Symptoms of poor positioning: Wrong Assumptions

How should you know if you have a positioning problem?

I’m going to be writing several blog posts about the signs and symptoms of poor positioning, and wanted to start off the series by talking about incorrect assumptions or expectations. This is a top sign of poor positioning.

Assumptions

Assumptions get a bad rap in our society. If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me, or so it goes.

The reality about assumptions is a little more nuanced. We all make them. Every day. Sometimes they are hurtful assumptions. Most of the time, though, they are just a way that humans can quickly make sense of and categorize people, places, things and situations without spending too much time thinking things over.

You will assume that the milk in a glass bottle is both more expensive and higher-quality than the milk in the plastic jug.

You will assume that, no matter what product we’re talking about, the more expensive version is higher quality.

You see a person drive up in a convertable sportscar and another person drive up in a minivan. You make different assumptions. Those assumptions might be incorrect, but you are lying to yourself if you think you don’t make any assumptions.

Unless we are making sexist, racist or otherwise hurtful assumptions, there is nothing wrong with assumptions per se. In fact, humans’ tendency to make assumptions is essentially the whole point when it comes to positioning. You want people to make correct assumptions about your product.

Which leads me to the sign of poor positioning: People keep making incorrect assumptions about your product.

If, during sales presentations, you often get people who are baffled about why you don’t offer X feature or why you don’t help them solve X pain point, it’s probably because something about your positioning has created an incorrect set of assumptions for them. They are mentally putting you in the wrong box, and you don’t have the functionality that is tablestakes for things in that box.

If you find that prospects, customers, analysts and everyone else you talk to about your product is making incorrect assuptions about it, that is a huge red flag of a positioning problem.

I’ll write more about symptoms of poor positioning tomorrow. In the meantime, if you feel like your startup is suffering from incorrect assumptions, feel free to get in touch to see if I can help.