A couple of months ago I was asked to contribute a primer on positioning for Lenny’s List. Below is a version of the article I wrote. If you work in product management and don’t already subscribe to Lenny’s newsletter, I highly recommend it - his content is deep and thoughtful and the community there is active and helpful.
几个月前，我被邀请为 Lenny’s List 撰写一篇关于定位的入门文章。以下是我写的文章版本。如果你从事产品管理工作并且还没有订阅 Lenny 的通讯，我强烈推荐——他的内容深入且富有思想，社区也非常活跃和有帮助。
This article is a very high-level introduction to the ideas in my book, Obviously Awesome. If you’re wondering if the book is for you, this a good place to start. The book gets into additional details about how to execute the methodology, how positioning changes in new versus existing markets and how you can take advantage of trends. That said, this is a pretty good summary of the main concepts.
这篇文章是对我书中 《显然很棒》 的思想的一个非常高层次的介绍。如果你在考虑这本书是否适合你，这是一个很好的起点。书中详细介绍了如何执行该方法论，如何在新市场和现有市场中进行定位变化，以及如何利用趋势。也就是说，这是对主要概念的一个很好的总结。
My first job out of engineering school 20 years ago was as a product marketer at a startup. I was assigned to work on a product that had been conceived as a “Microsoft Access killer” that supported Structured Query Language (SQL). Back then, SQL databases only ran on big servers. But after a significant marketing effort, we had barely sold 200 copies. It was time to wind it down, but first, we decided to check in with buyers to see how upset they would be. Being the new gal, I got the job to make the calls.
20 年前，我从工程学校毕业后的第一份工作是在一家初创公司担任产品营销员。我被分配到一个被设想为 “Microsoft Access 杀手” 的产品上，该产品支持结构化查询语言（SQL）。那时，SQL 数据库只能在大型服务器上运行。但经过大量的营销努力，我们仅仅卖出了 200 份。是时候结束这个产品了，但首先，我们决定与买家联系，看看他们会有多不满。作为新来的女孩，我得到了打电话的任务。
The first 20 conversations I had were exactly the same.
Me: Hi, I’m calling to find out how you’re using our product.
Customer: Sorry, lady, we don’t have that.
Me: Um, well, my records show you paid $100 for it on Jan 22nd?
Customer: Oh, THAT thing - yeah, we tried it, we don’t use it now.
前 20 次对话完全相同。
我：您好，我打电话是想了解您如何使用我们的产品。
客户：抱歉，女士，我们没有那个。
我：嗯，我的记录显示您在 1 月 22 日支付了 100 美元？
客户：哦，那个东西——是的，我们试过，但现在不用了。
Our decision to kill the product was going to be easy. But then I did call 21. “Your product made me the hero of the sales team!” the customer shouted. At his company, sales folks traveled to their customer, took orders on paper, and then returned to the office to enter them in the order system. Orders were often incomplete or full of errors. Our product was installed on laptops with the order system, allowing sales to take orders in the field and then sync with the SQL database back in the office. “We’re doubling sales! That SQL feature was a game-changer for us!” he ranted. I thanked him and carried on with my calls.
我们决定终止这个产品的决定本来会很容易。但接着我打了第 21 个电话。“你的产品让我成为销售团队的英雄！”客户喊道。在他的公司，销售人员会到客户那里，用纸记录订单，然后回到办公室将其输入订单系统。订单经常不完整或充满错误。我们的产品安装在带有订单系统的笔记本电脑上，使销售人员可以在现场接单，然后与办公室的 SQL 数据库同步。“我们的销售额翻了一番！那个 SQL 功能对我们来说是个游戏规则改变者！”他激动地说。我感谢了他，并继续打电话。
I had 20 more conversations with 20 more customers that barely remembered purchasing before I hit another fan. His story was similar - he used our product on mobile devices for field service agents who could update their system in the field, then sync with the database at headquarters. “We’ve increased service capacity by 60%. Your product is a game-changer!” he raved.
