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Hi everyone, welcome back to Demandy Coded Dan here with you today.
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Recording this after we've had this episode, uh, because we had a guest on the show today, Anthony Pieri from Fletch.
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He's co-founder of Fletch.
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If you haven't heard of them, they are a B2B positioning and messaging expert consultancy.
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Uh fascinating conversation.
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Anthony is a really, really fun guy.
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I know a lot of people would have heard of him before.
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Fletch have become, you know, so well known for being the leading positioning and messaging experts when it comes to go to market.
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Uh we often think of positioning and messaging as this maybe afterthought, not so sexy thing in go to market, but it is just one of the most crucial fundamental things we have to get right in order for the rest of our engine to actually run efficiently and to drive growth for the business.
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So, this conversation really touched on what are the core fundamental issues when it comes to positioning and messaging.
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How do you actually get that right?
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There's a lot of practical advice in here as well about how do you actually look at the market, how do you speak to stakeholders, how do you actually gather the information needed to change your positioning, to change your messaging, and how do you actually get it right?
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Super, super fun episode.
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Really enjoyed having Anthony on.
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Let's get into the show.
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Just a quick one before we get into the episode because I've got an offer that I'm sure all of you will be interested in.
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All right, awesome.
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Well, Anthony, I mean, amazing to have you here.
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We finally got you on Demand Ecoded, which I am just uh yeah, super, super excited about.
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We've been fans of Fletch for uh such a long time.
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We use you guys as kind of the prime example of how to do B2B positioning and messaging the right way to finally get clarity for brands and how they want to position themselves in the market.
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So awesome to have you here.
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I wonder if you could just give us a bit of background about who you are and how you started Fletch with your co-founder and where you're at now.
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Yeah, for sure.
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So I met my co-founder at a previous agency where we were doing all sorts of different things: product strategy, product design, uh product development.
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And I came from a completely different industry.
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I worked many, many years, not in B2B technology.
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Came in, basically took an entry-level sales role at this uh agency, and was really unsuccessful in getting anyone to buy us.
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Like uh it was basically like nine months of banging my head against the wall with really nothing to show for it.
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And looking back, eventually I realized you know, it's it's I'm not the best salesperson in the world, but the the challenges that were making it so difficult for me to sell was the fact that the agency served so many different groups of people in so many different ways, and it was sort of an intractable problem, and there was really no way to to go out and do, let's say, outbound sales or even marketing, really, of a primarily fully custom service offering.
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When the use case is always different, it's just impossible.
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It's like a it's like a general practice doctor knocking on people's doors and saying, Hey, you know, do you have any problems?
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And they're like, You knocked on my door.
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Like, what do you have to offer?
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And they're like, Well, I can't tell you what I have to offer until I figure out if you have any problems.
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Yeah, so it's like there's there's no way to solve it.
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And and the agency that we worked for tried hiring other marketing agencies and outbound sales coaches and all sorts of people, and no one could really solve it.
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And eventually, you know, looking back, it's like it was a business model thing, it was a broad segment of people we were serving, uh serving.
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So we realized that was not really going to work, and maybe the better option would be to say, could we come up with something that could be repeatedly sold to the same people and marketed in the same way?
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And so, me and another guy at the company who eventually becomes my co-founder with Fletch, we start ideating on things that we could theoretically sell as part of this agency.
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We kind of stumble into this positioning realm, start posting about it on LinkedIn, get a decent amount of traction, and then also get even further stumble into this homepage connection to positioning, which was not always tied together.
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There's there's lots of positioning experts who say, you know, you can't see positioning on a homepage.
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You know, those things don't go together.
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And like looking back now, I'm like, why not?
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You know, it feels like you should be able to see who the company's for and what makes them different on their homepage and why someone should pick you over the others, differentiation aspects and all that stuff.
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But so we were like saying, uh internally, how are we gonna audit or vet people's positioning to even see if they have a problem?
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So we started looking at their websites and we realized, wow, a lot of people have a really difficult time explaining what their product is, who it's for, how it works.
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And then we would post about these home pages on LinkedIn, and people would say, I saw your post breaking on the positioning.
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I think I have this problem.
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Can you fix the positioning on my homepage?
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So then they got connected and we said, Well, maybe there's a service here.
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And so we started doing these kind of sprint-esque projects to help people figure out their positioning struggles and then rewrite the homepage as like sort of place where this can live.
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That starts snowballing, getting more and more clients.
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And then eventually it didn't really make sense for us to stay a part of this other agency because again, they did more like product design, product dev, and this was more of a marketing function, they didn't really do marketing as a service.
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So we had an amicable split.
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Thankfully, uh, the founders sort of gave us their blessing to spin off on our own.
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We start fletch.
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Um, and then we realized that the same problem that made it so hard to market this custom service agency was effectively the same problem that every single one of these software companies had.
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That the software is really, really flexible and can be used in so many different ways.
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And so when companies say, Well, how do I not leave any money on the table?
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How do I reach out to as many different customer types as possible, not push anyone away?
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And then they end up with these incredibly broad messages that are almost like the doctor knocking on the door again.
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Like, I have this software.
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And you know, that's only exacerbated by all the AI stuff of AI agents that can do anything and these AI models that can be used for any reason.
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So it's the same underlying challenge, but you know, fast forward four years later, we've now helped position over, I think we're getting close to 600 companies.
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Um, because we only do these little sprints that are two weeks long, we don't really have long engagements and we work with so many businesses.
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It just gave us uh a ton of ammo to make a really, really strong methodology and framework that we think obviously we're a little biased, we think is the most robust positioning framework for B2B software companies of any out there.
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And I think we can back that up by saying nobody else has positioned as many companies as we have.
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So we've gotten more reps than I think anyone in the in the whole world.
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Um, so yeah, that's that's fletch in a nutshell.
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That's all I've been doing for the last, you know, four, four-ish years, and and here I am.
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Yeah, I think it's it's an amazing component of go to market that is so essential yet so often overlooked when it comes to positioning and messaging.
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Like us as marketing leaders, like, you know, we like to jump to the exciting things sometimes, like the channel, like even like the website design, how we like take our visual interests and our brand to market.
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Um, but yeah, it is just such an essential component.
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Um, do you know one of the things I love on the Fletch website is your before and after section?
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And um, I I often go in there, like uh we're we're actually rebranding at the moment, and I was like, ah, look, let me check out some examples that like Fletch have done because why not?
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Like you guys are the best.
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Um and um do you know what it's it's funny how often you see the same kind of challenges though pop up?
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Yeah, and the before section, it's like you can kind of see the same mistakes creep in again and again and again.
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It's like it's like brand strap lines being used instead of actual messaging statements that tell the market what you do.
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It's like you've just said, say everything, you know, like we do everything for everyone.
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And I'd love to know how you how you unpack that issue and what the impact of it is, um, particularly that one around like we do everything for everyone.
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How often do we see that like loads, isn't it?
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Yeah, I mean it's a it's a recurring issue.
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I just think before before we perhaps dive into that question, I just want to sort of build on that, which is to say I love the focus of what you do, right?
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The the the commitment and to continue and focus on this problem it you know is is both really admirable, but also what you know what leads to the to I think the phenomenal success that you're having.
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And you know, this problem is so uh prevalent.
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Um you made a really interesting point about the fact that you know there is a difference between positioning, you know, as a as a concept and your website, but however your buyers see you and perceive you is is is what's critical.
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And if if your website is how your supposed buyer forms their own conclusion about where you're positioned, then that is linked directly and and you can't break the link with your positioning.
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Um, and so this you know, positioning and the home page message are so very important to get right, and yet they are one of the hardest things for businesses to get right.
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And I think that is because they're so often perhaps perhaps lacking the perspective, the evidence, the right way to look at it that lets them get out of their own way a bit, um, you know, and and understand how to optimize for the result they seek.
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So really prevalent issue, uh, you know, one that can can be quite hard to um course correct on, uh, you know, given there are some usually some quite strong opinions about web company website home pages uh internally uh in various places.
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And so it you know, in a way, it's a bit of a public service that you're doing as well, uh, helping companies fix this problem.
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Um, so yeah, very, very, very, very widespread and important.
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So back to your question.
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What was that again, Dan?
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I've forgotten now.
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Um to that same point, though.
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I yeah, to that same point, I think uh we always try to tell people it's a little bit of a bait and switch.
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Like when we got started, you know, we had no credibility, we came from nowhere, we had no Silicon Valley background, never been in a venture back company, you know, all those types of things.
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Um Rob, my co-founder, he used to work at Oracle and he has some more tech background than I do, but like we were not well known.
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And so we couldn't go out and say, Hey, hire us to help you fix your core company strategy.
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Like they'd be like, Well, why would I listen to you guys?
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So we came in through the homepage door and said, Well, why don't we just fix your home page?
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And that made it easier to buy for the customers, and then we could say, Okay, so great, in order to fix the homepage, let's answer some some questions, right?
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Who really is your core customer?
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Say, well, we kind of got these five or six different ICPs, and I would say, Well, what is that what does that stand for?
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ICP?
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Well, it stands for ideal customer profile.
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And I'm like, interesting.
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Kind of feel like ideal should be one, right?
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Yeah, the ideal, right?
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Can you have six ideal, you know, um, like philosophical, even, you know, like the ideal of things, right?
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Like Aristotle or whoever that was, like it's like this pure main important thing.
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So we backed our way into these company strategy questions.
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And then eventually, when we got enough credibility, had worked with enough big name companies with credible logos and you know, trusted and had more of this case studies and things behind us, we could sort of pivot and say, we're gonna come in and do the positioning primarily.
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You're gonna hire us to fix your positioning.
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And then we still kept the home page because it makes it easier to buy, because people are like, okay, well, if I get my positioning solved, but what happens then?
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What do I do with it?
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We're still like, we're gonna knock off this big thing in your to-do list, which is part of probably a website refresh.
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Let's get the primary homepage right.
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But we constantly tell companies, even in the span of our projects, the point of this project is not the homepage, right?
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Like, if you go and you change your positioning and you change you put it on the homepage and that's it, most likely nothing's gonna happen, unless you're like, you know, some super low cost, you know, widget that you're selling for like five bucks and it's like direct to consumer or something.
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But we don't really deal with those companies, we're mostly dealing with B2B software companies, higher ACV, like 50K and above.
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So, with those companies, it's like the homepage is really not gonna move the needle much because these are more considered purchases and stuff like that.
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But we say it's still so crucial to get it right because there's only one of them, there's just one home page with one H1, one body underneath, you know, which is usually a sentence or two.
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And everyone has an opinion on what it should say and what it should be.
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And so if you can get all your executives in a room and get them to agree on what's the core thing we're going to market with, the chances that that message is going to then permeate throughout the rest of the org through all the go-to-market stuff is just exponentially higher.
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Like a lot of other people in our field will do sales decks as the uh primary deliverable, which makes a ton of sense because you're like, well, this would be the greatest place that we could test it.
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This is where we can go and put it in your real world practice.
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But for us, we're like, yeah, but the challenge is then let's say you get something that's working, awesome.
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It's documented in a deck that maybe some of the reps use.
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How are you gonna get the rest of the business to rally around this?
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How are you gonna get the people in HR to be able to explain this when they're vetting new employees, right?
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How are you gonna get your your sales team, your marketing team?
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How's the product team, if it's kind of sequestered in the corner of this like sales org, which usually is not like a you know super publicly available thing where everyone could just go and see well, what's the sales decks look like?
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It's usually like in some Google Drive or SharePoint, you know, instance where you can't really find it.
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So we're like the homepage, you just type in the URL of the business, and there it is, you know, anyone could see it customers, employees, investors.
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So, you know, we sometimes we'll get pulled into these like conversion rate optimization questions, and we're like, that's kind of not that's like ancillary to this because again, if you have a bunch of traffic coming to a home page for your old positioning, and then you make a big strategic bet to change who you're focused on.
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Like, let's say you were mainly servicing SMB, and you're like, We I think the opportunity is in the enterprise, yeah.
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And you could change the home page, and you're like, we don't want we're wasting all these time with these tiny businesses, we're starting to land these enterprise deals.
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We think we need to shift the company.
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So then you you let's say you update the homepage, the language, maybe even the branding, right?
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Like it goes from being like a fun, cutesy thing, and now it's like a very serious looking business.
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What's gonna happen to the conversion rate the day after you launch it?
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It's gonna it's gonna plummet because all those smaller businesses are gonna come on and say, wait a minute, I thought this company was like more for me.
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This seems like more of a serious enterprise.
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This is maybe not for me.
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So if you're judging it by the conversion rate, you'd be like, oh, what a failure.
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But it's like that's we're we're talking longer time horizons.
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So positioning has two jobs, right?
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Which yeah, you've touched on within that.
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It's it's not only to qualify those people that have seen your message, come to your homepage, and and thought, okay, that is the right solution for me.
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It's also to disqualify at the same time.
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Yeah.
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In that example you shared there, yeah, okay, that brand is going to position for enterprise deals.
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So you'd you'd have thought in that process they will shift the way that they sell, they'll shift the way that they serve their customers.
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So yeah, they they do want those, you know, uh small businesses to come onto the website and think that's not the right solution for me.
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That that that's a good thing.
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And conversion rate might dip, but like you say, it's looking at the the right metric to qualify if that change was the right one to have made.
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Yep, exactly.
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So I think one thing that we might have missed from this conversation so far is how do you actually know if you have a positioning problem?
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Yeah, we typically give people a set of questions.
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Um, they are people read our website and they do not understand what we do.
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That's a classic one, or people read our website and they don't know why they should pick us over the alternatives.
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Another one is everyone on our team describes our product and our target customers in very different ways.
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And then sometimes it's we have a suite of products and we really don't know how to explain all of them together.
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Those are kind of like the typical ones that we see the most, but those first two, right?
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They they read it, they don't get it, or they get it and they don't get why it's different.
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That's probably the the core, and that really tells you are you in an immature market or are you in a mature market?
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And does your messaging match?
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The amount of CRM companies that have a message on their homepage or just in their broader messaging, you know, in their outbound and things like that, that's some version of like get our CRM because it's gonna help keep track of your pipeline, you know, increase your deal velocity.
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It's all these things that you're like, yes, that's the promise of the CRM category, right?
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But which one should I get?
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Why should I get yours and not Salesforce when Salesforce is the one that everyone gets?
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And when companies don't realize if they're operating in a mature context or an immature context, they always get everything wrong.
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And then we see the flip problem happen where you have this cool new startup that's in an innovative emerging category.
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And who are they looking at?
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They're looking at all their competitors who are also in Y Combinator, Techstars, other little startups, and they go to the customers and they're like, you know, we our product in this category is way better than all the other vendors, and they're and they're trying to do like differentiation against the other companies.
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And and the person on the other end of the conversation is like, I don't even know what this thing is.
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Like, what is this for?
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And they're trying to say, like, don't buy the other one, buy us.
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And so there's this weird mismatch, and it you have to meet the customers where they're at.
00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:05.039
And so most companies will tell us, Well, wait a minute, but I have some customers who are very mature and some customers who are very immature.
00:21:05.120 --> 00:21:06.079
So, what do I do?
00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:08.079
And that's where we sort of flip the question back at them.
00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:11.920
We say, Well, you first of all, you have to realize these are two different segments.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:25.519
You probably, when you segment your market, are not segmenting by category awareness, which we think is like the core thing that you need to be segmenting by to make a marketing message work, but almost nobody does.
00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:33.440
You can look, I've looked at hundreds of ICP docs and you know, decks and you know all sorts of things like this is who we serve.
00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:36.160
And they're always a list of firmographic stuff.
00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:44.799
We're going after HR companies that are based in the UK, that have 500 or more employees that do X and on in revenue.
00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:47.279
They have all these lists, details about the firm, right?
00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:55.680
The firmographics, but nothing about their category awareness, the level of maturity as it relates to the category that you're in.
00:21:56.160 --> 00:21:59.519
Because that's gonna ultimately determine if the message lands or doesn't land.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:04.720
If I go out pitching a CRM as if you've never heard of a CRM, I will not win the business.
00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:06.400
Because they'll say, I don't understand.
00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:07.360
Why would I get yours?
00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:09.680
I'm just gonna go with the tried true one.
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:15.200
Um, so that's really what people need to be thinking in order to make this message land.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:16.880
Oh, yeah.
00:22:18.559 --> 00:22:18.880
Yeah.
00:22:19.120 --> 00:22:20.319
Processing, processing.
00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:24.559
It just looked like you were writing down uh I'm writing everything down, don't I?
00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:26.799
You bet.
00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:28.240
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:32.720
Because it positioning is it's this intersection.
00:22:32.799 --> 00:22:58.720
It's thinking about what do you want to represent in the mind of a customer in order to make an effective sale that is you know positive for both you and the customer in terms of lifetime value, and you know so many positioning efforts within companies, even when they're good intentioned and trying hard, will omit you know one or more of the important factors.
00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:22.720
So they might be really, really good at you know isolating a single ICP, for example, but failing to appreciate that they're in a mature market and uh you know there's lots of messages being heard every day, you know, and there's a need to find a way to create uh relevance and resonance with the specific buyer, or they will lack the you know the.
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:53.920
the the the customer you know needs pains and problems you know reflection and be totally internally focused on what you know what we perceive our product strengths to be and so it bringing all of those elements together to realize that it's not just an internal exercise it's very much an external exercise about where you want to go in your sector is I think key to success and you know and key to understanding both the role of positioning and how you're how to succeed when doing it.
00:23:54.079 --> 00:24:52.000
I'm interested to know what to what degree is uh you know positioning do you find is it is is it a big a big shift you know you talked about moving SMB to enterprise versus just failure to communicate uh what positioning is now in market yeah I think we'll get a sort of a different swath of people who are coming in and really are going to have a pretty significant repositioning and then some people who just need more of a rearticulation of what they are but almost nobody who checks those boxes of like people don't get what we do or or they get what we do but they don't get why those types of people 99% of the time have not actually picked a real marketable ICP that their ICP definition is not actually a marketable segment.
00:24:52.160 --> 00:25:09.120
And this is sort of an illustration of this like I'll ask you guys because I want to hear hear what your take is I did a poll on LinkedIn about this a while ago would you rather be in a company that has a product that let's say serves five different use cases for one specific industry.
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:12.880
So let's say we're we serve five different use cases for construction.
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:31.360
Yeah the other one the other product in in company two serves one use case but in 10 different industries which one of those is going to be easier to market and go to market comparatively for me your yes I I would choose option A.
00:25:33.519 --> 00:26:00.000
I think I feel like I'm being tested here I think when I think about it logically an industry specialism allows you to dive super deep into that audience have a like serious understanding of what they are trying to achieve holistically even outside of those five use cases like you understand everything there is possibly to know about that industry.
00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:34.160
Phil yeah so um this is a sort of thing that would send me into a corner for quite a few days to like really like analyze and try and work because you know anytime you anytime you introduce the multiplicity and you know the multi-line conundrum into it you create real real difficulty um and you've got to work out again this might but come back to the sort of category but you know marketing trying to trying to market or sell five different solutions to one customer has its challenges.
00:26:34.319 --> 00:27:04.160
Yes you can understand the customer well you you know uh you know you know how to reach and how to uh communicate with them but you've got to try and you've either got to pick which one of those products you're gonna lead with you know which one of those solutions you're gonna lead with or you know or or how you're gonna try and unite them and homogenize them versus the other approach whereas if you've got a single product and it and it and it's got a single job to be done so to speak and buyers are searching for the job to be done then there's advantages in that model as well.
00:27:04.319 --> 00:27:32.720
So I think I'd probably run away from both they are a little bit of like pick your hard you know they're both going to be challenging but if you just think of an amount of effort and let's say just assets you would have to create right to me the second category one job to be done will be infinitely less effort than the first one because if you think about a marketable segment right like what would it take to market?
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:48.559
You have to say here's the problem you have here's what you're trying to accomplish here's the current way that you try to accomplish that and here's how our solution will help you reach your goal in this specific job to be done better than your competitive alternative.
00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:54.720
So like that right there is kind of like you know a messaging bundle or something you know like for for a specific segment.
00:27:54.960 --> 00:28:01.600
In the first one it seems like it would be simpler because it's one industry and you're like well I'm an industry specialist.
00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:19.519
But if you have these five different use cases that maybe aren't necessarily connected to each other it actually will be significantly more effort because you'll have to create those bundles for every single different use case and you will be fighting competitors in each of those different use cases.
00:28:19.600 --> 00:28:21.519
And I'll I have a funny example to walk this out.
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:27.279
So imagine you're like you know a startup and you say I'm very very narrow I'm I'm I'm religiously narrow.
00:28:27.360 --> 00:28:37.680
I've I've honed in I'm gonna build my whole business around selling to tattoo artists right so you're like that's it it's a small TAM I'm not going after this giant venture back story.
00:28:37.840 --> 00:31:13.200
I'm being very you know restrained and I just gonna go sell to these tattoo artists so you say okay well what what what problems do they have and I say well the tattoo gun is kind of like uh it's it's not that good I have a newer better tattoo gun that can solve all these issues I don't yeah I'm making this up right so you say I'm gonna go I'm gonna go to market and I'm gonna sell this tattoo gun you're just like okay well that's great so you start selling it to tattoo artists they love it awesome well what's some other problems we could solve for tattoo artists okay well a lot of the tattoo artists I talk to again I'm making this up uh they are at the shop all the time so they have a lot of marital problems so a lot of them are struggling in their marriages what if we made an app that was marriage counseling in an app for tattoo artists great second product I launch it I get some tattoo artists on it they think that's cool and then I'm like well what else could I sell them and I say well they also really struggle with tax prep when it comes tax time they're collecting all this cash and stuff from people and they got to put it it's what if we made a tax prep app and he's like great it's like awesome and then these startups would come to me and say all right so Anthony we've got these three products we sell them tattoo artists we have one ICP sell them to tattoo artists and you know the the gun costs 300 bucks so that's a one time purchase the marriage and counseling app is like a$10 a month thing and then the tax prep happens once a year but it's like a thousand or something what we would really love is to sell all of them at the same time because that would be the best for us right how can we market these things all together we need we're looking for a combined story and then you would say well what is the combined story what would be the combined job to be done of someone who would say I need to fix my tattoo gun fix my marriage do my tax prep what what what's the story there what would be the cold email that you would send to a tattoo artist to sell those three products against something they're trying to do can you guys think of anything well it would be like it would be like live well or something live well right yeah but then we get into the challenge so that's what almost everyone does is they say I'm gonna pull from a much higher level job to be done right which sometimes will be like grow your business yeah increase your revenue but that that brings us to another concept we we've called this job coverage where it's like if you claim to service a job to be done how much of that job to be done do you actually cover right so if I sell the tattoo gun the marriage counseling app and the tax prep have I really covered the job of living well right like probably not there's a million things that would be under living well that I'm not going to cover.
00:31:13.360 --> 00:32:36.880
So people would perceive my claim as being bullshit right they would say you don't help me live well you just help me with these random three things so like in reality these are three segments it feels like it's one segment because I'm saying I uh tattoo artists industry focus but people who need a new tattoo gun are not necessarily the people who have marriage problems and people who have marriage problems are not necessarily the people who have tax prep problems so if I was going to sell these three products there is no unified story yeah it's just three products with three stories and who's my competitors right the tattoo gun competitor is the other tattoo gun providers the marriage counseling is you know a real counselor yeah the tax prep is an accountant so now I'm waging three wars three battles three positioning strategies three messaging strategies three outbound strategies um and then any one of them are gonna want to see testimonials and and case studies in their relative thing right they're gonna be like if if I'm buying selling the tattoo gun someone else who had the marriage counseling app they're gonna be like you know these things are not cross pollinating you wouldn't be like well you should buy my tattoo gun because all these people loved my marriage counseling app yeah like what you know so I don't know long long illustration but I think I think it gets to the heart of it where people because we're looking at software it's not so blatant like when you hear those things it sounds so silly.
00:32:37.120 --> 00:33:07.200
Who would think that that that you could sell these things at once but since it's software we delude ourselves and think I actually probably could sell the software that does these three different jobs for you done three different use cases yeah not realizing it's the same thing as just having three it's like a business that sells a car a boat and a you know I don't know a coat or something and you're like you know you're like hey you should buy my car why because we're we make great boats or coats yeah you should buy my boat because I sell really good coats.
00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:12.559
Yeah but it just doesn't make any sense yeah I think it's obvious in physical but not as much in software.
