The Unintended Consequences of In-House Positioning

By Ellie Victor, Co-CEO

As the new CMO, one of your first high-profile initiatives is to update the corporate positioning. Should you conduct the positioning yourself or hire an outside agency? The in-house approach is tempting to earn a quick win and prove your mettle.  

On the other hand, how will you know if you hit on the winning idea and gain buy-in from your peers? 

Here are the top concerns our clients have shared with us about the unintended consequences of in-house positioning.

It doesn’t stick.

Because the positioning was developed in a series of internal meetings, it can just as easily become undone in another meeting.  Since it’s free,  it’s viewed as something that can be done repeatedly. This is incredibly demotivating for the marketing team, but it also undermines sales and product development because there’s not a single truth; positioning is fluid and at the mercy of the loudest critic. 

When a company invests in a robust, inclusive process, all the teams can stand behind the message. Clients report that this kind of buy-in directly increased productivity because it ended micro negotiations at every turn.

It’s death by committee.

Too often, divergent priorities and company politics can hamper the process. Rather than focusing on the customer and the story, internal teams also have to manage a complex landscape that makes the process complicated and defocused. At the same time, in-house efforts are likely to suffer from groupthink (the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility) and limiting beliefs (a thought or state of mind that you think is the absolute truth and stops you from doing certain things) that don’t get examined because it’s too political. 

With fresh perspectives and a virtual bag of case studies, an outsider can share the learning that helps leaders expand their thinking and consider new information. Over and over, clients report that the process of positioning strategically aligns the leadership team in happily unexpected ways.

It isn’t tested.

One of the toughest challenges in leading a positioning project is getting buy-in. Our clients tell us that testing positioning concepts with prospects is the best way to get buy in. Testing ensures that the positioning speaks the customers language—instead of buzzwords—and hits on the ideas that motivate them.  

The easiest way to determine if this is happening in your organization is to assess the alignment between sales and marketing. Is your sales team using the positioning or producing their own marketing materials? Not only is this confusing to the customer, but it’s also expensive. When sales is working on marketing, they’re spending less time selling. Everyone can play their position when the teams agree: marketing generates leads, and sales sells.

When companies go outside for positioning, there’s a dramatically different outcome.

The trick is to find the right agency for your organization. We advocate choosing an agency that uses a data-driven approach to validate the positioning hypothesis. By using data, it removes bias and assumptions while honoring the importance of outside constituencies like customers, partners, and investors.

Let’s talk about how we can help you achieve breakthrough positioning using our data-driven methodology that will align leadership, streamline marketing and shorten your sales cycle.