我又与 20 位几乎不记得购买过我们产品的客户进行了 20 次对话，然后遇到了另一个粉丝。他的故事类似——他在移动设备上使用我们的产品，让现场服务人员可以在现场更新他们的系统，然后与总部的数据库同步。“我们的服务能力增加了 60%。你的产品是个游戏规则改变者！”他狂热地说。
In the end, I talked to 100 customers. 94 didn’t even know they had it. 6 had transformed their business with it. We didn’t exactly have product-market fit in the Sean Ellis sense.
最后，我与 100 位客户进行了交谈。94 位甚至不知道他们有这个产品。6 位用它改变了他们的业务。我们并没有真正实现 Sean Ellis 意义上的 产品市场契合。
I relayed my findings back to the exec team. Instead of killing the product straight away, they decided to take a shot at repositioning our “Microsoft Access-killer” as an “Embeddable Database for Mobile Devices.” The product took off. A year of massive growth later, we were acquired by a big database company, where the product spawned a product family that generated hundreds of million in revenue. Over 20 years later, this “failed” product still runs on mobile devices all over the world.
我将我的发现反馈给了执行团队。他们没有立即终止这个产品，而是决定尝试将我们的“Microsoft Access 杀手”重新定位为“移动设备的嵌入式数据库”。产品起飞了。一年大幅增长后，我们被一家大型数据库公司收购，该产品在那家公司衍生出一个产品家族，创造了数亿美元的收入。20 多年后，这个“失败”的产品仍然在世界各地的移动设备上运行。
Positioning isn’t new – but it’s deeply misunderstood
定位并不新鲜——但它被深深误解了
This experience sparked my life-long obsession with positioning. How could we have known in advance that our product was simply mispositioned? Was there a way for us to figure out what really set our product apart, what our value for customers really was, and what customers we should be targeting?
这次经历激发了我对定位的终生痴迷。我们怎么能提前知道我们的产品只是定位错误呢？有没有办法让我们弄清楚真正使我们的产品与众不同的是什么，我们对客户的真正价值是什么，以及我们应该瞄准哪些客户？
Positioning is not as well understood as you might think. If I put a dozen senior marketers in a room together and asked them to define positioning, I’d get a dozen different answers. When I talk about positioning at conferences, I sometimes start by defining what positioning is NOT: Positioning is not equivalent to messaging. It isn’t a tagline. It’s not your brand story, nor is it your vision or your “why.” It is not, as one CEO attempted to convince me, “Everything you marketers cook up over there.”
定位并不像你想象的那样被理解。如果我把十几个高级营销人员聚在一个房间里，问他们如何定义定位，我会得到十几个不同的答案。当我在会议上谈论定位时，我有时会先定义什么不是定位：定位不等同于信息传递。它不是一个标语。它不是你的 品牌故事，也不是你的愿景或你的“为什么”。它不是，正如一位 CEO 试图说服我的那样，“你们营销人员在那里捣鼓的一切”。
So what is it, and more importantly, how do we DO it?
那么它是什么，更重要的是，我们如何做？
Defining Positioning(定义定位)
Here’s how I define positioning:
“Positioning defines how your product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.”
Yeah, that sounds a bit complex, but positioning is made up of a distinct set of components. Those components and their relationship to each other is where the magic happens. We will get to that in a minute.
这是我对定位的定义：
“定位定义了你的产品如何在提供某些特定客户非常关心的东西方面处于领先地位。”
是的，这听起来有点复杂，但定位由一组独特的组件组成。这些组件及其相互关系是魔法发生的地方。我们稍后会谈到这一点。
Positioning as Context Setting
定位作为情境设定
Positioning is like context-setting for products. It’s a bit like the opening scene of a movie. The opening scene gets us oriented. It answers the big questions – Where are we? What year is this? What’s happening? How should I feel? Who are these people? Once we have established some context, we can settle in and pay attention to the story’s finer details. Let’s take the opening scene of Apocalypse Now. We see a grove of peaceful palm trees swaying the breeze and maybe you’re thinking “Hey maybe it’s not apocalypse right now, ”but then you notice some smoke and a helicopter quickly flies past. Suddenly the palm trees burst into flames as Jim Morrison screams “This is the end my friend!!” We realize we are in the middle of the Vietnam war and it’s Apocalypse right now alright.