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:26.720
I'm getting the vibe that you went out for a friend uh for dinner with a friend last night who's a tattoo artist who's having marriage issues who also like needs a new car but is like thinking about getting a boat as well because he loves his coat.
00:33:26.880 --> 00:35:06.879
And it's interesting I mean like yeah this I think is really really compelling and it's it's actually a problem that businesses just walk into simply by growing and succeeding sometimes right yeah and and so it's kind of it makes it hard in some in some cases harder to to address because it is a symptom of success in some cases but just for people listening you know when we talk about the uh the inverse so you've got one product one with one job to be done that you can sell well to 10 uh industries or 10 customers you know that could sound to people like 10 ICPs but it isn't right so how do we how do we tackle that disparity it's uh you know it we've got the one ICP but we've got three products that's three battles it's three times well three hundred times as hard but we don't want to be in a situation where we've got one product one job to be done but we've got 10 ICPs right yeah and it really comes down to so we've seen people do the inverse of what I'm suggesting and they say I service one job to be done and it shows up in all these different industries and you say great what's what's that job to be done that shows up and they're like it's really we connect disparate systems right we connect different siloed systems and you say okay is that how the customer would conceptualize the job to be done and they're like well not necessarily like the e-commerce businesses that we sell to they say I'm trying to connect my ERP to Shopify they're disparate systems.
00:35:07.039 --> 00:36:05.199
And then when we talk to the you know construction one I'm trying to connect pro core to my whatever and it's like these specific things and you're like so so would any customer ever say like the big goal for this quarter is we're going to connect our disparate systems and they're like well no no one would say that then I would say that's probably just different jobs to be done then like you from a product angle are seeing these abstracted away and you're able to see that they're similar problems but again it has to be from a customer perspective because again we go back to what's the point what's the point of a segmentation it's a group of people that you can market to yeah so if I can't show the same cold email to these 10 industries and have it be perceived in the same way then they're not the same segment if I go because again if I send emails to these 10 and I say hey are you trying to a lot of people we see are struggling with disparate systems that are not connected you know is that a problem you have we've got a solution that connects your disparate systems.
00:36:05.279 --> 00:36:06.959
They're gonna be like what the hell are you talking about?
00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:08.719
Like what what does this even mean?
00:36:08.799 --> 00:36:09.599
Like are you a human?
00:36:09.679 --> 00:36:10.399
Is this a robot?
00:36:10.559 --> 00:36:12.159
Like no one talks like that.
00:36:12.319 --> 00:36:24.719
And then I would have to then actually change it and say some sort of specific message for those people right in their world I have to say we talk to people that are trying to connect Shopify and blah blah blah and all of a sudden it's its own message.
00:36:24.879 --> 00:36:57.359
So we're talking about scalability in terms of the go to market right like how much can we reuse the same identical assets can I show in front of these people so like you you know you go back to a lot of the big PLG companies from the 2020s right like Calendly I can show a CEO, a doctor, uh a teacher a message where it says hey are you trying to schedule meetings over email and they all would say yes I am hey you probably just send emails back and forth being like does this time work?
00:36:57.519 --> 00:36:58.239
Does that time work?
00:36:58.319 --> 00:37:31.359
And it's really annoying what if there is this product that could help you figure out exactly when to do it and have a pre you know selected times and all that stuff and that's why those types of companies grew so fast because again one job to be done that truly is shared by all these different industries and for for Calendly you wouldn't say oh look at how many different industries like look at how many ICPs they have right you'd be like well kind of I'm not really though because they really just have one segment that they're going after which is a job to be done based segment people who are trying to schedule meetings over email.
00:37:31.759 --> 00:40:42.519
Yeah and that shrinks the complexity yeah I think that's an important important message to to take away because it's creating that alignment the simplicity uh you know understanding that you've got to reach you've got to find a place where it's a shared way of describing of thinking uh and of solving a problem that is a segment and and the minute you get into a territory where there's a difference in how we talk about it or how it's perceived you're you're you're at a decision point where you're gonna say well are we going to try and market to both of these segments at once and and and and have we got the budget for that most usually the answer is no um or or narrow that down and so many businesses are afraid to narrow but it's actually usually positive um because we're never really that narrow right this is a big yeah big world we we live in and the narrow isn't usually too small but these are definitely the themes and concepts that we see people you know wrestling with when they're trying to get this right yeah um I want to give listeners something actionable to take away right so Anthony why don't you grade me on my approach right if I was gonna go and figure out if we have a positioning problem and in our business right now I'd be thinking about interviewing key stakeholders in the business like a 30 minute call with you know 10 key stakeholders and asking them a series of questions about what they think the business does like what they think the benefits are who we who they think we serve best etc etc then collate that down into findings have everybody in a room and and share those is that a good approach a bad approach what would you do differently to to say to somebody here is how you are going to go today and identify if you've got a problem and rectify that yeah I mean I think I would I think you could do that I think there's a lot faster way to do that uh than even that to tell and um it sort of comes down to this this is a loose framework that we've we've sort of developed if you think about positioning the thing like you said before Phil you're finding spot to live in people's brains so the way that we interact with this very complicated world is we categorize things we put things in buckets right you say this is my phone this is my car this is my computer um even people right this is my boss this is my spouse this is my child my friend so we put all these things in buckets and so it's the same with software or services or whatever people say what bucket do I put you in and so companies have to either say I am in an existing bucket that you're familiar with which like we would say positioning in a mature category that's really just strategy one.
00:40:42.919 --> 00:40:57.559
Strategy two would say I am in a category but you've probably never never heard of it because it's new and emerging and nascent right and so for strategy two it's you're more aligning yourself to a job to be done and you're saying you know I'm a I'm software that helps you do this X thing that you're trying to do.
00:40:57.719 --> 00:41:04.759
Or you could say I'm I'm in a new category right I I don't want to be put in anyone's existing bucket I'm going out to create a new bucket from scratch.
00:41:04.919 --> 00:41:09.559
So there's examples of companies in strategy one strategy two strategy three that have really really become successful.
00:41:09.639 --> 00:41:19.959
So it's not like there's one that's better than the others it's all very circumstantial based on the product and where you think the opportunity is so like the first thing you would just look at is is our company in a category or not?
00:41:20.359 --> 00:41:21.959
Is there multiple categories right?
00:41:22.119 --> 00:42:05.559
And you could do that without asking anyone you can just look right like what do we call ourselves and so if you list out and you say well actually we kind of are spanning a lot of categories some people put us in this bucket some people put us in this bucket some people put us in this bucket uh and even you know not even customers but maybe were going out to the market saying four or five different things then the question would become okay well do we want one of these categories to be the primary thing people think of us for and you you know I always do this this is a fun exercise if I had to ask you guys in a word or two you know what is Salesforce cloud CRM CRM right yeah uh what is what does Stripe do?
00:42:05.879 --> 00:42:25.559
Payments payments right so I've asked that hundreds of times everyone says payments for stripe everyone says CRM but that's not the only thing they do they actually both have you know 30 40 products a piece stripe also can let your startup get in incorporated in Delaware that's not payments but it doesn't matter because it's like I'm known for one thing.
00:42:25.639 --> 00:42:44.759
So you look at your company you say what are all the categories we span are we willing to be in one of them primarily and then I would look at does our messaging reflect that are we saying we're in this category right and then I the next question would be to say do I feel like most of the customers that we sell to do they already know about this category or not?
00:42:44.999 --> 00:42:46.999
So you say most of them do.
00:42:47.239 --> 00:43:20.039
So okay maybe it's more mature for the segment we're going after and then the follow-up question would be are we saying why we're better than the other vendors publicly and usually the answer is no and you say that's probably where we have to change but if you go back and you say actually most people do not know about this category then it's a question of saying are we saying the specific job to be done because there's another thing too that every product category has a corresponding job to be done from the biggest to the smallest right they can be big jobs or small jobs like and it's usually like an inversion of the name of the category will get us to the job to be done.
00:43:20.119 --> 00:43:57.479
So customer relationship management the job to be done managing customer relationships right the scheduling tool like Calendly is for the job to be done of scheduling maintenance yeah scheduling right so there you go um you know the Slack the communication platform yeah messaging communication communicating right like so every category has a corresponding job to be done and so if we say all right so we're in this new emerging category that people don't know have we communicated to them through the lens of the job to be done are we saying you're trying to do X and we're a better way to do that usually the answer is no.
00:43:57.719 --> 00:43:59.399
And so maybe that's what you have to do.
00:43:59.559 --> 00:44:07.559
And so like what really what we're doing with companies is we're helping just map these the options we're saying okay what categories could we play in that are mature?
00:44:07.799 --> 00:44:10.599
What categories could we play in that are immature?
00:44:10.919 --> 00:44:13.799
And then is there an opportunity for a new category?
00:44:13.959 --> 00:44:20.199
And the the new category strategy is really looking at are there existing jobs to be done that don't have a great solution, right?
00:44:20.359 --> 00:44:31.639
Are there workflows, you know, tasks responsibilities that someone in the org has whether that's up to the C suite or all the way down to like an intern that doesn't really have a dedicated product category for it.
00:44:31.719 --> 00:44:31.879
Yeah.
00:44:32.039 --> 00:44:34.759
And you would say maybe there's an opportunity to create a new category there.
00:44:34.919 --> 00:45:10.039
So you would look across those things and then you're really doing like risk analysis and and opportunity mapping to say where do we think the opportunity is let's say we're making two million a year in ARR and we want to get to 10 where do we think the opportunity is is strongest and then there's like you know meta level questions of like should we stay just multiproduct and do we think we have the resources to just have three different products and market them separately and try to win them like again Stripe Atlas to incorporate your startup in Delaware is facing a completely different competitor set than Stripe Payments.
00:45:10.119 --> 00:45:42.919
Yeah they have their own competitive set and they're just a multiproduct company because they're massive and they're like we can be multiproduct that's fine we have you know hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue maybe billions actually probably in revenue huge amounts of teams right so they're like we could we could be multiproduct so those are like questions like that but like it does seem like um you know a lot of people when they talk about positioning they see it very much like a customer interview type thing um and that could help us inputs but it is kind of an armchair thing where you can kind of Just sit back and just look at the market and be like, where do I think the opportunity is?
00:45:42.999 --> 00:45:43.239
Yeah.
00:45:43.399 --> 00:45:52.119
And then some companies are not ready for a positioning project if they haven't done enough customer conversations already or market mapping or looking out there.
00:45:52.199 --> 00:45:55.879
Like when we ask people, we say, like, okay, we're going to be together for two weeks.
00:45:56.119 --> 00:45:58.199
We're going to get your key people in a room.
00:45:58.519 --> 00:46:05.639
Do you think, knowing that we're going to be together for two weeks, we're going to pick something, a strategy that you're going to stick with for the next 12 months?
00:46:05.799 --> 00:46:07.079
How do you feel about that?
00:46:07.319 --> 00:46:08.919
And it's one of two reactions.
00:46:09.079 --> 00:46:11.719
Either they'll say, Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.
00:46:11.879 --> 00:46:13.159
We need to get unstuck.
00:46:13.559 --> 00:46:15.799
Jeff in sales thinks we need to be going this way.
00:46:15.959 --> 00:46:17.639
Karen thinks we this is the opportunity.
00:46:17.719 --> 00:46:19.719
We just need to align around something, right?
00:46:19.799 --> 00:46:22.039
Those people, they're ready for positioning project.
00:46:22.279 --> 00:46:24.039
The other people say, What?
00:46:24.279 --> 00:46:25.079
Two weeks?
00:46:25.239 --> 00:46:27.079
I mean, we got to go out and see what's out there.
00:46:27.159 --> 00:46:28.439
We don't really know who the competitors are.
00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:29.559
We haven't really talked to our customer.
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:35.079
Like, we need to figure out like what really are the reasons that people are buying us and who are they comparing it?
00:46:35.159 --> 00:46:37.239
Like that person's not ready for positioning project.
00:46:37.319 --> 00:46:40.039
They need to go out and do research and like see what's going on.
00:46:40.279 --> 00:46:48.439
But assuming you're on the other side of that research, and then you actually are stepping into a positioning conversation, it really is just saying, where do we want to place the vet?
00:46:48.599 --> 00:46:50.679
Yeah, where do we feel like the opportunity is?
00:46:50.919 --> 00:47:08.919
That there's a that's there's I think an important message, which is you there needs to be gathering of information, uh, you know, taking place before for a positioning exercise to be productive and and hopefully it's a prerequisite, you know.
