Symptom of poor positioning: The wrong competitors

I’ve already written about some other symptoms of poor positioning: Blank stares, wrong assumptions and no leads. Today I’m writing about a symptom of poor positioning that’s related to incorrect assumptions but slightly different — being compared to the wrong competitors or alternatives.

Whether you’re thinking about positioning for a closed-source or an open source software, you should expect to have some kind of competition. Ideally you will have reasons to argue that your software is better, of course, or at least better for certain use cases. But nonetheless there is some way that people are currently adressing the problem you solve, even if it is imperfectly (ie, they are doing something manually or they follow a checklist). Most likely, there is also some other software that solves the same problem, even if it is inferior.

You should have in your mind a short list of legitimate competitive alternatives. The problem, though, is if journalists, analysts, VCs and prospects continually compare you to alternatives that you don’t think make sense.

If that is happening, it is almost always a positioning problem, or at the very least a failure to effectively communicate your positioning. When someone compares you with the wrong types of competitors, it's a sign that they are making a number of other incorrect assumptions about your software and your company. They will also likely expect you to provide value that you don’t, include features that you don’t and won’t value the features that you do have.

Being compared to the wrong competitors is a major sign of a positioning problem.