定位就像是产品的 情境设定。这有点像电影的开场场景。开场场景让我们有了方向感。它回答了大问题——我们在哪里？这是哪一年？发生了什么？我应该怎么感觉？这些人是谁？一旦我们建立了一些背景，我们就可以安顿下来，关注故事的细节。让我们来看一下《现代启示录》的开场场景。我们看到一片宁静的棕榈树在微风中摇曳，也许你会想“嘿，也许现在不是世界末日”，但随后你注意到一些烟雾和一架快速飞过的直升机。突然，棕榈树在吉姆·莫里森的尖叫声中燃起了火焰，“这就是终结，我的朋友！！”我们意识到我们正处于越南战争的中间，现在确实是世界末日。
Oh it’s Apocalypse right now alright
哦，现在确实是世界末日
Then slowly the scene shifts and we see Martin Sheen’s face. He’s drinking and smoking, his hotel room is a total mess and he’s clearly in psychological distress. He walks over to the window and we get the first line of dialog of the movie - “Saigon. Shit. I’m still only in Saigon. Everytime I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.” We are exactly 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the movie but we know a lot about what’s happening. We are in the middle of the Vietnam war, and in Saigon specifically. Our lead character has been there before and has some pretty bad PTSD as a result. We also get the tone of the movie and we know it’s going to be an intense couple of hours. The opening scene positions the movie by answering our big questions about who, what, where and why so that we can settle in and focus on the details of the story within that context.
然后场景慢慢转变，我们看到马丁·辛的脸。他在喝酒和抽烟，他的酒店房间一片混乱，他显然处于心理困境中。他走到窗前，我们听到电影的第一句台词——“西贡。该死。我还在西贡。每次我以为我会醒来回到丛林。”我们刚刚进入电影 4 分钟 45 秒，但我们已经知道很多正在发生的事情。我们正处于越南战争的中间，特别是在西贡。我们的主角以前在那里，并因此患上了严重的创伤后应激障碍。我们还了解了电影的基调，知道接下来的几个小时将会非常紧张。开场场景通过回答关于谁、什么、在哪里和为什么的重大问题来定位电影，以便我们可以安顿下来并在该背景下关注故事的细节。
Similarly, positioning your product in a market can orient customers and convey a lot of valuable information. Your positioning context sets off a really powerful set of assumptions about who your product competes with, what features your product should have, who the product is intended for, and even things like what the product should cost.
同样，在市场中定位你的产品可以为客户提供方向并传达大量有价值的信息。你的定位背景会引发一组非常强大的假设，关于你的产品与谁竞争，你的产品应该具有什么功能，产品的目标客户是谁，甚至产品的价格应该是多少。
Suppose I pitch you my product, and all I tell you is that it’s a “CRM” and that’s it. What assumptions would you make about my product before I got to page 2 of my pitch? You would assume my competition is Salesforce - they are the leader in that market. You would assume I sell to the head of sales. You would assume my product has a set of features - tracking deals and accounts, for example. You would even make pricing assumptions. Salesforce is the leader in the market, so you would assume my product costs less than that.
假设我向你推销我的产品，我只告诉你它是一个“CRM”，仅此而已。在我推销的第二页之前，你会对我的产品做出什么假设？你会假设我的竞争对手是 Salesforce——他们是该市场的领导者。你会假设我卖给销售主管。你会假设我的产品有一组功能——例如，跟踪交易和账户。你甚至会做出价格假设。Salesforce 是市场领导者，所以你会假设我的产品价格低于它。
Good positioning sets off a set of assumptions about my product that are true. Bad positioning sets off a set of assumptions about my product that aren’t true - leaving your sales and marketing teams to do the work of undoing the damage your positioning has already done.