00:47:09.159 --> 00:47:22.839
Yeah, so you know, businesses need to be collating information from customers, from the market, um, about competitors from their own stakeholders as well, and and start doing that ASAP.
00:47:23.239 --> 00:47:23.479
Yeah.
00:47:23.719 --> 00:47:39.719
Um, conscious of time, and there's one thing that I I really want to ask, which is around the impact of AI, not in creating positioning, because I think that's clear, like how you could use AI to benefit you if you wanted to DIY this instead of using Fletch, of course.
00:47:39.879 --> 00:47:52.119
Um, but the impact that messaging in your digital assets and on your website can have now because of AI summarizing companies and what you do.
00:47:52.279 --> 00:47:54.599
Like, how have you seen that change?
00:47:54.679 --> 00:48:01.159
And and do you need to change messaging uh to suit the way that AI is summarizing businesses?
00:48:01.239 --> 00:48:04.839
Like, how has it impacted what you're seeing and doing at Fletch?
00:48:05.479 --> 00:48:21.639
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of just accelerating the same trends that were already there, like SEO practices, from what I understand of the people who now do AEO, like answer engine optimization, they say it's kind of the same thing, but better.
00:48:21.879 --> 00:48:31.559
They're like all the stuff around SEO that would try to get you ranking, like you're still kind of doing the same stuff, and the LLMs are just better at summarizing and figuring out where you should be.
00:48:31.719 --> 00:48:39.639
And so I think being extremely clear in your messaging is gonna help even more than it did with SEO, where it was kind of a dumber technology.
00:48:39.959 --> 00:48:41.719
Now being smarter, you're actually gonna help.
00:48:41.799 --> 00:48:43.159
Like, I'll give an example of us.
00:48:43.239 --> 00:48:55.239
Like, if you search in an LLM and you say, I am, you know, a B2B software startup, I'm struggling with my product positioning, I'm looking for an external consultant.
00:48:55.399 --> 00:48:56.679
Who should I talk to?
00:48:56.919 --> 00:49:00.119
Me and Rob with Fletch, we usually come up in the answers.
00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:05.399
And so when people hear that, and you know, they'll get on calls with us, we'll take sales calls with people, and we say, How'd you hear about us?
00:49:05.479 --> 00:49:08.279
Oh, I was I was sparring with Claude and they recommended you.
00:49:08.359 --> 00:49:09.479
And they're like, That's so cool.
00:49:09.559 --> 00:49:10.359
What have you guys been doing?
00:49:10.439 --> 00:49:27.799
Like, you're doing some of those cool AEO practices, and we're like, No, we're just existing as a business with credibility in the space, and all the things you do as a focused company will make the LLMs find you because they're looking and they're very smart to do that.
00:49:28.039 --> 00:49:40.359
If you go out with this really weird scatter shot message, the LLM is not gonna see that as a strong signal of like this is really who you would need, because it's very clear you're not focused.
00:49:40.679 --> 00:49:48.679
So I think all the principles that were important before are even more important now with the advent of AI.
00:49:48.999 --> 00:49:51.799
Yeah, yeah, we've definitely, definitely seen that.
00:49:51.959 --> 00:50:06.439
When you think about the way that AI um retrieves information and the way that they passage information and then summarize it and synthesize it, it is all around relevancy and being extremely accurate to the prompt that's actually being injected.
00:50:06.599 --> 00:50:20.359
So the the more clear and concise you can be in in messaging, which of course is you know what this conversation has been about, it's gonna benefit you in in many ways, and especially when it comes to AEO now.
00:50:20.599 --> 00:50:23.399
Yeah, everything everything is easier when you're focused.
00:50:23.559 --> 00:50:49.719
And in this context, that means knowing who your ICP is, having clear, sound positioning that enables you to create messaging that resonates and makes sense and connects, and then everywhere you put that, it's gonna add to, you know, rather than deduct from the world's understanding of who you are and what you do, whether that's at the LLM or the or the buyer uh you know on your website.
00:50:49.799 --> 00:50:54.359
So that focus and having those building blocks, those crucial building blocks in place.
00:50:54.519 --> 00:51:10.839
And we frequently meet companies that don't really have those blocks in existence, don't really have a stated or documented ICP or positioning for that matter, or any kind of messaging guide, you know, but they are powerful at making everything else easier.
00:51:10.999 --> 00:51:12.279
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:51:12.519 --> 00:51:30.919
Um, Anthony, just want to leave us on like one rapid fire question, I suppose, which is what's the fastest fix somebody should look at right now that has the biggest outsized impact when it comes to positioning advice?
00:51:31.559 --> 00:51:32.919
Yeah, it's funny.
00:51:32.999 --> 00:51:44.119
I mean, it's like there like with because we're talking about something that is like core company strategy, you know, there is uh there are a few fast fixes.
00:51:44.599 --> 00:51:46.839
And that that could be the answer as well, right?
00:51:46.919 --> 00:51:51.079
Which is this isn't a fast thing, like it's a fundamental thing.
00:51:51.399 --> 00:51:53.159
I think that here's here's the thing.
00:51:53.399 --> 00:52:15.079
I would look at your homepage and say, let's say you're in a category and say, if that category is a category that most of your customers have heard of, just go section by section and say really quickly rank is the thing that I'm saying right now differentiated from the other people in that category or not?
00:52:15.479 --> 00:52:17.799
And if it's not, change it, cut it.
00:52:18.039 --> 00:52:27.719
Like we we were just working with a company last week and we were going through their product and we were looking at the page, and I said, Would the other category vendors say the same thing?
00:52:27.879 --> 00:52:28.599
They said, Yeah.
00:52:28.839 --> 00:52:29.879
And I went to the next one.
00:52:30.039 --> 00:52:31.799
Whether they make the same claim here, yeah.
00:52:32.039 --> 00:52:32.919
Next one, yeah.
00:52:33.159 --> 00:52:34.439
This one, well, not that one.
00:52:34.599 --> 00:52:35.239
Okay, interesting.
00:52:35.319 --> 00:52:36.119
What about this next one?
00:52:36.199 --> 00:52:37.079
Yeah, they'd say that.
00:52:37.319 --> 00:52:41.479
I'm like, and I'm like, and your customers would know this category and know the competitors, yeah, yeah.
00:52:41.559 --> 00:52:45.239
They're the competitors way bigger than us, and everyone uses them, and they're kind of the market leader.
00:52:45.479 --> 00:52:48.999
I'm like, you probably want to differentiate then, yeah, right.
00:52:49.159 --> 00:53:01.399
So I would I would do that and just make sure, because again, if you look at your hero and you're like, you know, it's a project management tool, and then the body says, get everyone working on the same page.
00:53:01.559 --> 00:53:05.399
It's like that's what the tool does, like that's what they all do.
00:53:05.479 --> 00:53:06.119
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:53:06.279 --> 00:53:10.599
And assuming you're not living under a rock, you've probably used a project management tool at some point.
00:53:10.999 --> 00:53:14.359
That's not that's that's wasted it, it's wasted air, wasted space.
00:53:14.519 --> 00:53:15.799
Yeah, uh amazing.
00:53:15.879 --> 00:53:16.839
That was that was awesome.
00:53:16.999 --> 00:53:18.439
Any final thoughts from you, Phil?
00:53:18.599 --> 00:53:19.319
No, that's great.
00:53:19.399 --> 00:53:29.879
I think this is such a crucial area um of you know, well, I was about to say the modern B2B go to market, but it's not modern, it's always been crucial.
00:53:29.959 --> 00:53:42.119
Yeah, but we're yeah, we're always keen to help and see what's amiss in companies um strategy in this area.
00:53:42.199 --> 00:53:43.799
So, no, been fascinating to discuss.
00:53:44.039 --> 00:53:44.999
Yeah, yeah, awesome.
00:53:45.159 --> 00:53:53.239
Um, I would say as well to listeners, the Fletch newsletter, actually, which Anthony forced me to sign up to, um is is awesome.
00:53:53.559 --> 00:53:54.119
Bloody good, I think.
00:53:54.439 --> 00:53:55.319
Yeah, like really good.
00:53:55.479 --> 00:54:07.319
So that's one one thing that I would say is a takeaway, like go and subscribe to that because it's it's just like yeah, public service to uh B2B companies.
00:54:07.479 --> 00:54:09.479
Um, so yeah, awesome.
00:54:09.719 --> 00:54:10.519
Um, right.
00:54:10.599 --> 00:54:16.999
I don't wanna I don't want to take up any more of your time, Anthony, because it's been like such a useful and enjoyable conversation.
00:54:17.159 --> 00:54:19.479
So yeah, just want to say thank you for joining us.
00:54:19.639 --> 00:54:23.159
Um and yeah, uh it's been great, great having you.
00:54:23.399 --> 00:54:24.039
Thanks for having me.
00:54:24.199 --> 00:54:25.879
Super fun to be with you guys.
00:00:39.799 --> 00:00:43.560
Hi everyone, welcome back to Demandy Coded Dan here with you today.
00:00:43.719 --> 00:00:50.679
Recording this after we've had this episode, uh, because we had a guest on the show today, Anthony Pieri from Fletch.
00:00:50.759 --> 00:00:52.039
He's co-founder of Fletch.
00:00:52.119 --> 00:00:58.200
If you haven't heard of them, they are a B2B positioning and messaging expert consultancy.
00:00:58.359 --> 00:00:59.879
Uh fascinating conversation.
00:01:00.039 --> 00:01:02.039
Anthony is a really, really fun guy.
00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:04.200
I know a lot of people would have heard of him before.
00:01:04.280 --> 00:01:11.560
Fletch have become, you know, so well known for being the leading positioning and messaging experts when it comes to go to market.
00:01:12.039 --> 00:01:30.840
Uh we often think of positioning and messaging as this maybe afterthought, not so sexy thing in go to market, but it is just one of the most crucial fundamental things we have to get right in order for the rest of our engine to actually run efficiently and to drive growth for the business.
00:01:31.079 --> 00:01:38.280
So, this conversation really touched on what are the core fundamental issues when it comes to positioning and messaging.
00:01:38.439 --> 00:01:39.719
How do you actually get that right?
00:01:39.799 --> 00:01:53.000
There's a lot of practical advice in here as well about how do you actually look at the market, how do you speak to stakeholders, how do you actually gather the information needed to change your positioning, to change your messaging, and how do you actually get it right?
00:01:53.239 --> 00:01:54.679
Super, super fun episode.
00:01:54.840 --> 00:01:56.439
Really enjoyed having Anthony on.
00:01:56.599 --> 00:01:58.200
Let's get into the show.
00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:11.240
Just a quick one before we get into the episode because I've got an offer that I'm sure all of you will be interested in.
00:02:11.480 --> 00:02:18.199
AEO is something that every B2B marketing team is trying to figure out right now, and most just don't know where to start.
00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:26.840
But at Blend, we're offering a full AEO analysis of your brand's AI visibility, and we'll walk you through exactly what we found and what to do about it.
00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:45.240
From full prompt analysis against your competitors to a citation analysis where we'll look at different content types and how you're being cited for those and mentioned in those, and what you can actually do to be mentioned and cited much more for your brand and what content you should create going forwards and how you comprise that strategy really.
00:02:45.480 --> 00:02:53.879
We will drop a note in the uh description of this episode in the show notes, and you can go over there, request your free AEO audit, and we will deliver that to you.
00:02:56.359 --> 00:02:57.400
All right, awesome.
00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:00.199
Well, Anthony, I mean, amazing to have you here.
00:03:00.359 --> 00:03:06.759
We finally got you on Demand Ecoded, which I am just uh yeah, super, super excited about.
00:03:06.919 --> 00:03:10.520
We've been fans of Fletch for uh such a long time.
00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:22.520
We use you guys as kind of the prime example of how to do B2B positioning and messaging the right way to finally get clarity for brands and how they want to position themselves in the market.
00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:24.520
So awesome to have you here.
00:03:24.759 --> 00:03:33.639
I wonder if you could just give us a bit of background about who you are and how you started Fletch with your co-founder and where you're at now.
00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:34.919
Yeah, for sure.
00:03:35.159 --> 00:03:45.319
So I met my co-founder at a previous agency where we were doing all sorts of different things: product strategy, product design, uh product development.
00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:48.439
And I came from a completely different industry.
00:03:48.520 --> 00:03:52.359
I worked many, many years, not in B2B technology.
