Symptoms of poor positioning: The blank stare

I’m doing a series on symptoms of bad positioning — yesterday I wrote about incorrect assumptions.

Today I’d like to address perhaps the most uncomfortable symptom: The Blank Stare. This isn’t necessarily the worst for your business, but it is more personally uncomfortable to get a roomful (or zoomful) of blank stares after describing your product than it is to review your churn rate and find it lacking.

If you are getting The Blank Stare when you introduce your product, you have a positioning problem. You are not setting the right context around the product or creating the right assumptions.

Note: Even if you can make The Blank Stare go away after 10 or 15 minutes, you still have a positioning problem. With good positioning, you should be able to get heads nodding immediately, not 15 minutes later.

Confused prospects do not become customers, confused journalists/analysts do not write about your product and confused investors don’t open their wallets. Oh, and this goes for open source projects, too — confused OSS community members don’t contribute and move on to the next repo.