良好的定位会引发一组关于我的产品的真实假设。糟糕的定位会引发一组关于我的产品的不真实假设——让你的销售和营销团队去修复你的定位已经造成的损害。
If I were to tell you my product was “email,” you would have a very different set of assumptions than if I positioned it as “chat.” There is a large overlap in features between the two, but as buyers, we expect email to filter spam, allow us to organize and store conversations, and integrate with a calendar. Our expectations for chat are different. We expect instant delivery, a way to see if someone has received or viewed our message, etc. A new product could be positioned in either market, but great chat is lousy email and vice versa. A shift in positioning can completely transform how we perceive a product and can mean the difference between success and failure.
如果我告诉你我的产品是“电子邮件”，你会有一组与我将其定位为“聊天”时完全不同的假设。两者在功能上有很大的重叠，但作为买家，我们期望电子邮件能够过滤垃圾邮件，允许我们组织和存储对话，并与日历集成。我们对聊天的期望是不同的。我们期望即时传递，能够看到某人是否收到了或查看了我们的消息，等等。一个新产品可以在任何一个市场中定位，但优秀的聊天是糟糕的电子邮件，反之亦然。定位的转变可以完全改变我们对产品的看法，并可能意味着成功与失败的区别。
A Positioning Statement Can’t Help You(定位声明帮不了你)
So if positioning is so important, how do we do it. Let’s start with what not to do. For many people, positioning was taught to them in school using “The Positioning Statement.” It’s a sort of “Mad Libs” fill in the blanks exercise. The blanks are things like market category, value, competitors, etc. Typically it looks something like this:
那么，如果定位如此重要，我们该怎么做呢？让我们从不该做的事情开始。对于许多人来说，定位是在学校里通过“定位声明”教给他们的。这是一种“疯狂填词”填空练习。空白处是市场类别、价值、竞争对手等。通常它看起来像这样：
The Traditional Positioning Statement
传统的定位声明
I believe this exercise is not only pointless but potentially dangerous. The exercise assumes that there is only one answer for each of the blanks, and you simply “know” what it is. However, most products could easily be positioned in multiple different market categories, with different competitors, providing different value for different kinds of customers. How would this exercise help me understand that my “Microsoft Access Killer” was really an “Embeddable Database for Mobile Devices?” The answer is that it simply would not.
我认为这个练习不仅毫无意义，而且可能是危险的。这个练习假设每个空白处只有一个答案，而你只是“知道”它是什么。然而，大多数产品可以轻松地在多个不同的市场类别中定位，拥有不同的竞争对手，为不同类型的客户提供不同的价值。这个练习如何帮助我理解我的“Microsoft Access 杀手”实际上是一个“移动设备的嵌入式数据库”？答案是它根本不会。
The 5 Components of Positioning
定位的五个组成部分
So how do we find the best positioning for our offerings? This question vexed me as a marketing executive across seven successful startups (and the six big companies that acquired them). I read books! I took courses! Everyone agreed that positioning was the marketing bedrock we built our entire go-to-market strategy around, and yet, there didn’t seem to be a methodology for actually getting it done. I decided to figure it out.
那么我们如何为我们的产品找到最佳定位呢？作为七家成功初创公司（以及收购它们的六家大公司）的营销高管，这个问题困扰了我。我读书！我上课！每个人都同意定位是我们构建整个市场策略的营销基石，然而，似乎没有一种实际完成它的方法论。我决定弄清楚。
I started with an engineering mindset. I decided we could break positioning up into its component pieces, find the best answer for each piece, bring the pieces back together, and voila - great positioning.
我从工程思维开始。我决定我们可以将定位分解成其组成部分，为每个部分找到最佳答案，然后将这些部分重新组合起来，瞧——伟大的定位。
Breaking positioning up isn’t hard because we generally agree on the components. These are, in essence, the blanks in the positioning statement. The components are:
-
Competitive Alternatives
-
Differentiated “Features” or “Capabilities”
-
Value for customers
-
Target Customer Segmentation
-
Market Category
Easy. Now, all we have to do is figure out how to get the best answer for each component. Now here’s where things get a little tricky.