00:03:52.680 --> 00:04:02.520
Came in, basically took an entry-level sales role at this uh agency, and was really unsuccessful in getting anyone to buy us.
00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:08.520
Like uh it was basically like nine months of banging my head against the wall with really nothing to show for it.
00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:42.519
And looking back, eventually I realized you know, it's it's I'm not the best salesperson in the world, but the the challenges that were making it so difficult for me to sell was the fact that the agency served so many different groups of people in so many different ways, and it was sort of an intractable problem, and there was really no way to to go out and do, let's say, outbound sales or even marketing, really, of a primarily fully custom service offering.
00:04:42.840 --> 00:04:45.800
When the use case is always different, it's just impossible.
00:04:45.879 --> 00:04:52.439
It's like a it's like a general practice doctor knocking on people's doors and saying, Hey, you know, do you have any problems?
00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:54.919
And they're like, You knocked on my door.
00:04:55.080 --> 00:04:56.200
Like, what do you have to offer?
00:04:56.279 --> 00:04:59.480
And they're like, Well, I can't tell you what I have to offer until I figure out if you have any problems.
00:04:59.559 --> 00:05:01.320
Yeah, so it's like there's there's no way to solve it.
00:05:01.399 --> 00:05:10.120
And and the agency that we worked for tried hiring other marketing agencies and outbound sales coaches and all sorts of people, and no one could really solve it.
00:05:10.279 --> 00:05:18.039
And eventually, you know, looking back, it's like it was a business model thing, it was a broad segment of people we were serving, uh serving.
00:05:18.519 --> 00:05:29.799
So we realized that was not really going to work, and maybe the better option would be to say, could we come up with something that could be repeatedly sold to the same people and marketed in the same way?
00:05:30.039 --> 00:05:39.639
And so, me and another guy at the company who eventually becomes my co-founder with Fletch, we start ideating on things that we could theoretically sell as part of this agency.
00:05:39.799 --> 00:05:53.720
We kind of stumble into this positioning realm, start posting about it on LinkedIn, get a decent amount of traction, and then also get even further stumble into this homepage connection to positioning, which was not always tied together.
00:05:53.799 --> 00:06:00.039
There's there's lots of positioning experts who say, you know, you can't see positioning on a homepage.
00:06:00.200 --> 00:06:01.639
You know, those things don't go together.
00:06:01.799 --> 00:06:04.120
And like looking back now, I'm like, why not?
00:06:04.279 --> 00:06:12.200
You know, it feels like you should be able to see who the company's for and what makes them different on their homepage and why someone should pick you over the others, differentiation aspects and all that stuff.
00:06:12.360 --> 00:06:19.159
But so we were like saying, uh internally, how are we gonna audit or vet people's positioning to even see if they have a problem?
00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:28.919
So we started looking at their websites and we realized, wow, a lot of people have a really difficult time explaining what their product is, who it's for, how it works.
00:06:29.159 --> 00:06:35.399
And then we would post about these home pages on LinkedIn, and people would say, I saw your post breaking on the positioning.
00:06:35.480 --> 00:06:36.679
I think I have this problem.
00:06:36.919 --> 00:06:39.399
Can you fix the positioning on my homepage?
00:06:39.559 --> 00:06:42.600
So then they got connected and we said, Well, maybe there's a service here.
00:06:42.759 --> 00:06:52.200
And so we started doing these kind of sprint-esque projects to help people figure out their positioning struggles and then rewrite the homepage as like sort of place where this can live.
00:06:52.519 --> 00:06:55.159
That starts snowballing, getting more and more clients.
00:06:55.240 --> 00:07:05.080
And then eventually it didn't really make sense for us to stay a part of this other agency because again, they did more like product design, product dev, and this was more of a marketing function, they didn't really do marketing as a service.
00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:07.159
So we had an amicable split.
00:07:07.320 --> 00:07:10.840
Thankfully, uh, the founders sort of gave us their blessing to spin off on our own.
00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:12.279
We start fletch.
00:07:12.440 --> 00:07:22.279
Um, and then we realized that the same problem that made it so hard to market this custom service agency was effectively the same problem that every single one of these software companies had.
00:07:22.440 --> 00:07:27.399
That the software is really, really flexible and can be used in so many different ways.
00:07:27.639 --> 00:07:32.200
And so when companies say, Well, how do I not leave any money on the table?
00:07:32.360 --> 00:07:38.200
How do I reach out to as many different customer types as possible, not push anyone away?
00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:43.720
And then they end up with these incredibly broad messages that are almost like the doctor knocking on the door again.
00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:45.080
Like, I have this software.
00:07:45.240 --> 00:07:52.519
And you know, that's only exacerbated by all the AI stuff of AI agents that can do anything and these AI models that can be used for any reason.
00:07:52.759 --> 00:08:01.879
So it's the same underlying challenge, but you know, fast forward four years later, we've now helped position over, I think we're getting close to 600 companies.
00:08:02.039 --> 00:08:08.600
Um, because we only do these little sprints that are two weeks long, we don't really have long engagements and we work with so many businesses.
00:08:08.679 --> 00:08:20.679
It just gave us uh a ton of ammo to make a really, really strong methodology and framework that we think obviously we're a little biased, we think is the most robust positioning framework for B2B software companies of any out there.
00:08:20.759 --> 00:08:25.799
And I think we can back that up by saying nobody else has positioned as many companies as we have.
00:08:25.960 --> 00:08:29.879
So we've gotten more reps than I think anyone in the in the whole world.
00:08:30.039 --> 00:08:33.240
Um, so yeah, that's that's fletch in a nutshell.
00:08:33.399 --> 00:08:38.279
That's all I've been doing for the last, you know, four, four-ish years, and and here I am.
00:08:38.519 --> 00:08:48.360
Yeah, I think it's it's an amazing component of go to market that is so essential yet so often overlooked when it comes to positioning and messaging.
00:08:48.519 --> 00:09:03.399
Like us as marketing leaders, like, you know, we like to jump to the exciting things sometimes, like the channel, like even like the website design, how we like take our visual interests and our brand to market.
00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:07.080
Um, but yeah, it is just such an essential component.
00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:11.480
Um, do you know one of the things I love on the Fletch website is your before and after section?
00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:21.080
And um, I I often go in there, like uh we're we're actually rebranding at the moment, and I was like, ah, look, let me check out some examples that like Fletch have done because why not?
00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:22.279
Like you guys are the best.
00:09:22.920 --> 00:09:30.279
Um and um do you know what it's it's funny how often you see the same kind of challenges though pop up?
00:09:30.360 --> 00:09:36.680
Yeah, and the before section, it's like you can kind of see the same mistakes creep in again and again and again.
00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:45.240
It's like it's like brand strap lines being used instead of actual messaging statements that tell the market what you do.
00:09:45.480 --> 00:09:50.759
It's like you've just said, say everything, you know, like we do everything for everyone.
00:09:50.920 --> 00:10:00.120
And I'd love to know how you how you unpack that issue and what the impact of it is, um, particularly that one around like we do everything for everyone.
00:10:00.200 --> 00:10:02.360
How often do we see that like loads, isn't it?
00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:04.279
Yeah, I mean it's a it's a recurring issue.
00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:12.279
I just think before before we perhaps dive into that question, I just want to sort of build on that, which is to say I love the focus of what you do, right?
00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:25.960
The the the commitment and to continue and focus on this problem it you know is is both really admirable, but also what you know what leads to the to I think the phenomenal success that you're having.
00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:30.040
And you know, this problem is so uh prevalent.
00:10:30.279 --> 00:10:45.720
Um you made a really interesting point about the fact that you know there is a difference between positioning, you know, as a as a concept and your website, but however your buyers see you and perceive you is is is what's critical.
00:10:45.879 --> 00:10:59.800
And if if your website is how your supposed buyer forms their own conclusion about where you're positioned, then that is linked directly and and you can't break the link with your positioning.
00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:11.000
Um, and so this you know, positioning and the home page message are so very important to get right, and yet they are one of the hardest things for businesses to get right.
00:11:11.320 --> 00:11:29.639
And I think that is because they're so often perhaps perhaps lacking the perspective, the evidence, the right way to look at it that lets them get out of their own way a bit, um, you know, and and understand how to optimize for the result they seek.
00:11:29.800 --> 00:11:47.560
So really prevalent issue, uh, you know, one that can can be quite hard to um course correct on, uh, you know, given there are some usually some quite strong opinions about web company website home pages uh internally uh in various places.
00:11:47.720 --> 00:11:53.399
And so it you know, in a way, it's a bit of a public service that you're doing as well, uh, helping companies fix this problem.
00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:56.519
Um, so yeah, very, very, very, very widespread and important.
00:11:56.680 --> 00:11:57.720
So back to your question.
00:11:57.800 --> 00:11:58.840
What was that again, Dan?
00:12:00.279 --> 00:12:01.480
I've forgotten now.
00:12:01.639 --> 00:12:03.960
Um to that same point, though.
00:12:04.040 --> 00:12:09.320
I yeah, to that same point, I think uh we always try to tell people it's a little bit of a bait and switch.
00:12:09.399 --> 00:12:18.040
Like when we got started, you know, we had no credibility, we came from nowhere, we had no Silicon Valley background, never been in a venture back company, you know, all those types of things.
00:12:18.200 --> 00:12:23.639
Um Rob, my co-founder, he used to work at Oracle and he has some more tech background than I do, but like we were not well known.
00:12:23.800 --> 00:12:29.399
And so we couldn't go out and say, Hey, hire us to help you fix your core company strategy.
00:12:29.560 --> 00:12:31.560
Like they'd be like, Well, why would I listen to you guys?
00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:35.639
So we came in through the homepage door and said, Well, why don't we just fix your home page?
00:12:35.879 --> 00:12:44.840
And that made it easier to buy for the customers, and then we could say, Okay, so great, in order to fix the homepage, let's answer some some questions, right?
00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:47.240
Who really is your core customer?
00:12:47.560 --> 00:12:53.560
Say, well, we kind of got these five or six different ICPs, and I would say, Well, what is that what does that stand for?
00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:54.279
ICP?
00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:56.840
Well, it stands for ideal customer profile.
00:12:56.920 --> 00:12:57.800
And I'm like, interesting.
00:12:58.040 --> 00:13:01.080
Kind of feel like ideal should be one, right?
00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:02.440
Yeah, the ideal, right?
00:13:02.519 --> 00:13:09.480
Can you have six ideal, you know, um, like philosophical, even, you know, like the ideal of things, right?
00:13:09.560 --> 00:13:13.720
Like Aristotle or whoever that was, like it's like this pure main important thing.
00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:19.240
So we backed our way into these company strategy questions.
00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:34.519
And then eventually, when we got enough credibility, had worked with enough big name companies with credible logos and you know, trusted and had more of this case studies and things behind us, we could sort of pivot and say, we're gonna come in and do the positioning primarily.
00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:36.440
You're gonna hire us to fix your positioning.
00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:44.360
And then we still kept the home page because it makes it easier to buy, because people are like, okay, well, if I get my positioning solved, but what happens then?
00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:45.080
What do I do with it?
00:13:45.240 --> 00:13:49.800
We're still like, we're gonna knock off this big thing in your to-do list, which is part of probably a website refresh.
00:13:49.960 --> 00:13:51.800
Let's get the primary homepage right.
00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:59.320
But we constantly tell companies, even in the span of our projects, the point of this project is not the homepage, right?
00:13:59.399 --> 00:14:15.480
Like, if you go and you change your positioning and you change you put it on the homepage and that's it, most likely nothing's gonna happen, unless you're like, you know, some super low cost, you know, widget that you're selling for like five bucks and it's like direct to consumer or something.
00:14:15.560 --> 00:14:21.720
But we don't really deal with those companies, we're mostly dealing with B2B software companies, higher ACV, like 50K and above.
00:14:21.879 --> 00:14:28.360
So, with those companies, it's like the homepage is really not gonna move the needle much because these are more considered purchases and stuff like that.
00:14:28.519 --> 00:14:41.080
But we say it's still so crucial to get it right because there's only one of them, there's just one home page with one H1, one body underneath, you know, which is usually a sentence or two.
00:14:41.399 --> 00:14:45.879
And everyone has an opinion on what it should say and what it should be.
00:14:46.040 --> 00:15:01.080
And so if you can get all your executives in a room and get them to agree on what's the core thing we're going to market with, the chances that that message is going to then permeate throughout the rest of the org through all the go-to-market stuff is just exponentially higher.
