Podcast Summary

Podcast: Positioning with April Dunford
Host: April Dunford
Episode: Preparing for a Positioning Exercise
Date: February 5, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, April Dunford explores how to prepare for an effective positioning exercise in a company. Drawing from her refined methodology and insights introduced in the second edition of her book, "Obviously Awesome," April details essential pre-work, team formation, and mindset shifts that ensure positioning efforts are focused, collaborative, and aligned with business goals. The episode is especially insightful for entrepreneurs, marketers, and business leaders looking to improve their product's market fit and narrative.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Positioning Is Not for Every Customer (00:00)

• April opens by emphasizing that a good positioning exercise should not try to appeal to every customer ever closed. Instead, it must focus on good-fit customers—those who gain the most value and satisfaction from your offering.
• Quote:

  “In a positioning exercise, it's very important that we don't attempt to do positioning that works for every customer that we've ever closed. That's not the point. The point is to do positioning that gets us to a great story, that attracts good fit customers, allows us to close those good fit customers easily, and have those customers be happy after we've closed them.” (00:00)

2. Structure Changes in Second Edition (02:30)

• The positioning methodology in the new edition is streamlined:
  • Pre-work: Decisions to make before the exercise.
  • 5 Core Steps: Aligning to the 5 components of positioning.
  • Post-work: What happens downstream.
• She notes feedback over confusion about the original model's “10 steps for 5 components,” and how the revised structure solves that.

3. Positioning Is a Cross-Functional Activity (04:30)

• Positioning is not the sole domain of marketing. Cross-functional collaboration is crucial, as marketing-driven positioning often fails to resonate with sales, product, or leadership.
• Quote:

  “Positioning is not a thing that can just happen in the marketing department... Whenever we came up with positioning on our own in marketing, it often did not survive the jump to sales.” (05:10)

• Involvement from Sales, Product, Customer Success, CEO/Founder is recommended for alignment and comprehensive input.
• Memorable Story: April describes how in her marketing roles, materials created by marketing were ignored by sales and product, leading to misalignment.

4. Assembling the Positioning Team (07:25)

• The core team should include:
  • Marketing leaders
  • Sales leaders (possibly more than one to account for diverse perspectives)
  • Product leaders (especially if there have been acquisitions or multiple products)
  • Customer Success leaders
  • CEO/Founder (for historical context and vision)
• Additional participants might include heads of HR, Legal, Strategy, or other executives with “big opinions” about positioning.
• Quote:

  “If there is someone on the executive team that has big opinions about this stuff, then we want to include them. And we want to include them because it is much easier and better to get those opinions out on the table while we're forming the positioning than to have to go to those people later and try to defend the positioning and have them say, I just fundamentally disagree.” (12:22)

• Keep the team manageable (ideally a dozen, max 15); observers are okay if their role is clear.

5. Preparation: Good-Fit vs. Bad-Fit Customers (15:00)

• Before the workshop, teams should identify which current customers are “good fits” and which are “outlier” or “bad fit” customers.
• Important Distinction: You don’t need a full analysis—just recognize obvious poor fits whose experiences and needs shouldn't dictate your core positioning.
• Memorable Story: April recounts a startup with 6 customers, where 1 large, oddball insurance client drove much of the revenue but wasn't a model for growth.
• Quote:

  “In B2B, it is not unusual for us to have clients that pay us money...some of them are very good fit and some of them are a bad fit...At a very macro level, some of these companies, we probably should never have closed business with them in the first place.” (19:50) “What we want to do is take these big weird bad customers and, and even if they pay us a lot of money — we want to recognize that these are kind of one offs and we are not likely to see another company like that in the pipeline again. That's it.” (25:09)

6. Letting Go of “Positioning Baggage” (28:00)

• Teams must be willing to release long-held assumptions and legacy mental models about their positioning.
• CEO/founder should encourage openness about possibly evolving the product’s story, market category, or customer focus.
• Quote:

  “When we started the company, you know, we built it to be this thing, but a few years have gone by and...when we look at it now, maybe what we are is something different. It's okay if our thinking about who we are and who we serve and what the value is that we can really deliver to customers—it's okay if that changes.” (29:18)

• Especially relevant for long-tenured employees versus newcomers.

7. Aligning Positioning Vocabulary (32:48)

• Ensure all workshop participants have a clear, shared understanding of the terminology and framework being used (e.g., what “positioning” is, difference from “messaging”, what is meant by “market category,” “competitive alternatives,” etc.).
• Suggests distributing a presentation or pre-read beforehand, or covering it early in the exercise.
• Quote:

  “It's good to sort of lay that on the table and say, well, no, [positioning] isn’t [messaging]...It's kind of a set of fundamental inputs to the things we're doing in marketing and sales, and that includes messaging.” (34:50)

8. Reviewing Core Decisions Before the Exercise (39:50)

• Recap and clarify:
  • What specifically is being positioned (product, company, platform)
  • Which personas/champions are the intended focus
  • Boundaries of the exercise; “forget about the rest of the stuff”
  • Ensures focus and mitigates confusion or re-litigation during the workshop

9. What’s Next – Competitive Alternatives (41:00)

• Preview of the next episode: April will delve into the critical importance of nailing “competitive alternatives” as the first step in positioning.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Positioning is not a thing that can just happen in the marketing department…whenever we came up with positioning on our own in marketing, it often did not survive the jump to sales.”
  — April Dunford (05:10)

• “What we want to do is take these big weird bad customers and, and even if they pay us a lot of money — we want to recognize that these are kind of one offs…”
  — April Dunford (25:09)

• “It's okay if our thinking about who we are and who we serve and what the value is that we can really deliver to customers—it's okay if that changes.”
  — April Dunford (29:18)

• “It's good to define it up front...so we aren't spending the first hour, two hours of the positioning workshop trying to define all this stuff. ... Or worse, we get to day two and somebody pops up and says, 'Well, I didn't think that's what you meant when you said competitive alternatives.'”
  — April Dunford (35:45)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00: Why positioning should focus on good-fit customers
• 02:30: Structural changes in the revised book/method
• 04:30: Why positioning is not only marketing’s job
• 07:25: Who needs to be in the positioning team
• 15:00: Prepping team to identify bad-fit customers and outliers
• 19:50–25:09: Example/story about the “big, weird” customer and what to do with them
• 28:00: Letting go of positioning baggage
• 32:48: Aligning vocabulary and definitions
• 39:50: Reviewing decisions before starting the exercise
• 41:00: What’s coming next (competitive alternatives step)

Summary: Actionable Prep for Your Positioning Exercise

• Include all key stakeholders—not just marketing—in your positioning team.
• Limit team size to facilitate productive discussion; maximize cross-function representation.
• Prepare ahead:
  • Identify your “bad fit” customers so their unique needs don’t distort your positioning.
  • Encourage openness to rethinking your story (“let go of baggage”), led by the CEO/founder.
  • Ensure everyone understands the core terminology and what exactly is being positioned.
  • Start with clear boundaries for “what and who” are the focus—minimize outliers.
• Embrace that positioning is for attracting and serving your “right” customers—not every possible one.

This episode provides a practical, in-depth roadmap for leaders about to enter a positioning exercise and is a must-listen for anyone taking their product or company through this foundational strategic process.