分解定位并不难，因为我们通常对组成部分达成一致。这些本质上是定位声明中的空白。组成部分是：
-
竞争替代品
-
差异化的“功能”或“能力”
-
对客户的价值
-
目标客户细分
-
市场类别
简单。现在，我们所要做的就是弄清楚如何为每个组成部分找到最佳答案。现在这里有点棘手。
Each Component Depends on the Others
每个组成部分都依赖于其他部分
If you look at the pieces, you quickly understand that each component has a relationship with the others. For example, the unique value that you can provide to customers is completely dependent on your differentiated features. Your differentiated features are only “differentiated” when you compare them to competitive alternatives. Your best-fit target customers are customers that really care a lot about your unique value. And lastly, your best market category is the context you position your product in such that your unique value is obvious to your target customers. So, if every piece has a relationship with every other piece, where do we start?
如果你看这些部分，你会很快理解每个组成部分都与其他部分有关系。例如，你可以为客户提供的独特价值完全依赖于你的差异化功能。你的差异化功能只有在与竞争替代品比较时才是“差异化的”。你的最佳目标客户是那些非常关心你的独特价值的客户。最后，你的最佳市场类别是你将产品定位在其中的背景，使你的独特价值对目标客户显而易见。因此，如果每个部分都与其他部分有关系，我们从哪里开始？
For two years, I didn’t think there was a starting point. I attempted to find the best positioning for my products by picking an arbitrary starting point (for example, features) and then working my way through the others to get a “candidate positioning.” I would then test it on prospects, and if it worked, we ran with it. If it didn’t, I tossed it out and repeated the process to get another candidate to test.
两年来，我认为没有起点。我试图通过选择一个任意的起点（例如功能），然后通过其他部分来找到我的产品的最佳定位，得到一个“候选定位”。然后我会在潜在客户上测试它，如果有效，我们就继续。如果无效，我就把它扔掉，重复这个过程以获得另一个候选者进行测试。
The drawbacks to this method are obvious to anyone who’s worked in a startup. It just took too long!! While I was out testing candidate after candidate, the sales, marketing, and product teams were stuck in a holding pattern waiting.
这种方法的缺点对任何在初创公司工作过的人来说都是显而易见的。它花费的时间太长了！！当我在一个又一个候选者上测试时，销售、营销和产品团队都被困在等待的状态中。
A Customer-Centric Methodology
以客户为中心的方法论
Eventually, Clayton Christensen solved this problem for me. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about Jobs To Be Done theory, and I had the realization that the starting point had to be competitive alternatives. If it wasn’t, what we ended up with was positioning that sounded good in the office, but it didn’t work with customers because it wasn’t differentiated. The flow has to look like this:
最终，克莱顿·克里斯滕森为我解决了这个问题。我阅读了所有能找到的关于“待完成的工作”理论的资料，我意识到起点必须是竞争替代品。如果不是这样，我们最终得到的定位在办公室听起来不错，但在客户那里不起作用，因为它没有差异化。流程必须是这样的：
Obviously Awesome - Positioning Workflow
显然很棒——定位工作流程
We start with competitive alternatives, or what would customers do if our solution didn’t exist. Once we have that, we can ask ourselves, “What do we have that the alternatives do not?” That gives us a list of differentiated features or key unique attributes. We can then go down that list and ask ourselves, “So what for customers?” Put another way, what is the value those capabilities enable for our buyers? Once we understand what our differentiated value is, then we can move to customer segmentation, or who are the customers that care a lot about our value. There is likely a wide range of buyers that care about that value, but certain customers care a lot more than others. What are the characteristics of a customer that makes them care a lot about your differentiated value? That gives us an idea of who our best-fit customers are. Lastly, we move to market category. Our best market category is the context we position our product in such that our value is obvious to our target customers. Put another way, it is the definition of the market we intend to win.
