Company/product positioning is critical for a successful company. It is the essence of your brand value and fundamental to how your company & products are perceived by your prospects and customers.

Holding a messaging workshop, whether a start-up or well-established company, can galvanize you positioning and improve you messaging for all customer facing functions.

A messaging workshop can take a couple of hours to a couple of days depending on how many people are involved and how much disagreement there is amongst the team. And from experience, there will be disagreements. Some will be subtle and some may be strategic.

The goal is simple; develop a concise messaging platform for the company, product line or product. 

A successful workshop results in company alignment at the executive level and establishes the messaging framework for all customer-facing communications going forward.

Here is a good article on developing a go-to-market strategy by the team at startup.com. This article describes the steps a start-up should take to develop a defensible strategy.

The challenge is to invest the time to thoroughly think through each area and document your assumptions. Go as deep as you can on your first draft.

Consider your initial work a living document and keep it up-to-date.  Your assumptions will no doubt change as you learn more about the market and your competitiors.

Good luck.

This is the most comprehensive collection of up-to-date marketing resources and templates I have seen. These were curated by usefyi.com and made available through producthunt.com. Very useful with excellent reviews.

Many mid-stage technology companies are started and lead by the chief technologist. Their title is CEO, but their skill set is technical development and vision.

With customer acquisition and references the highest priority, the first non-technical hires focus on business development/sales. 

In the early days, the technical CEO attempts to cover marketing and often delays hiring a marketing professional due to cost and equity considerations. 

In doing so, they often struggle with:

• Identifying the target buyer and articulating their unique value proposition
• Addressing packaging, licensing and pricing strategies
• Selecting product category definitions and articulating competitive differentiation
• Enabling sales personnel with a compelling business proposition
• Determining a proper marketing mix and executing programs to deliver qualified leads

​The longer the company struggles with these core go-to-market issues, the more likely customer acquisition goals won't be met, competitors will gain market share and the risk of company failure increases. 

It is a pretty bold statement to suggest that CEOs and Product Managers have a lot in common. So, let me explain.

A CEO and Product Manager have these characteristics in common:

• Strategic (they want to win the war, not simply the battle)
• Think and see big picture (forest, not just the trees)
• Paranoid about the competition and differentiation
• Focus on profitability and long-term customer value
• Excel at collaboration and communication 

I had the pleasure of listening to a podcast, hosted by Salesforce Cloudcast, by BrightFunnel on attributing and forecasting marketing's contribution to revenue. 

Really liked their Infographic on B2B marketing in 2016, so sharing it. 

Infographic provided by brightfunnel.

​Depending on your role and experience, you will have very specific opinions on how to market your products and services. Unfortunately there are a lot of options to choose from and getting the right balance of programs and level-of-spend can be a challenge.

Most will agree that customer acquisition, retention and revenue is the end goal, but every executive (CEO, CRO, CFO) has a different notion of what marketing should do to support these goals.

Established B2B technology companies invest in sales force automation (SFA) tools that provide insight into the pipeline and associated analytics. With meaningful use by sales and careful analysis, SFA tools tell you why deals are delayed, lost and won. 

These tactical tools provide important insights into operations and, with thoughtful analysis, shed light on gaps that exist in the go-to-market revenue chain. 

A sure sign that go-to-market alignment issues exist is when too many forecasted opportunities don't close and when you hear excuses like: 

• Sales is overselling product capabilities, or worse, products that don't yet exist
• Product Management is too busy to provide competitive positioning/knock-offs
  
• Product positioning is missing the target buyer and influencers
• Marketing isn't providing qualified leads
• Products don't meet customer needs or are not price competitive

These finger-pointing statements are indicators of poor alignment and communication between the product, marketing and sales organizations.