Positioning outcomes: Lower turnover

Earlier this week I wrote about how tight positioning can make your existing team more productive by helping them focus and making it easier not to check things off their to-do list but to figure out what to put on their list in the first place. Here’s the other thing: Good positioning helps you also keep the team you have from leaving for better opportunities.

First of all, in case this seems like a trivial outcome, turnover hurts even the largest of companies. It can be fatal in a startup scenario, where you’re trying to move fast and don’t have time for the inevitable delay associated with trying to replace key team members.

People don’t go to work at startups because they’re looking for a stable job with a fat paycheck. They join startups because they want to work towards something with a group of dedicated colleagues. However, if they feel like:

  • They’re not really sure why the product matters to anyone

  • The company’s strategy is scattershot

  • Everyone is rowing in different directions

  • Expected growth just isn’t happening

  • They’re not even sure who they should be connecting with or selling/marketing to

They will get frustrated. Working in pursuit of a common goal is exiting. Working without a clear picture of where you’re going is frustrating.

Good positioning gets everyone on the same page. A positioning workshop itself helps the leadership team and founders get alignment among themselves, and that alone goes a long way towards improving the entire team’s sense of direction. There’s also the positioning canvas, which can (and should!) be shared with everyone down to the interns.

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Positioning products for software engineers is hard — even if you’re positioning a completely closed source application, it’s still more complex than positioning an application for doctors or lawyers. Engineers are going to want to look under the hood and they might wish they could build it themselves. I’m going to do a webinar next Thursday (July 1st!) at 10am PT about positioning devtools in general, whether they are API-based, open source or cloud-based SaaS apps. Register here.

Emily Omier