00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:10.440
Like a lot of other people in our field will do sales decks as the uh primary deliverable, which makes a ton of sense because you're like, well, this would be the greatest place that we could test it.
00:15:10.600 --> 00:15:13.080
This is where we can go and put it in your real world practice.
00:15:13.240 --> 00:15:17.320
But for us, we're like, yeah, but the challenge is then let's say you get something that's working, awesome.
00:15:17.399 --> 00:15:21.160
It's documented in a deck that maybe some of the reps use.
00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:24.120
How are you gonna get the rest of the business to rally around this?
00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:29.080
How are you gonna get the people in HR to be able to explain this when they're vetting new employees, right?
00:15:29.160 --> 00:15:31.639
How are you gonna get your your sales team, your marketing team?
00:15:31.720 --> 00:15:43.160
How's the product team, if it's kind of sequestered in the corner of this like sales org, which usually is not like a you know super publicly available thing where everyone could just go and see well, what's the sales decks look like?
00:15:43.240 --> 00:15:47.879
It's usually like in some Google Drive or SharePoint, you know, instance where you can't really find it.
00:15:48.040 --> 00:15:55.480
So we're like the homepage, you just type in the URL of the business, and there it is, you know, anyone could see it customers, employees, investors.
00:15:55.879 --> 00:16:15.720
So, you know, we sometimes we'll get pulled into these like conversion rate optimization questions, and we're like, that's kind of not that's like ancillary to this because again, if you have a bunch of traffic coming to a home page for your old positioning, and then you make a big strategic bet to change who you're focused on.
00:16:15.800 --> 00:16:21.879
Like, let's say you were mainly servicing SMB, and you're like, We I think the opportunity is in the enterprise, yeah.
00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:29.080
And you could change the home page, and you're like, we don't want we're wasting all these time with these tiny businesses, we're starting to land these enterprise deals.
00:16:29.160 --> 00:16:30.519
We think we need to shift the company.
00:16:30.680 --> 00:16:35.480
So then you you let's say you update the homepage, the language, maybe even the branding, right?
00:16:35.560 --> 00:16:39.960
Like it goes from being like a fun, cutesy thing, and now it's like a very serious looking business.
00:16:40.200 --> 00:16:42.680
What's gonna happen to the conversion rate the day after you launch it?
00:16:42.920 --> 00:16:51.160
It's gonna it's gonna plummet because all those smaller businesses are gonna come on and say, wait a minute, I thought this company was like more for me.
00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:53.560
This seems like more of a serious enterprise.
00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:54.920
This is maybe not for me.
00:16:55.080 --> 00:16:58.680
So if you're judging it by the conversion rate, you'd be like, oh, what a failure.
00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:01.960
But it's like that's we're we're talking longer time horizons.
00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:05.240
So positioning has two jobs, right?
00:17:05.639 --> 00:17:07.480
Which yeah, you've touched on within that.
00:17:07.639 --> 00:17:16.920
It's it's not only to qualify those people that have seen your message, come to your homepage, and and thought, okay, that is the right solution for me.
00:17:17.079 --> 00:17:19.160
It's also to disqualify at the same time.
00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:19.480
Yeah.
00:17:19.720 --> 00:18:08.879
In that example you shared there, yeah, okay, that brand is going to position for enterprise deals.
00:18:09.119 --> 00:18:15.759
So you'd you'd have thought in that process they will shift the way that they sell, they'll shift the way that they serve their customers.
00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:23.839
So yeah, they they do want those, you know, uh small businesses to come onto the website and think that's not the right solution for me.
00:18:24.079 --> 00:18:26.160
That that that's a good thing.
00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:35.279
And conversion rate might dip, but like you say, it's looking at the the right metric to qualify if that change was the right one to have made.
00:18:35.600 --> 00:18:37.279
Yep, exactly.
00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:46.480
So I think one thing that we might have missed from this conversation so far is how do you actually know if you have a positioning problem?
00:18:47.279 --> 00:18:50.640
Yeah, we typically give people a set of questions.
00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:56.079
Um, they are people read our website and they do not understand what we do.
00:18:56.319 --> 00:19:03.759
That's a classic one, or people read our website and they don't know why they should pick us over the alternatives.
00:19:04.079 --> 00:19:11.519
Another one is everyone on our team describes our product and our target customers in very different ways.
00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:18.960
And then sometimes it's we have a suite of products and we really don't know how to explain all of them together.
00:19:19.600 --> 00:19:23.200
Those are kind of like the typical ones that we see the most, but those first two, right?
00:19:23.360 --> 00:19:27.039
They they read it, they don't get it, or they get it and they don't get why it's different.
00:19:27.279 --> 00:19:34.880
That's probably the the core, and that really tells you are you in an immature market or are you in a mature market?
00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:36.960
And does your messaging match?
00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:56.960
The amount of CRM companies that have a message on their homepage or just in their broader messaging, you know, in their outbound and things like that, that's some version of like get our CRM because it's gonna help keep track of your pipeline, you know, increase your deal velocity.
00:19:57.120 --> 00:20:03.519
It's all these things that you're like, yes, that's the promise of the CRM category, right?
00:20:03.759 --> 00:20:05.600
But which one should I get?
00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:12.160
Why should I get yours and not Salesforce when Salesforce is the one that everyone gets?
00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:19.039
And when companies don't realize if they're operating in a mature context or an immature context, they always get everything wrong.
00:20:19.120 --> 00:20:25.759
And then we see the flip problem happen where you have this cool new startup that's in an innovative emerging category.
00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:27.279
And who are they looking at?
00:20:27.440 --> 00:20:42.559
They're looking at all their competitors who are also in Y Combinator, Techstars, other little startups, and they go to the customers and they're like, you know, we our product in this category is way better than all the other vendors, and they're and they're trying to do like differentiation against the other companies.
00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:46.400
And and the person on the other end of the conversation is like, I don't even know what this thing is.
00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:48.079
Like, what is this for?
00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:50.960
And they're trying to say, like, don't buy the other one, buy us.
00:20:51.120 --> 00:20:57.120
And so there's this weird mismatch, and it you have to meet the customers where they're at.
00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:05.039
And so most companies will tell us, Well, wait a minute, but I have some customers who are very mature and some customers who are very immature.
00:21:05.120 --> 00:21:06.079
So, what do I do?
00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:08.079
And that's where we sort of flip the question back at them.
00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:11.920
We say, Well, you first of all, you have to realize these are two different segments.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:25.519
You probably, when you segment your market, are not segmenting by category awareness, which we think is like the core thing that you need to be segmenting by to make a marketing message work, but almost nobody does.
00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:33.440
You can look, I've looked at hundreds of ICP docs and you know, decks and you know all sorts of things like this is who we serve.
00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:36.160
And they're always a list of firmographic stuff.
00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:44.799
We're going after HR companies that are based in the UK, that have 500 or more employees that do X and on in revenue.
00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:47.279
They have all these lists, details about the firm, right?
00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:55.680
The firmographics, but nothing about their category awareness, the level of maturity as it relates to the category that you're in.
00:21:56.160 --> 00:21:59.519
Because that's gonna ultimately determine if the message lands or doesn't land.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:04.720
If I go out pitching a CRM as if you've never heard of a CRM, I will not win the business.
00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:06.400
Because they'll say, I don't understand.
00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:07.360
Why would I get yours?
00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:09.680
I'm just gonna go with the tried true one.
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:15.200
Um, so that's really what people need to be thinking in order to make this message land.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:16.880
Oh, yeah.
00:22:18.559 --> 00:22:18.880
Yeah.
00:22:19.120 --> 00:22:20.319
Processing, processing.
00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:24.559
It just looked like you were writing down uh I'm writing everything down, don't I?
00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:26.799
You bet.
00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:28.240
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:32.720
Because it positioning is it's this intersection.
00:22:32.799 --> 00:22:58.720
It's thinking about what do you want to represent in the mind of a customer in order to make an effective sale that is you know positive for both you and the customer in terms of lifetime value, and you know so many positioning efforts within companies, even when they're good intentioned and trying hard, will omit you know one or more of the important factors.
00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:22.720
So they might be really, really good at you know isolating a single ICP, for example, but failing to appreciate that they're in a mature market and uh you know there's lots of messages being heard every day, you know, and there's a need to find a way to create uh relevance and resonance with the specific buyer, or they will lack the you know the.
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:53.920
the the the customer you know needs pains and problems you know reflection and be totally internally focused on what you know what we perceive our product strengths to be and so it bringing all of those elements together to realize that it's not just an internal exercise it's very much an external exercise about where you want to go in your sector is I think key to success and you know and key to understanding both the role of positioning and how you're how to succeed when doing it.
00:23:54.079 --> 00:24:52.000
I'm interested to know what to what degree is uh you know positioning do you find is it is is it a big a big shift you know you talked about moving SMB to enterprise versus just failure to communicate uh what positioning is now in market yeah I think we'll get a sort of a different swath of people who are coming in and really are going to have a pretty significant repositioning and then some people who just need more of a rearticulation of what they are but almost nobody who checks those boxes of like people don't get what we do or or they get what we do but they don't get why those types of people 99% of the time have not actually picked a real marketable ICP that their ICP definition is not actually a marketable segment.
00:24:52.160 --> 00:25:09.120
And this is sort of an illustration of this like I'll ask you guys because I want to hear hear what your take is I did a poll on LinkedIn about this a while ago would you rather be in a company that has a product that let's say serves five different use cases for one specific industry.
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:12.880
So let's say we're we serve five different use cases for construction.
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:31.360
Yeah the other one the other product in in company two serves one use case but in 10 different industries which one of those is going to be easier to market and go to market comparatively for me your yes I I would choose option A.
00:25:33.519 --> 00:26:00.000
I think I feel like I'm being tested here I think when I think about it logically an industry specialism allows you to dive super deep into that audience have a like serious understanding of what they are trying to achieve holistically even outside of those five use cases like you understand everything there is possibly to know about that industry.
00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:34.160
Phil yeah so um this is a sort of thing that would send me into a corner for quite a few days to like really like analyze and try and work because you know anytime you anytime you introduce the multiplicity and you know the multi-line conundrum into it you create real real difficulty um and you've got to work out again this might but come back to the sort of category but you know marketing trying to trying to market or sell five different solutions to one customer has its challenges.
00:26:34.319 --> 00:27:04.160
Yes you can understand the customer well you you know uh you know you know how to reach and how to uh communicate with them but you've got to try and you've either got to pick which one of those products you're gonna lead with you know which one of those solutions you're gonna lead with or you know or or how you're gonna try and unite them and homogenize them versus the other approach whereas if you've got a single product and it and it and it's got a single job to be done so to speak and buyers are searching for the job to be done then there's advantages in that model as well.
00:27:04.319 --> 00:27:32.720
So I think I'd probably run away from both they are a little bit of like pick your hard you know they're both going to be challenging but if you just think of an amount of effort and let's say just assets you would have to create right to me the second category one job to be done will be infinitely less effort than the first one because if you think about a marketable segment right like what would it take to market?
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:48.559
You have to say here's the problem you have here's what you're trying to accomplish here's the current way that you try to accomplish that and here's how our solution will help you reach your goal in this specific job to be done better than your competitive alternative.
00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:54.720
So like that right there is kind of like you know a messaging bundle or something you know like for for a specific segment.
00:27:54.960 --> 00:28:01.600
In the first one it seems like it would be simpler because it's one industry and you're like well I'm an industry specialist.
00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:19.519
But if you have these five different use cases that maybe aren't necessarily connected to each other it actually will be significantly more effort because you'll have to create those bundles for every single different use case and you will be fighting competitors in each of those different use cases.
00:28:19.600 --> 00:28:21.519
And I'll I have a funny example to walk this out.
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:27.279
So imagine you're like you know a startup and you say I'm very very narrow I'm I'm I'm religiously narrow.
00:28:27.360 --> 00:28:37.680
I've I've honed in I'm gonna build my whole business around selling to tattoo artists right so you're like that's it it's a small TAM I'm not going after this giant venture back story.
