another category of solution. For example, the Amazon Kindle does for reading what our <product> does for <category>.

If your team is comfortable with Agile, it will likely respond well to the User-Story format. Your team members can write up a positioning statement like any user story, only this one will focus on the product level. You state the problem the persona needs to solve and how your solution meets that need.

No matter what format your positioning statement takes, make sure it is appealing to customers and helps focus the product development and marketing approach.

Looking Ahead

In my next post we’ll take a look at the launch strategy document and what it should contain in order to deliver the most benefit to your team.

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• When to share the tactical product roadmap with customers and customer-facing employees
• The reporting structure of the user experience group

Let’s take a look at survey responses.

Question: How far into the future does your tactical product roadmap illustrate future development activities when shared with customers! (Check one.)

Delving Into Product Roadmap Responses

Approaches to sharing product information with customer-facing employees and customers vary. That’s especially true when it comes to how far out they are willing to share. The highest percentage of respondents (24.3%) indicated that their companies were willing to share information six months out. Closely following that are 12 months out with 20.6% of responses and three months out at 20.2%. The answer garnering the lowest response was one month out at 5.2%. Nearly as low (9.9%) was the response indicating that a company shares the product roadmap more than 12 months out. Nearly 20% of respondents indicated that their organizations do not share their product roadmap with customers as all.

Question: User experience is becoming increasingly important to the design and development of successful products. Where does user experience report in your organization?

Drilling Down

Two survey answers received the highest percentage of responses to this question. Almost equal in number, each garnering almost a third of responses, reveal that most user experience teams report to either Product Management (30.8%) or to Engineering, Development, Technology or a similar segment (30.0%). Technology Architecture, Product Architecture, or similar areas and the Chief Product Officer each received just 10.7% of responses. Only 6.7% of respondents named Marketing as the department to which the User Experience team reports.

Coming Up

The Global Study of Product Team Performance provides a treasure trove of insight into how organizations operate and what distinguishes the most productive teams from those that are performing less successfully.

Next week we’ll consider what is the most effective place for the user experience team to report and the most effective size of a core user experience design group.

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Clearly Communicating the Facts

To successfully share facts with your company teams and leaders, you need to develop a Product Scorecard. This Scorecard needs to be a combination of quantifiable facts and qualitative information. As you climb the corporate ladder, you’ll be judged on what you’ve accomplished, and how you reached your objective. It’s a combination of the objective facts and subjective perceptions of others.

Understanding the Metrics of Successful Product Management

When you became a Product Manager in your company, one of the first things you did was review the business plan. Within the plan were financial metrics and assumptions that can morph into your annual performance goals. For example, if your company had a plan to increase revenue by $1 million, this likely became your personal goal as Product Manager.

Common goals you might be expected to meet could be things like:

• Reach your company’s sales and margin targets
• Publish fully resourced product roadmaps
• Achieve 80% of customer-facing roadmap deliverable
• Be in 100% compliance with the product lifecycle management process

Each of these goals will be easy for the Product Manager to track. The findings become the hard data that shows what you have accomplished.

Creating the Product Scorecard

As a Product Manager you’ll needs to work with Finance to develop a Product Scorecard. This will allow you to track monthly progress toward your financial targets.  Developed correctly, the Product Scorecard allows you to step in and adjust course so that you can keep your group on track. It also gives you the information you need to document your year-end results. (For an example see page 214 from Take Charge Product Management)

In my next post I’ll breakdown this chart to reveal the value a Product Scorecard brings to Product Managers.

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Make Use of Existing Training Regimes

You don’t need to create a separate meeting to disperse competitive information.  Depending on teams’ geographic distribution, you can make use of planned on-site meetings, conference calls, or other formats favored by your organization.

Small organizations typically rely on face-to-face meetings to cover the competitive landscapes. Large organizations often must rely on other more removed formats. No matter how the information is initially shared, it should be posted behind a firewall protected marketing intranet site.  Or, use of another secure central repository. This allows the ongoing training of new team members.

Legal Considerations

Before anything is shared with employees, have your legal team review the competitive information to minimize legal risk. The truth is, no matter how you guard the information inevitably it will make its way into the market.

