Three areas of positioning science

Summary: Use attention science to win deals, market science to win segments, & N=1 thinking to win as a company.

We’ve discussed our one big idea — that positioning, first coined 50+ years ago, needs a science-based update, and this science eventually gives us our four basic positioning choices: prove it, find it, own it, and (if it ain’t broke) ride it.

But what is the actual science? In this section, we’re going to look at:

1. Minds (attention & prospects): As we’ve discussed, we want to engage the correct mode of prospect attention so you win more (and better) deals.
2. Markets (diffusion & brand): We want to ‘diffuse’ an innovation into a market so you win in your segment (and build a brand while you’re at it).
3. Go-to-market (N=1 company experiments): We want to run coherent “experiments of one” at the company level so you can place meaningful bets that build towards a winning position.

We’ve also discussed why the first of our three sciences — attention — is particularly relevant for venture-backed B2B startups, and we’ll discuss that further next.

Here, however, I’m going to briefly summarize the three areas of science and you can then either keep reading and explore each area or skip ahead to the four positioning strategies.

First though, let’s acknowledge that the point of all this is to build momentum.

Building momentum

I like talking about momentum because it captures the kind of growth we’re trying to generate in B2B.

In the B2B world growth usually doesn’t come from B2C-style breakout virality. Instead it comes from the grind of starting small and slowly building momentum. Get big enough and/or grow fast enough and that momentum eventually becomes self-perpetuating, at least to a point, which is why B2B companies that reach product/market fit tend to stick around for a long time.

We’re going to think about building momentum at each of these levels.

• Customer attention: You get your sales narrative working so you close more deals and build momentum that way.
• Go to market: You go to market with a niche strategy to build momentum, and then you build a brand to sustain that momentum as you go from niche to reach.
• Company: You design an N=1 positioning experiment to build additional momentum — that’s the nature of the bet, whether you can find that additional momentum.

The point is to get these things compounding. As we look at each of these areas of science, consider what they mean for your momentum and your ARR growth.

Science #1 Minds — attention

In a nutshell:

• The ‘hierarchy of attention’ says we have two distinct modes of attention — a broad, open, ‘radar’ attention, and a narrow, focused, ’laser beam’ attention.
• Two modes of attention = two story types (story 1/story 2) that we can use to find that winning position in the mind of the prospect.
• A winning pitch must therefore be calibrated to cater to the mode of attention the prospect is using (or, if you’re a skilled seller, you might guide them into the mode of attention you want to address).

We’ll dive deeper into how this lets us synthesize two common approaches to positioning next, but here are the high-level outcomes of harnessing attention science in your positioning:

• Close more deals: The point of science-based positioning is compounding momentum, and that happens one successful deal at a time with sellers armed with a narrative that works.
• Go upmarket: Pitching execs and the C-suite can be a mystery for folks used to explaining the nuts and bolts of how their product works, but right-brain story 1 pitches can open doors there.
• Keep you honest: It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of a grand vision, but knowing you’ve got to go down the story 2 axis and ensure the vision actually works keeps you focused on what actually matters: customer outcomes and their real, tangible success.

Science #2 Markets — diffusion & brand

For startups and tech companies, there’s a bigger positioning context than just the cut and thrust of sales and closing the next deal. That bigger context is what’s happening on a market level, and it turns out that’s well-studied! There’s science we can draw from here, too, that gives us vision into the nature of markets themselves, and that’s especially valuable if you’ve got a discontinuous innovation you’re trying to introduce.

Here, we draw on:

• Decades of diffusion research described by Everett M. Rogers (of Diffusion of Innovations fame) on the one hand.
• Mass-market brand research, described by Byron Sharp (of How Brands Grow) and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science on the other.

Here, science-based positioning helps you sequence your GTM efforts by providing a framework for both niche and reach. Typically, B2B startups first go niche, and use the diffusion market strategy to build momentum in that niche. Then it’s time to build reach, using the more mainstream brand approach to target more buyers so you sell more product and grow faster.

Knowing when to go niche (diffusion) and when to go for reach (brand) is fundamental to an efficient go-to-market strategy that closes deals in the short term while building ‘mental availability,’ as the brand folks describe it, in the long term.

(Disturbingly, very few CMOs know how to navigate this journey well, and the entire marketing industry tends to split into one camp or the other. It’s not great!)

Science #3 Go-to-market — N=1 experiments

When we talk about ‘science,’ folks tend to think about appeals to existing research: ‘what the science says,’ and so on.

There’s certainly much to be learned there, and there’s no reason why any startup should learn the hard way — potentially through the failure of their company — what’s been known for decades.

However, science is also, of course, about experiments — experiments that, in this case, let you see what is true in your particular context. Science-based positioning, then, is about running meaningful positioning experiments that are unique to you as much as it is about drawing from the research.

What’s a “meaningful” experiment? It’s one that has the potential to generate significant momentum in your market. This means it considers the whole of what you’re doing, not the superficial parts, and is built on real fundamentals, not myopic, superficial data scrutiny on the one hand or ill-fitting ‘best practices’ on the other.

Startups are nothing if not experiments, and the N=1 approach gives us:

• Holistic positioning: We’re not trying to test a headline on a homepage; we’re trying to test a value proposition in a market, and knowing we can experiment with the “market” in the “product/market fit” equation opens up a lot of momentum-building opportunities.
• Real learning: You don’t learn if you don’t close your loops (thanks, Cedric Chin). Real positioning experiments test your vision — in both senses — so you develop genuine market insight.
• Validated vision: A founder’s vision isn’t immutable. (Again, remember that Slack thought they were building an MMORPG until they discovered their collaborative chat feature was actually pretty interesting.) Framing your vision as an N=1 experiment keeps potentially more lucrative positioning possibilities alive as you learn in your market.

From science to momentum

These three areas of science in science-based positioning let us build momentum in compounding ways as you attend to your prospects, your market, and indeed your company itself.

Next, we’re going to explore each of these areas in more depth, continuing with attention science and how it helps us synthesize common (and seemingly contradictory) approaches to narrative and positioning.

First published: September 2024 · Last updated: October 4, 2024