我们从 竞争替代品 开始，或者说如果我们的解决方案不存在，客户会做什么。一旦我们有了这个，我们可以问自己，“我们有什么是替代品没有的？”这给了我们一份差异化功能或 关键独特属性 的清单。然后我们可以沿着这份清单问自己，“这对客户来说意味着什么？”换句话说，这些能力为我们的买家带来了什么 价值？一旦我们了解了我们的差异化价值，我们就可以转向客户细分，或者说谁是非常关心我们价值的 客户。可能有广泛的买家关心这个价值，但某些客户关心的更多。是什么特征使客户非常关心你的差异化价值？这给了我们一个关于谁是我们最佳客户的想法。最后，我们转向市场类别。我们最好的市场类别是我们将产品定位在其中的背景，使我们的价值对目标客户显而易见。换句话说，它是我们打算赢得的 市场的定义。
An Example - Janna Systems
一个例子——Janna Systems
Let’s walk through an example of how this works. Early in my career I ran marketing for a company that positioned its product as an Enterprise CRM. This was ages ago when Salesforce was still focused on SMBs and the gorilla in the enterprise CRM market at the time was Siebel Systems. Unsurprisingly everytime we got a meeting with a customer we got the question “So how are you better than Siebel?” That was a bad question for us because by almost every measure, they were better than we were. They had 8000 employees and we had a couple dozen. They had 2M. They had 400 customers and we had 6. We did however have 2 differentiators. The first was a feature that they couldn’t match - we could model relationships in a different way. The problem was that for the most part, we didn’t do a good job of articulating the value of that. We showed the feature in every demo and when customers asked us what they would do what that feature, our reply was “Anything you want!”
让我们通过一个例子来看看这是如何工作的。在我职业生涯的早期，我为一家将其产品定位为企业 CRM 的公司负责营销。这是很久以前的事了，当时 Salesforce 仍然专注于中小企业，而当时企业 CRM 市场的巨头是 Siebel Systems。不出所料，每次我们与客户会面时，都会被问到“那么你们比 Siebel 好在哪里？”这对我们来说是个糟糕的问题，因为几乎在每个方面，他们都比我们好。他们有 8000 名员工，而我们只有几十名。他们有 20 亿美元的收入，而我们不到 200 万美元。他们有 400 名客户，而我们只有 6 名。然而，我们确实有两个差异化点。第一个是他们无法匹配的功能——我们可以以不同的方式建模关系。问题是，大多数情况下，我们没有很好地阐明这一点的价值。我们在每次演示中都展示了这个功能，当客户问我们他们可以用这个功能做什么时，我们的回答是“随你所愿！”
Coming back to the process I laid out in the previous section - our competitor was obvious, it was Siebel. Our differentiator was the ability to model relationships in a different way. What we hadn’t figured out was what the value of that feature was and what types of customers cared a lot about it.
回到我在上一节中描述的过程——我们的竞争对手很明显，是 Siebel。我们的差异化点是能够以不同的方式建模关系。我们没有弄清楚的是这个功能的价值是什么，以及哪些类型的客户非常关心它。
Eventually we landed a deal with an investment bank. Working with that customer helped us understand that the value of our feature was that companies could get insight into interpersonal relationships that sales teams could use to start new sales conversations and understand who might have influence over a deal in process. For companies that relied heavily on personal relationships, (investment banking, private client services) our product was a game-changer.
最终，我们与一家投资银行达成了一笔交易。与那个客户的合作帮助我们理解了我们的功能的价值在于，公司可以获得销售团队可以用来开始新的销售对话并了解谁可能对正在进行的交易有影响的洞察。对于那些高度依赖人际关系的公司（投资银行、私人客户服务），我们的产品是一个游戏规则改变者。
Going back to the positioning process, we could now fill in Value and Customers that Care. This was super-important for our go to market strategy. We shifted our sales and marketing efforts on selling to investment banks, where we had a distinct advantage over Siebel.
