Are customers stuck in your pipeline?

Ideally, potential customers should do one of two things when they first contact you:

• Realize that your solution is exactly what they need and sign up immediately

• Recognize that your solution is not right for them and go away without ever contacting you

Clearly the first option is everyone’s preference: We want customers to sign up and pay our company money. Which is why we can get caught in the least desireable situation, with potential customers scheduling multiple sales calls, asking for POCs that never go anywhere and constantly recommending you talk to yet another colleague in their organization. It’s hard for any company — but especially startups eager to meet sales goals — to tell a potential customer who seems interested but can never close the deal to just go away. But they waste a ton of time.

Good positioning reduces or even eliminates these indecisive time-wasters. When positioning is squishy, it’s harder for prospects to understand if your product is right for them or not. It’s also harder for your sales team to disqualify them immediately, because the sales team doesn’t have the tools they need to evaluate if this is likely to become a good customer.

With clearly articulated positioning, you will have a clear set of characteristics that define the type of customer your product is a good fit for. Those characteristics should be communicated clearly — on the website, in the sales presentations, in marketing material. If it’s a match, the prospect becomes a customer. If it’s not a match, it’s obvious that the prospect should move on.

Do you have a bunch of indecisive, time-wasting prospects in the pipeline? If so, my positioning workshop might be for you.