00:28:37.840 --> 00:31:13.200
I'm being very you know restrained and I just gonna go sell to these tattoo artists so you say okay well what what what problems do they have and I say well the tattoo gun is kind of like uh it's it's not that good I have a newer better tattoo gun that can solve all these issues I don't yeah I'm making this up right so you say I'm gonna go I'm gonna go to market and I'm gonna sell this tattoo gun you're just like okay well that's great so you start selling it to tattoo artists they love it awesome well what's some other problems we could solve for tattoo artists okay well a lot of the tattoo artists I talk to again I'm making this up uh they are at the shop all the time so they have a lot of marital problems so a lot of them are struggling in their marriages what if we made an app that was marriage counseling in an app for tattoo artists great second product I launch it I get some tattoo artists on it they think that's cool and then I'm like well what else could I sell them and I say well they also really struggle with tax prep when it comes tax time they're collecting all this cash and stuff from people and they got to put it it's what if we made a tax prep app and he's like great it's like awesome and then these startups would come to me and say all right so Anthony we've got these three products we sell them tattoo artists we have one ICP sell them to tattoo artists and you know the the gun costs 300 bucks so that's a one time purchase the marriage and counseling app is like a$10 a month thing and then the tax prep happens once a year but it's like a thousand or something what we would really love is to sell all of them at the same time because that would be the best for us right how can we market these things all together we need we're looking for a combined story and then you would say well what is the combined story what would be the combined job to be done of someone who would say I need to fix my tattoo gun fix my marriage do my tax prep what what what's the story there what would be the cold email that you would send to a tattoo artist to sell those three products against something they're trying to do can you guys think of anything well it would be like it would be like live well or something live well right yeah but then we get into the challenge so that's what almost everyone does is they say I'm gonna pull from a much higher level job to be done right which sometimes will be like grow your business yeah increase your revenue but that that brings us to another concept we we've called this job coverage where it's like if you claim to service a job to be done how much of that job to be done do you actually cover right so if I sell the tattoo gun the marriage counseling app and the tax prep have I really covered the job of living well right like probably not there's a million things that would be under living well that I'm not going to cover.
00:31:13.360 --> 00:32:36.880
So people would perceive my claim as being bullshit right they would say you don't help me live well you just help me with these random three things so like in reality these are three segments it feels like it's one segment because I'm saying I uh tattoo artists industry focus but people who need a new tattoo gun are not necessarily the people who have marriage problems and people who have marriage problems are not necessarily the people who have tax prep problems so if I was going to sell these three products there is no unified story yeah it's just three products with three stories and who's my competitors right the tattoo gun competitor is the other tattoo gun providers the marriage counseling is you know a real counselor yeah the tax prep is an accountant so now I'm waging three wars three battles three positioning strategies three messaging strategies three outbound strategies um and then any one of them are gonna want to see testimonials and and case studies in their relative thing right they're gonna be like if if I'm buying selling the tattoo gun someone else who had the marriage counseling app they're gonna be like you know these things are not cross pollinating you wouldn't be like well you should buy my tattoo gun because all these people loved my marriage counseling app yeah like what you know so I don't know long long illustration but I think I think it gets to the heart of it where people because we're looking at software it's not so blatant like when you hear those things it sounds so silly.
00:32:37.120 --> 00:33:07.200
Who would think that that that you could sell these things at once but since it's software we delude ourselves and think I actually probably could sell the software that does these three different jobs for you done three different use cases yeah not realizing it's the same thing as just having three it's like a business that sells a car a boat and a you know I don't know a coat or something and you're like you know you're like hey you should buy my car why because we're we make great boats or coats yeah you should buy my boat because I sell really good coats.
00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:12.559
Yeah but it just doesn't make any sense yeah I think it's obvious in physical but not as much in software.
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:26.720
I'm getting the vibe that you went out for a friend uh for dinner with a friend last night who's a tattoo artist who's having marriage issues who also like needs a new car but is like thinking about getting a boat as well because he loves his coat.
00:33:26.880 --> 00:35:06.879
And it's interesting I mean like yeah this I think is really really compelling and it's it's actually a problem that businesses just walk into simply by growing and succeeding sometimes right yeah and and so it's kind of it makes it hard in some in some cases harder to to address because it is a symptom of success in some cases but just for people listening you know when we talk about the uh the inverse so you've got one product one with one job to be done that you can sell well to 10 uh industries or 10 customers you know that could sound to people like 10 ICPs but it isn't right so how do we how do we tackle that disparity it's uh you know it we've got the one ICP but we've got three products that's three battles it's three times well three hundred times as hard but we don't want to be in a situation where we've got one product one job to be done but we've got 10 ICPs right yeah and it really comes down to so we've seen people do the inverse of what I'm suggesting and they say I service one job to be done and it shows up in all these different industries and you say great what's what's that job to be done that shows up and they're like it's really we connect disparate systems right we connect different siloed systems and you say okay is that how the customer would conceptualize the job to be done and they're like well not necessarily like the e-commerce businesses that we sell to they say I'm trying to connect my ERP to Shopify they're disparate systems.
00:35:07.039 --> 00:36:05.199
And then when we talk to the you know construction one I'm trying to connect pro core to my whatever and it's like these specific things and you're like so so would any customer ever say like the big goal for this quarter is we're going to connect our disparate systems and they're like well no no one would say that then I would say that's probably just different jobs to be done then like you from a product angle are seeing these abstracted away and you're able to see that they're similar problems but again it has to be from a customer perspective because again we go back to what's the point what's the point of a segmentation it's a group of people that you can market to yeah so if I can't show the same cold email to these 10 industries and have it be perceived in the same way then they're not the same segment if I go because again if I send emails to these 10 and I say hey are you trying to a lot of people we see are struggling with disparate systems that are not connected you know is that a problem you have we've got a solution that connects your disparate systems.
00:36:05.279 --> 00:36:06.959
They're gonna be like what the hell are you talking about?
00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:08.719
Like what what does this even mean?
00:36:08.799 --> 00:36:09.599
Like are you a human?
00:36:09.679 --> 00:36:10.399
Is this a robot?
00:36:10.559 --> 00:36:12.159
Like no one talks like that.
00:36:12.319 --> 00:36:24.719
And then I would have to then actually change it and say some sort of specific message for those people right in their world I have to say we talk to people that are trying to connect Shopify and blah blah blah and all of a sudden it's its own message.
00:36:24.879 --> 00:36:57.359
So we're talking about scalability in terms of the go to market right like how much can we reuse the same identical assets can I show in front of these people so like you you know you go back to a lot of the big PLG companies from the 2020s right like Calendly I can show a CEO, a doctor, uh a teacher a message where it says hey are you trying to schedule meetings over email and they all would say yes I am hey you probably just send emails back and forth being like does this time work?
00:36:57.519 --> 00:36:58.239
Does that time work?
00:36:58.319 --> 00:37:31.359
And it's really annoying what if there is this product that could help you figure out exactly when to do it and have a pre you know selected times and all that stuff and that's why those types of companies grew so fast because again one job to be done that truly is shared by all these different industries and for for Calendly you wouldn't say oh look at how many different industries like look at how many ICPs they have right you'd be like well kind of I'm not really though because they really just have one segment that they're going after which is a job to be done based segment people who are trying to schedule meetings over email.
00:37:31.759 --> 00:40:42.519
Yeah and that shrinks the complexity yeah I think that's an important important message to to take away because it's creating that alignment the simplicity uh you know understanding that you've got to reach you've got to find a place where it's a shared way of describing of thinking uh and of solving a problem that is a segment and and the minute you get into a territory where there's a difference in how we talk about it or how it's perceived you're you're you're at a decision point where you're gonna say well are we going to try and market to both of these segments at once and and and and have we got the budget for that most usually the answer is no um or or narrow that down and so many businesses are afraid to narrow but it's actually usually positive um because we're never really that narrow right this is a big yeah big world we we live in and the narrow isn't usually too small but these are definitely the themes and concepts that we see people you know wrestling with when they're trying to get this right yeah um I want to give listeners something actionable to take away right so Anthony why don't you grade me on my approach right if I was gonna go and figure out if we have a positioning problem and in our business right now I'd be thinking about interviewing key stakeholders in the business like a 30 minute call with you know 10 key stakeholders and asking them a series of questions about what they think the business does like what they think the benefits are who we who they think we serve best etc etc then collate that down into findings have everybody in a room and and share those is that a good approach a bad approach what would you do differently to to say to somebody here is how you are going to go today and identify if you've got a problem and rectify that yeah I mean I think I would I think you could do that I think there's a lot faster way to do that uh than even that to tell and um it sort of comes down to this this is a loose framework that we've we've sort of developed if you think about positioning the thing like you said before Phil you're finding spot to live in people's brains so the way that we interact with this very complicated world is we categorize things we put things in buckets right you say this is my phone this is my car this is my computer um even people right this is my boss this is my spouse this is my child my friend so we put all these things in buckets and so it's the same with software or services or whatever people say what bucket do I put you in and so companies have to either say I am in an existing bucket that you're familiar with which like we would say positioning in a mature category that's really just strategy one.
00:40:42.919 --> 00:40:57.559
Strategy two would say I am in a category but you've probably never never heard of it because it's new and emerging and nascent right and so for strategy two it's you're more aligning yourself to a job to be done and you're saying you know I'm a I'm software that helps you do this X thing that you're trying to do.
00:40:57.719 --> 00:41:04.759
Or you could say I'm I'm in a new category right I I don't want to be put in anyone's existing bucket I'm going out to create a new bucket from scratch.
00:41:04.919 --> 00:41:09.559
So there's examples of companies in strategy one strategy two strategy three that have really really become successful.
00:41:09.639 --> 00:41:19.959
So it's not like there's one that's better than the others it's all very circumstantial based on the product and where you think the opportunity is so like the first thing you would just look at is is our company in a category or not?
00:41:20.359 --> 00:41:21.959
Is there multiple categories right?
00:41:22.119 --> 00:42:05.559
And you could do that without asking anyone you can just look right like what do we call ourselves and so if you list out and you say well actually we kind of are spanning a lot of categories some people put us in this bucket some people put us in this bucket some people put us in this bucket uh and even you know not even customers but maybe were going out to the market saying four or five different things then the question would become okay well do we want one of these categories to be the primary thing people think of us for and you you know I always do this this is a fun exercise if I had to ask you guys in a word or two you know what is Salesforce cloud CRM CRM right yeah uh what is what does Stripe do?
00:42:05.879 --> 00:42:25.559
Payments payments right so I've asked that hundreds of times everyone says payments for stripe everyone says CRM but that's not the only thing they do they actually both have you know 30 40 products a piece stripe also can let your startup get in incorporated in Delaware that's not payments but it doesn't matter because it's like I'm known for one thing.
00:42:25.639 --> 00:42:44.759
So you look at your company you say what are all the categories we span are we willing to be in one of them primarily and then I would look at does our messaging reflect that are we saying we're in this category right and then I the next question would be to say do I feel like most of the customers that we sell to do they already know about this category or not?
00:42:44.999 --> 00:42:46.999
So you say most of them do.
00:42:47.239 --> 00:43:20.039
So okay maybe it's more mature for the segment we're going after and then the follow-up question would be are we saying why we're better than the other vendors publicly and usually the answer is no and you say that's probably where we have to change but if you go back and you say actually most people do not know about this category then it's a question of saying are we saying the specific job to be done because there's another thing too that every product category has a corresponding job to be done from the biggest to the smallest right they can be big jobs or small jobs like and it's usually like an inversion of the name of the category will get us to the job to be done.
00:43:20.119 --> 00:43:57.479
So customer relationship management the job to be done managing customer relationships right the scheduling tool like Calendly is for the job to be done of scheduling maintenance yeah scheduling right so there you go um you know the Slack the communication platform yeah messaging communication communicating right like so every category has a corresponding job to be done and so if we say all right so we're in this new emerging category that people don't know have we communicated to them through the lens of the job to be done are we saying you're trying to do X and we're a better way to do that usually the answer is no.
00:43:57.719 --> 00:43:59.399
And so maybe that's what you have to do.
00:43:59.559 --> 00:44:07.559
And so like what really what we're doing with companies is we're helping just map these the options we're saying okay what categories could we play in that are mature?
00:44:07.799 --> 00:44:10.599
What categories could we play in that are immature?
00:44:10.919 --> 00:44:13.799
And then is there an opportunity for a new category?
00:44:13.959 --> 00:44:20.199
And the the new category strategy is really looking at are there existing jobs to be done that don't have a great solution, right?