回到定位过程，我们现在可以填写价值和关心的客户。这对我们的市场策略非常重要。我们将销售和营销工作转向投资银行，在那里我们对 Siebel 有明显的优势。
Lastly we decided to make a change to the market category. Clearly we couldn’t win “Enterprise CRM” but we could win CRM for Investment Banks. Positioning ourselves that way helped banks find us and helped us clearly differentiate from Siebel. This shift in positioning allowed us to grow very quickly over the next 18 months from under 80M. Our plan was to shift the positioning to CRM for Financial Services as we expanded to retail banks and insurance companies. We didn’t get the chance to test that positioning evolution however - Siebel acquired us for $1.3B revenue.
最后，我们决定改变市场类别。显然，我们无法赢得“企业 CRM”，但我们可以赢得投资银行的 CRM。这样定位自己帮助银行找到我们，并帮助我们与 Siebel 明确区分开来。这一定位转变使我们在接下来的 18 个月内从不到 200 万美元迅速增长到接近 8000 万美元。我们的计划是在扩展到零售银行和保险公司时，将定位转变为金融服务的 CRM。然而，我们没有机会测试这一定位演变——Siebel 以 13 亿美元的收入收购了我们。
Common Mistakes(常见错误)
Once you understand the flow, conceptually, it’s pretty easy. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of ways you can mess this process up. Here are the two most common traps:
一旦你理解了这个流程，从概念上讲，它相当简单。但这并不意味着你不会有很多方法搞砸这个过程。以下是两种最常见的陷阱：
Trap 1: Defining competitive alternatives as any possible “competitor”
将竞争替代品定义为任何可能的“竞争对手”
The most common mistake I see startups make is in how they define the competitive alternatives in the first step. A better way to think about competitive alternatives is to ask yourself, “What would a customer do if your offering didn’t exist?” Sometimes the answer to that question is “Do nothing.” What that really means is the customer would stick with their current way of solving the problem. That could mean using a spreadsheet, using a manual process, or hiring an intern to do it. In enterprise software, we typically lose 25% of deals to “no decision.” Your positioning needs to position you against the status quo if you want to convince customers to act.
我看到初创公司犯的最常见错误是他们在第一步中如何定义竞争替代品。更好的思考竞争替代品的方法是问自己，“如果你的产品不存在，客户会做什么？”有时这个问题的答案是“什么都不做”。这实际上意味着客户会坚持他们当前解决问题的方式。这可能意味着使用电子表格、使用手动流程或雇用实习生来做。在企业软件中，我们通常会失去 25% 的交易，因为“没有决定”。如果你想说服客户采取行动，你的定位需要针对现状进行定位。
Next, I see companies listing what I would call “phantom competitors” in step 1. Phantom competitors are companies that theoretically could compete with you; you just never actually see them or lose to them in deals. Until you do, you are watering down your positioning by trying to position against them. Step 1 in the positioning process is to identify what your customers see as alternatives. This isn’t a test of your internet research skills, and just because a company could compete with you doesn’t mean they ever will. The product team might want to keep an eye on them as a future competitive threat, and if you do start to see them in deals, you can adjust your positioning at that time. Until then, you will weaken your positioning by trying to position against competitors your customers never even consider.
接下来，我看到公司在第一步中列出了我称之为“幽灵竞争对手”的东西。幽灵竞争对手 是那些理论上可以与你竞争的公司；你只是从未真正见过他们或在交易中输给他们。除非你真的遇到，否则你试图与他们竞争的定位只会削弱你的定位。定位过程的第一步是识别客户认为的替代品。这不是对你互联网研究技能的测试，仅仅因为一家公司可能与你竞争并不意味着他们真的会。产品团队可能需要将他们视为未来的竞争威胁，如果你在交易中开始看到他们，你可以在那时调整你的定位。在此之前，你试图与客户从未考虑过的竞争对手竞争只会削弱你的定位。
Trap 2: Assuming that you have to create a new market category to grow
陷阱 2：假设你必须创建一个新的市场类别才能增长
When selecting a market category, you can either choose to position your product in an existing market category or attempt to create a new category in customers’ minds and then position your product as the leader in it.