Be sure to reinforce to employees that the information shared is for internal use only. It should not be shared with anyone outside the company.

Presenting the Information

It’s wise to co-present competitive information to teams with a cross-functional team member. This person can enhance understanding by sharing anecdotes that give the information value and context.

A Final Word about the Competitive Information

If you are sharing only a point-in-time competitive analysis, make sure this information in your analysis is updated at least annually.

Capturing Near Real-Time Market Info

It is virtually impossible to capture competitive information in real time. However, it is possible to acquire information in near real-time. To do this, you’ll need to develop a cross-functional market intelligence system.

Contact leaders in all company teams that interact with clients directly. Have these individuals agree to a format for sharing intelligence with product management. The format should be short and easy to use by both the team leader and product management.

As information flows in, product management needs to analyze it and share updates with all parties involved. By sharing the information to the group, you reinforce the value of the system. Ultimately, it helps customer-facing teams gain fresh knowledge that can improve results in the field.

Talk to your senior management about establishing an incentive system that will encourage leaders to share information. Once sharing information becomes expected practice, you will be well on your way to gaining a near real-time view of your market.

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• Market focus
• Size of your market and expected growth rate
• Overview of your company’s current marketing position
• Matrix of your top competitors by market segment
• Detailed breakdown of competitors
• Overview of your current position with a focus on market opportunities
• Buy vs. build opportunities
• Possible acquisition candidates
• Risks and contingencies
• Potential competitive movements
• Deep dive into specific competitors

We’ll begin with bullet four: Matrix of your top competitors by market segment.

Analyzing Top Competitors as Part of Your Market View Analysis

As Product Manager, you’ll need to create an easily understood slide showing your company’s top competitors in each market segment. This slide should also reveal how these companies compete with your firm in multiple areas of business.

Once this slide is complete, you’ll want to single out the top five competitors and write a short description of each. Include each company’s profile, strategic direction, and partnerships. The narrative should indicate how each company differentiates itself from competitors. What gives them a leg up in the market?

Your Opportunities

Next consider areas where there are gaps that your company could fill. Now that you’ve covered competitors you have a good idea of where your company stands in the mix. You can begin considering buy versus build opportunities that will secure your market position. The presentation of findings should outline your reasoning about whether you should buy or build certain aspects of your products’ planned new capabilities.

If you become convinced it is better to acquire a component rather than build it, you must create a list of potential acquisition targets. Include target companies, their revenue, and the market segments they serve. Of course, it is also important to explain any known risks connected with the acquisition. These include things like:

• How should the company be valued?
• Are they amenable to being acquired?
• Next steps in the acquisition process

Eye on the Competition

Take a look at what the competition has been up to on the acquisition front. Has a competitor been binge buying in recent years? Have competitors been raising capital? Are they making moves to control strategic channels important to your business? All this bears consideration along with how competitors will react to your firm acquiring another.

The Final Step

The last part of the market view analysis contains a deep dive into the profiles of your five top competitors. You’ll need a short summary of each competitor’s annual revenue, number of employees, ownership status, products, and any ideas you have about their future direction.

When complete, the market analysis will keep senior leadership aligned with the market you serve and plan to grow. The sensitivity of the information contained in this report makes it unsuitable to share with anyone but senior leadership.

In my next post I’ll talk about the document you should create to share with customer facing employees.

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Thirteen Components of a Robust Market Analysis

Here are the main areas to focus your market research:

• Market focus
• Size of your market and expected growth rate
• Overview of your company’s current marketing position
• Matrix of your top competitors by market segment
• Detailed breakdown of competitors
• Overview of your current position with a focus on market opportunities
• Buy vs. build opportunities
• Possible acquisition candidates
• Risks and contingencies
• Potential competitive movements
• Deep dive into specific competitors

Now, let’s take a closer look at a few of these components. (Components not dealt with here will be discussed in a follow-up post.)

