Four Forces of Positioning

POSITIONING STRATEGIES has developed a unique model for analyzing a product or company positioning strategy challenge.  Like the principles of flight, technology positioning can be reduced to simple matters of overcoming negative forces. As thrust must overcome drag, vision must overcome the risk as perceived by the market. As lift must overcome gravity, differentiation must overcome competition.  POSITIONING STRATEGIES uses this model in its proven positioning methodology.
 

VISION: Vision is a term too often misapplied. To us, a market vision is always “the route to an alternative future.” Visionary companies describe an unexpected future and define the engines and benefits of change for customers.  These are not the familiar benefits of the expected future.  Instead, they are the new, superior benefits of the alternative future.

COMPETITION: It’s always necessary to think about other vendors currently or potentially going for the revenue we seek. It is vital to determine the positioning options that competitors have taken — or soon will. POSITIONING STRATEGIES’ CASE Advantage Analysis Model™ makes competition analysis efficient. For purposes of positioning, there is no point to analyzing competitors beyond defining what your company can — or could — do better than they do.

RISK PROFILE: Customers of technology companies, especially companies serving emerging categories, take a certain amount of risk.  Sound positioning is the best way to reduce a prospect’s perceived risk of doing business with you.  One key is demonstrating how a company’s product roadmap aligns with its segment penetration roadmap. That is, showing who gets what additional value and when they get it.

DIFFERENTIATION: Achieving differentiation requires more than the expression of a positioning goal.  A company must define for itself a space where it provides unique value. In part, that requires a willingness to accept limits. Positioning success requires discipline, both for strategically focusing company resources, as well as for foregoing opportunities that are not on-strategy. The business model implications of strategy options must be explicit.