在选择市场类别时，你可以选择将产品定位在现有市场类别中，或者尝试在客户心中创建一个新的类别，然后将产品定位为该类别的领导者。
The first option allows you to use what customers already know and understand about a market to help them understand but what your product is and what makes it uniquely special. If I tell you my product is an “embeddable database for mobile devices” you have the benefit of understanding what a database is. “Embeddable” and “for mobile devices” narrows down the field of alternatives to a market niche where this product is not only different from the leaders in the more generic “database” market category, but much better for a particular kind of buyer.
第一个选项允许你利用客户已经知道和理解的市场信息来帮助他们理解你的产品是什么以及它的独特之处。如果我告诉你我的产品是“移动设备的嵌入式数据库”，你会理解什么是数据库。“嵌入式”和“用于移动设备”将替代品的范围缩小到一个市场利基，在这个利基市场中，这个产品不仅与更通用的“数据库”市场类别中的领导者不同，而且对特定类型的买家更好。
Creating a new market category, on the other hand, is where you invent a new frame of reference for customers. The obvious downside to this strategy is that you first have to make the category mean something in the customer’s mind before it can serve as a meaningful context. So instead of being an “embeddable database for mobile devices,” you choose to be a fluflommer. Yep, a fluflommer. Customers have no idea what that is because you’ve just invented it, so be prepared to spend a significant amount of time and effort making that term mean what you want it to mean.
另一方面，创建一个新的市场类别是为客户发明一个新的参考框架。这种策略的明显缺点是，你首先必须让这个类别在客户心中有意义，然后它才能作为一个有意义的背景。因此，你选择成为一个 fluflommer，而不是“移动设备的嵌入式数据库”。是的，一个 fluflommer。客户不知道那是什么，因为你刚刚发明了它，所以准备花费大量时间和精力让这个术语意味着你想要的意思。
There is an assumption that the payoff for creating a new market category is that you will dominate the market as it grows. In my book, I tell the story of Eloqua and how founder Mark Organ created the Marketing Automation category and did exactly that.
有一种假设是，创建一个新的市场类别的回报是你将主导市场的增长。在我的书中，我讲述了 Eloqua 的故事以及创始人 Mark Organ 如何创建营销自动化类别并实现了这一点。
Unfortunately, history teaches us that companies that create market categories often lose in the long run to companies that gained a market foothold after the hard work of creating the category was already done.
不幸的是，历史告诉我们，创建市场类别的公司往往在长期内输给那些在创建类别的艰苦工作完成后获得市场立足点的公司。
This is why we use Google and not Ask Jeeves. This is why we use Facebook and not Myspace. In fact, 90% of tech companies that have gone public over the past five years have been positioned in existing markets rather than creating new ones. Many of the examples of category creators started out positioning themselves in existing markets before they later stretched the boundaries of that category. Salesforce was a niche play in the CRM space until it had hundreds of millions of revenue. Qualtrix was in the survey software market until it had hundreds of millions of revenue. It’s much more common for startups to start out positioning themselves in an existing category until they have the money and momentum required to re-draw the lines around that category.
这就是为什么我们使用 Google 而不是 Ask Jeeves。这就是为什么我们使用 Facebook 而不是 Myspace。事实上，过去五年中上市的科技公司中有 90% 是在现有市场中定位的，而不是创建新的市场。许多类别创建者的例子在最初将自己定位在现有市场中，然后才扩展该类别的边界。Salesforce 在 CRM 领域是一个利基市场，直到它拥有数亿美元的收入。Qualtrix 在调查软件市场，直到它拥有数亿美元的收入。对于初创公司来说，更常见的是在现有类别中定位自己，直到他们有足够的资金和动力重新划定该类别的界限。
Positioning - you’ve got this
Positioning is a misunderstood concept but I believe that if you master it, it can be the most powerful strategic tool you have at your disposal. If you are interested in learning more, I go deeper on this topic in my book and I’ve got a set of templates to go with it that you might find helpful.
定位是一个被误解的概念，但我相信，如果你掌握了它，它可以成为你手中最强大的战略工具。如果你有兴趣了解更多，我在我的 书中 更深入地探讨了这个话题，并且我有一套 模板 可以与你一起使用，你可能会觉得有帮助。