The market focus component identifies the specific market your company is targeting. This lays out the context for other parts of the analysis. Let’s say your company’s market is hospitals and your company wants to sell them software. Your analysis would visually illustrate how the hospital’s operations work, including how patients are processed, diagnosed, and treated. The analysis would then show how your company’s products benefit hospitals.

Market size and potential growth rate is where you consider how the segment you target fits into the overall health care market. If the overall U.S. health care market is $50 billion, show what portion of that figure falls within your potential market. Also indicate the other areas that help make up the $50 billion, but have no value to your company. For instance, these might include pharmaceuticals, physicians, and insurance. Then, list the projected annualized growth rate for each segment.

Where Does Your Company Fit In?

Now that you’ve established the scope of the market and the potential opportunity, it’s time to determine where your company stands among its competitors. Where does your company fit into the mix of companies vying for a piece of the hospital dollar? In the analysis presentation, you’ll need to list each competitor and their market share.

If your product covers multiple markets within the hospital, you will need to break the competitors out individually for all segments.

Market Analysis Continued

Next week we will continue this explanation of an analysis’ components and how best to share your information with company leadership.

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Two Vantage Points of Competitive Analysis

Essentially, a product manager can look at the market in one of two ways:

• Point-in-Time
• Near Real-Time

Point-in-Time presents a consolidated view of competitive information gathered from sources that are mostly available to the public. By its very nature, it is information from the past. Even though this information is dated, it may provide strong indicators of where your known competitors will be headed in the future.

What Differentiates the Near Real-Time Approach

Like Point-in-Time, Near Real-Time is also retrospective. However, unlike Point-in-Time, it is a cross-functional system. It shortens the lag time and gives something closer to a real-time look at the market landscape.

Typically, before you can develop a Near Real-Time analysis, you must first develop a Point-in-Time analysis. You build on what you discovered through Point-in-Time to  develop the Real-Time analysis.  Through it you want to keep a keen eye on your competitors’ movements in the market.

To achieve the Near Real-Time view, you’ll need to work closely with other functional areas in your company. Together, you’ll need to develop a disciplined system for tracking your competitors’ moves. You’ll depend on these people to funnel information about competitors’ actions into your product management group.

Watch Out for the Unknown

No matter which approach you take to competitive analysis, keep your eyes open for new players in your market.  I’m referring to start-up companies, threats from adjoining verticals, and large companies. Large companies regularly buy their way into markets through partnerships and acquisitions. The sudden appearance of an unforeseen threat can significantly damage your business.

In my next post I’ll delve deeper into market view, what to look for, and where to gather information you need for a truly useful market analysis.

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• Launching to an existing market
• Seeking out markets that don’t currently exist
• Creating a re-segmented market by taking a piece of an existing market

It takes collaboration among many internal team members to effectively launch a product. To get everyone on the same page with regard to messaging and execution, you’ll create a product brief.

What is a Product Brief?

The product brief is a one-to-three page document that provides critical information your internal team needs to effectively launch the product. It will be the central information source for your team during the launch preparation and execution.

You’ll develop the brief once and it will be used many times by many different people. Your company’s executive team will review it to understand your thought process and value proposition. Marketing will turn to your key messaging points to develop appropriate sales materials and to fine-tune the message. It will also help your marketing group identify the best channels for reaching your identified market segment. The product brief will help your sales team, channel partners, and customer service when you begin training them for the launch.

The Product Brief’s Eleven Suggested Sections

There’s a lot of critical information included in the one-to-three-page product brief. It should outline the following:

• Product name and release date
• Who the product is targeted to
• Product description
• Summary of the customer needs the product will meet
• Customer value proposition
• The impact the product will have on the customer
• Launch plan description and timetable of key events
• Product benefits and features
• Sales and customer service talking points
• Pricing
• Resources

This concise document will immediately become the rope that ties your launch together and keeps everyone on task and on message. The product brief is not to be circulated outside your company. It is strictly an internal document that will immeasurably smooth out your launch preparation process.

Coming Up

In my next post I’ll discuss the how to create a launch plan framework to coordinate the tasks and timing required for a successful product launch.

The post What is a Product Brief and Why is it Important? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Two Objectives

A successful product launch should accomplish two primary objectives:

• Clearly show what your product stands for
• Reveal why customers should buy the product

If the product launch is mishandled, it is nearly impossible to pull a product back. The consequences of such a move are costly. For this reason, you need to plan every facet of the launch down to the smallest detail. Then make sure each detail is executed perfectly.

Two Types of Market

There are essentially two types of market for any product:

• An existing market that already has a number of competitors in the same space
• A new market – one that didn’t previously exist

Three Approaches to Product Launch

The most common approach to a product launch requires you to release your product into an existing market. To successfully do this, you must have a distinctive value proposition that sets you apart from your competitors. This is how you take as much market share from competitors as possible. Your approach must be single-minded in its dedication to acquiring new customers and developing demand for your product. Your company must take an “all-in” attitude toward the launch to be successful. This approach is typically quite expensive.

The second launch approach is oriented toward seeking out markets that don’t currently exist. Your goal is to ramp up awareness and ultimately compel customers to buy. It is a long-term focus. Your company needs to target early adopters to gain momentum and generate interest among an unengaged mass market. Education features prominently in this approach. It’s wise to take it slowly and not invest the high dollars required for a launch into an existing market.

The Third Approach: Into a Re-segmented Market

You create a re-segmented market by slicing off a piece of an existing market by offering a product priced lower than the competition. Or, you can achieve a re-segmented market by targeting those who will be especially attracted to certain product strengths.

The re-segmented approach requires you to redefine market conditions so you can peel off a winnable segment. You need to both educate your audience and capture customers. Decide if you are targeting people who will be ready to buy. If so, you’ll want to go “all in” as described in the existing market approach. However, if you don’t feel the segment is ready to buy, focus on attracting a few early adopters and work the launch like you would one into a new market.

In my next post I’ll explore the use and development of the launch product brief.

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Advisory Council Charter Defined

The Advisory Council Charter is a concise, one-page document that presents the product manager’s expectations for council members. It’s a way for you to set expectations for members before the council’s work begins. It’s also a way to keep control of internal company expectations. Within your company you should share the Charter with senior management, engineering, sales, and marketing.

The Advisory Council Charter needs to cover these key topics:

• Group objective
• Meeting frequency
• Length of meetings
• Meeting location
• Council participants
• Timeframe
• Planned meeting dates and topics
• Other expectations
• Expenses
• Point person

Everything in the Charter must be spelled out clearly and succinctly. Remember the whole charter is only one page long. Typically advisory councils meet only once or twice a year, but consider your objectives before setting frequency.

It’s also important to allow enough time for each meeting. Many set aside an entire day for the Advisory Council meeting. If you can arrange it, have members come in the night before your meeting. This will allow you to take the team to dinner and begin building camaraderie among the group.

Outlining Roles Included on the Council

The Charter should also clearly outline the role or roles of Customer Advisory Council members. Are you involving end users, economic decision makers, or maybe people who are some of both? Being on an Advisory Council is often considered a prestigious accomplishment. By including those whom participants consider peers, you enhance the attractiveness of joining the Council.

Beware of the Evergreen Assumption

Participants joining the Council need to know up front that there are term limits on participation. It’s not a lifetime or “evergreen” term.  One year is usually too little time for members to form a strong chemistry and begin sharing ideas that have a positive impact. Remember, the Council is probably only going to meet one or two times per year. For many organizations, a two-year Council term works well. This approach allows you to continually bring fresh thinking into the group. It also keeps the council aligned with your company’s evolving focus, leadership, and direction.

Get on the Schedule Early

Those you choose for the Advisory Council are typically busy people. You need to publish the dates of your meetings early and then circulate the meeting topics before members arrive. This will allow them to begin formulating ideas and questions before they get there.

Handling Expenses

How will travel expenses be handled? How will travel arrangements be made? Who within your organization will help the participants and answer their questions? All this needs to be laid out clearly in the Charter. You also need to clearly cover policies concerning travel. Handling these issues up front will avoid misunderstandings later.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how best to support your company’s product launch.

Advancing the Profession of Product Management
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