Welcome! Science-based positioning & what to expect from this newsletter
Welcome! Science-based positioning & what to expect from this newsletter
A new newsletter, a new approach to positioning, new books (out now!), and plenty of fresh insights to share.
Hey there! This is the very first post of a new newsletter about a brand new concept and I would love to have you along for the journey.
I’ve just emerged from the writing dungeon with two books totaling 250k+ words on a new approach to B2B positioning, particularly for B2B SaaS & AI, and I’m going to share it all here.
Positioning in B2B is kind of… everything. Especially in tech. New products are weird and novel; mature products are sprawling and complex. Finding a ‘position’ you can occupy in the buyer’s mind — something to be about — so they both understand what you offer and choose you over the competition is a fundamental part of product/market fit. The more competitive the market, the harder you have to work on your positioning. And B2B tech markets are very competitive indeed.
The good news is my science-based positioning approach, built on the modern neuroscience of attention, makes this much easier. It doesn’t make it easy — it’s still hard! — but it’s a heck of a lot better to have a framework to use than to be groping around in the dark.
Next, I’ll tell you what to expect from this newsletter.
But make sure you subscribe 👇🏻
Thanks you! 🙏🏻
What to expect
My two books — the Positioning Science Blueprint and Playbook, respectively — cover the fundamentals and application of science-based positioning, as their titles suggest, and that’s what I’m going to try and cover here.
While my shtick is almost entirely focused on B2B SaaS, I’m also super interested in AI, so there will be plenty of examples of AI positioning analysis too, I hope.
Despite being locked away in the writing dungeon for the past couple of years (emerging briefly for client projects), news of the generative AI revolution still managed to reach me all the way down in those dark, dank caves, and it’s been fun to probe the latest models for where they do and don’t help. (Writing & idea generation? Horrible. Proof-reading? Pretty great, with several passes. Docs and code snippets for Hugo, the static site generator? Chef’s kiss.)
I know AI has been hyped to death, but that’s part of the fascination for me. It’s not just the tech per se that’s novel, but the narratives and positioning wars going on around it. Hopefully, we get a little more nuanced after the hysteria around AI being god or the devil settle down and we figure out where it’s actually value creating — and not just slop generating — for business. I’m extremely interested to see how positioning plays out in real-time for this new generation of tools, so stay tuned.
But first, fundamentals
Before I get too carried away, I want to ensure we’ve covered the fundamentals of science-based positioning so that we’re all speaking the same language and singing from the same, err, 2x2, which you’ll find in the post below.
That introduction, along with this brief take on the two modes of attention:
…will get you up to speed fast on what we’ll be discussing in the weeks ahead.
In terms of actual outcomes, i.e. what you can do with it, I’ve got a crash course on science-based positioning sales narratives here which is worth your while too:
This is a big part of the positioning & messaging consulting work I do for clients by the way (I’m available for projects — drop me line) and I love it. I’ve missed it. Being locked in the writing dungeon was very productive — landing on a new approach to the >50-year old concept of positioning was a surprise to me, too — but it’s time to return to the surface world, get some sunlight (it burns!), get to work putting the framework into practice, and get the world out there.
If you want to follow my progress and be a part of getting the word out about this crazy new idea of science-based positioning, I’d be absolutely thrilled if you’d subscribe and join me for the journey.
Let’s do this 👊🏻