00:44:20.359 --> 00:44:31.639
Are there workflows, you know, tasks responsibilities that someone in the org has whether that's up to the C suite or all the way down to like an intern that doesn't really have a dedicated product category for it.
00:44:31.719 --> 00:44:31.879
Yeah.
00:44:32.039 --> 00:44:34.759
And you would say maybe there's an opportunity to create a new category there.
00:44:34.919 --> 00:45:10.039
So you would look across those things and then you're really doing like risk analysis and and opportunity mapping to say where do we think the opportunity is let's say we're making two million a year in ARR and we want to get to 10 where do we think the opportunity is is strongest and then there's like you know meta level questions of like should we stay just multiproduct and do we think we have the resources to just have three different products and market them separately and try to win them like again Stripe Atlas to incorporate your startup in Delaware is facing a completely different competitor set than Stripe Payments.
00:45:10.119 --> 00:45:42.919
Yeah they have their own competitive set and they're just a multiproduct company because they're massive and they're like we can be multiproduct that's fine we have you know hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue maybe billions actually probably in revenue huge amounts of teams right so they're like we could we could be multiproduct so those are like questions like that but like it does seem like um you know a lot of people when they talk about positioning they see it very much like a customer interview type thing um and that could help us inputs but it is kind of an armchair thing where you can kind of Just sit back and just look at the market and be like, where do I think the opportunity is?
00:45:42.999 --> 00:45:43.239
Yeah.
00:45:43.399 --> 00:45:52.119
And then some companies are not ready for a positioning project if they haven't done enough customer conversations already or market mapping or looking out there.
00:45:52.199 --> 00:45:55.879
Like when we ask people, we say, like, okay, we're going to be together for two weeks.
00:45:56.119 --> 00:45:58.199
We're going to get your key people in a room.
00:45:58.519 --> 00:46:05.639
Do you think, knowing that we're going to be together for two weeks, we're going to pick something, a strategy that you're going to stick with for the next 12 months?
00:46:05.799 --> 00:46:07.079
How do you feel about that?
00:46:07.319 --> 00:46:08.919
And it's one of two reactions.
00:46:09.079 --> 00:46:11.719
Either they'll say, Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.
00:46:11.879 --> 00:46:13.159
We need to get unstuck.
00:46:13.559 --> 00:46:15.799
Jeff in sales thinks we need to be going this way.
00:46:15.959 --> 00:46:17.639
Karen thinks we this is the opportunity.
00:46:17.719 --> 00:46:19.719
We just need to align around something, right?
00:46:19.799 --> 00:46:22.039
Those people, they're ready for positioning project.
00:46:22.279 --> 00:46:24.039
The other people say, What?
00:46:24.279 --> 00:46:25.079
Two weeks?
00:46:25.239 --> 00:46:27.079
I mean, we got to go out and see what's out there.
00:46:27.159 --> 00:46:28.439
We don't really know who the competitors are.
00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:29.559
We haven't really talked to our customer.
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:35.079
Like, we need to figure out like what really are the reasons that people are buying us and who are they comparing it?
00:46:35.159 --> 00:46:37.239
Like that person's not ready for positioning project.
00:46:37.319 --> 00:46:40.039
They need to go out and do research and like see what's going on.
00:46:40.279 --> 00:46:48.439
But assuming you're on the other side of that research, and then you actually are stepping into a positioning conversation, it really is just saying, where do we want to place the vet?
00:46:48.599 --> 00:46:50.679
Yeah, where do we feel like the opportunity is?
00:46:50.919 --> 00:47:08.919
That there's a that's there's I think an important message, which is you there needs to be gathering of information, uh, you know, taking place before for a positioning exercise to be productive and and hopefully it's a prerequisite, you know.
00:47:09.159 --> 00:47:22.839
Yeah, so you know, businesses need to be collating information from customers, from the market, um, about competitors from their own stakeholders as well, and and start doing that ASAP.
00:47:23.239 --> 00:47:23.479
Yeah.
00:47:23.719 --> 00:47:39.719
Um, conscious of time, and there's one thing that I I really want to ask, which is around the impact of AI, not in creating positioning, because I think that's clear, like how you could use AI to benefit you if you wanted to DIY this instead of using Fletch, of course.
00:47:39.879 --> 00:47:52.119
Um, but the impact that messaging in your digital assets and on your website can have now because of AI summarizing companies and what you do.
00:47:52.279 --> 00:47:54.599
Like, how have you seen that change?
00:47:54.679 --> 00:48:01.159
And and do you need to change messaging uh to suit the way that AI is summarizing businesses?
00:48:01.239 --> 00:48:04.839
Like, how has it impacted what you're seeing and doing at Fletch?
00:48:05.479 --> 00:48:21.639
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of just accelerating the same trends that were already there, like SEO practices, from what I understand of the people who now do AEO, like answer engine optimization, they say it's kind of the same thing, but better.
00:48:21.879 --> 00:48:31.559
They're like all the stuff around SEO that would try to get you ranking, like you're still kind of doing the same stuff, and the LLMs are just better at summarizing and figuring out where you should be.
00:48:31.719 --> 00:48:39.639
And so I think being extremely clear in your messaging is gonna help even more than it did with SEO, where it was kind of a dumber technology.
00:48:39.959 --> 00:48:41.719
Now being smarter, you're actually gonna help.
00:48:41.799 --> 00:48:43.159
Like, I'll give an example of us.
00:48:43.239 --> 00:48:55.239
Like, if you search in an LLM and you say, I am, you know, a B2B software startup, I'm struggling with my product positioning, I'm looking for an external consultant.
00:48:55.399 --> 00:48:56.679
Who should I talk to?
00:48:56.919 --> 00:49:00.119
Me and Rob with Fletch, we usually come up in the answers.
00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:05.399
And so when people hear that, and you know, they'll get on calls with us, we'll take sales calls with people, and we say, How'd you hear about us?
00:49:05.479 --> 00:49:08.279
Oh, I was I was sparring with Claude and they recommended you.
00:49:08.359 --> 00:49:09.479
And they're like, That's so cool.
00:49:09.559 --> 00:49:10.359
What have you guys been doing?
00:49:10.439 --> 00:49:27.799
Like, you're doing some of those cool AEO practices, and we're like, No, we're just existing as a business with credibility in the space, and all the things you do as a focused company will make the LLMs find you because they're looking and they're very smart to do that.
00:49:28.039 --> 00:49:40.359
If you go out with this really weird scatter shot message, the LLM is not gonna see that as a strong signal of like this is really who you would need, because it's very clear you're not focused.
00:49:40.679 --> 00:49:48.679
So I think all the principles that were important before are even more important now with the advent of AI.
00:49:48.999 --> 00:49:51.799
Yeah, yeah, we've definitely, definitely seen that.
00:49:51.959 --> 00:50:06.439
When you think about the way that AI um retrieves information and the way that they passage information and then summarize it and synthesize it, it is all around relevancy and being extremely accurate to the prompt that's actually being injected.
00:50:06.599 --> 00:50:20.359
So the the more clear and concise you can be in in messaging, which of course is you know what this conversation has been about, it's gonna benefit you in in many ways, and especially when it comes to AEO now.
00:50:20.599 --> 00:50:23.399
Yeah, everything everything is easier when you're focused.
00:50:23.559 --> 00:50:49.719
And in this context, that means knowing who your ICP is, having clear, sound positioning that enables you to create messaging that resonates and makes sense and connects, and then everywhere you put that, it's gonna add to, you know, rather than deduct from the world's understanding of who you are and what you do, whether that's at the LLM or the or the buyer uh you know on your website.
00:50:49.799 --> 00:50:54.359
So that focus and having those building blocks, those crucial building blocks in place.
00:50:54.519 --> 00:51:10.839
And we frequently meet companies that don't really have those blocks in existence, don't really have a stated or documented ICP or positioning for that matter, or any kind of messaging guide, you know, but they are powerful at making everything else easier.
00:51:10.999 --> 00:51:12.279
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:51:12.519 --> 00:51:30.919
Um, Anthony, just want to leave us on like one rapid fire question, I suppose, which is what's the fastest fix somebody should look at right now that has the biggest outsized impact when it comes to positioning advice?
00:51:31.559 --> 00:51:32.919
Yeah, it's funny.
00:51:32.999 --> 00:51:44.119
I mean, it's like there like with because we're talking about something that is like core company strategy, you know, there is uh there are a few fast fixes.
00:51:44.599 --> 00:51:46.839
And that that could be the answer as well, right?
00:51:46.919 --> 00:51:51.079
Which is this isn't a fast thing, like it's a fundamental thing.
00:51:51.399 --> 00:51:53.159
I think that here's here's the thing.
00:51:53.399 --> 00:52:15.079
I would look at your homepage and say, let's say you're in a category and say, if that category is a category that most of your customers have heard of, just go section by section and say really quickly rank is the thing that I'm saying right now differentiated from the other people in that category or not?
00:52:15.479 --> 00:52:17.799
And if it's not, change it, cut it.
00:52:18.039 --> 00:52:27.719
Like we we were just working with a company last week and we were going through their product and we were looking at the page, and I said, Would the other category vendors say the same thing?
00:52:27.879 --> 00:52:28.599
They said, Yeah.
00:52:28.839 --> 00:52:29.879
And I went to the next one.
00:52:30.039 --> 00:52:31.799
Whether they make the same claim here, yeah.
00:52:32.039 --> 00:52:32.919
Next one, yeah.
00:52:33.159 --> 00:52:34.439
This one, well, not that one.
00:52:34.599 --> 00:52:35.239
Okay, interesting.
00:52:35.319 --> 00:52:36.119
What about this next one?
00:52:36.199 --> 00:52:37.079
Yeah, they'd say that.
00:52:37.319 --> 00:52:41.479
I'm like, and I'm like, and your customers would know this category and know the competitors, yeah, yeah.
00:52:41.559 --> 00:52:45.239
They're the competitors way bigger than us, and everyone uses them, and they're kind of the market leader.
00:52:45.479 --> 00:52:48.999
I'm like, you probably want to differentiate then, yeah, right.
00:52:49.159 --> 00:53:01.399
So I would I would do that and just make sure, because again, if you look at your hero and you're like, you know, it's a project management tool, and then the body says, get everyone working on the same page.
00:53:01.559 --> 00:53:05.399
It's like that's what the tool does, like that's what they all do.
00:53:05.479 --> 00:53:06.119
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:53:06.279 --> 00:53:10.599
And assuming you're not living under a rock, you've probably used a project management tool at some point.
00:53:10.999 --> 00:53:14.359
That's not that's that's wasted it, it's wasted air, wasted space.
00:53:14.519 --> 00:53:15.799
Yeah, uh amazing.
00:53:15.879 --> 00:53:16.839
That was that was awesome.
00:53:16.999 --> 00:53:18.439
Any final thoughts from you, Phil?
00:53:18.599 --> 00:53:19.319
No, that's great.
00:53:19.399 --> 00:53:29.879
I think this is such a crucial area um of you know, well, I was about to say the modern B2B go to market, but it's not modern, it's always been crucial.
00:53:29.959 --> 00:53:42.119
Yeah, but we're yeah, we're always keen to help and see what's amiss in companies um strategy in this area.
00:53:42.199 --> 00:53:43.799
So, no, been fascinating to discuss.
00:53:44.039 --> 00:53:44.999
Yeah, yeah, awesome.
00:53:45.159 --> 00:53:53.239
Um, I would say as well to listeners, the Fletch newsletter, actually, which Anthony forced me to sign up to, um is is awesome.
00:53:53.559 --> 00:53:54.119
Bloody good, I think.
00:53:54.439 --> 00:53:55.319
Yeah, like really good.
00:53:55.479 --> 00:54:07.319
So that's one one thing that I would say is a takeaway, like go and subscribe to that because it's it's just like yeah, public service to uh B2B companies.
00:54:07.479 --> 00:54:09.479
Um, so yeah, awesome.
00:54:09.719 --> 00:54:10.519
Um, right.
00:54:10.599 --> 00:54:16.999
I don't wanna I don't want to take up any more of your time, Anthony, because it's been like such a useful and enjoyable conversation.
00:54:17.159 --> 00:54:19.479
So yeah, just want to say thank you for joining us.
00:54:19.639 --> 00:54:23.159
Um and yeah, uh it's been great, great having you.
00:54:23.399 --> 00:54:24.039
Thanks for having me.
00:54:24.199 --> 00:54:25.879
Super fun to be with you guys.
