Chapter 5 Nailing Your Go-to-Market Positioning It’s a given that your go-to-market positioning will change over time, but that’s no excuse not to focus on it early. The biggest challenge most startups face is not getting their positioning right in the first place. Your message is too feature-oriented, it sets the bar too low, it’s not relevant to the market, or it doesn’t resonate with investors. To be effective, your messaging must connect with your audience, be clear, repeatable, and strong enough to rise above all the noise in today’s market. It’s impossible to develop the right positioning for your company without thinking through every aspect of your go-to-market strategy. So, while officially about go-to-market positioning, this chapter is equally about nailing your go-to-market strategy. Investing the time to work on your positioning now, whether you’re a brand-new company or a growth-stage startup, will accelerate every aspect of your business. I’ve worked with lots of entrepreneurs and Investing time executives, with lots of different personalities to work on your and opinions. I can attest that it takes quite a bit positioning now of time to nail the right go-to-market positioning, will accelerate and that it’s not easy to do. My goal for this every aspect of your business. chapter is to give startups a specific framework that you can use to develop your own go-to- market positioning. This chapter will cover: • The impact that strong go-to-market positioning can have on your business. • Three hard truths that will help you avoid the most common startup mistakes (sorry in advance that these are so blunt). • The five important go-to-market considerations to think through when developing your own positioning. • A specific framework for developing strong go-to-market positioning. • Three exercises and templates you can use with your team to develop your own company positioning. The Impact of Strong Go-to-Market Positioning Nailing your go-to-market positioning helps more than just your marketing — it can accelerate your entire business. Specifically, it can shorten your sales cycle, inspire employees and recruiting efforts, and align all your executives around a common, unified strategy. Let’s take a closer look at how positioning impacts each area of your startup: