Monday, September 28, 2020

Obviously Awesome by April Dunford

 Obviously Awesome by April Dunford is a solid marketing book subtitled How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.

Dunford covers how positioning is the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about. Customers need to be able to easily understand what your product is, why it's unique, and why that matters to them. She goes on to note that positioning can be thought of as context-setting. Most products are exceptional only when understood within their best frame of reference. Great positioning takes into account the customer's point of view on the problem you solve, alternative ways of solving that problem, and how you're different than them. 

Additionally, Dunford writes how the worst part of standard "who is it for, what does it provide" positioning statements is they assume the marketers know the answers. Rather, the most enthusiastic customers are the best people to say what a given product is, why it's unique, and why that matters to them. Marketers should try to find out what these fans of your product would do if your solution didn't exist, what's their alternative? Understanding what your best customers see as true alternatives to your solution will lead you to your differentiators or unique attributes. Also, the characteristics of these most enthusiastic customers are important as determining who they are means others with these same characteristics can be targeted. 

There's interesting concepts in the book and Dunford closes with steps on how to go about positioning, and then how to write it up as part of a positioning canvas:

Step one - understand what your most passionate customers say.
Step two - form a positioning team, with that team cutting across your business functions.
Step three - align your positioning vocabulary and let go of your positioning baggage.
Step four - list your true competitive alternatives. 
Step five - isolate your unique attributes or features.
Step six - map the attributes to value themes.
Step seven - determine who cares a lot, narrowly at first, you can broaden later.
Step eight - find a market frame of reference that puts your strengths at the center of it.
Step nine - layer on a trend (but be careful).
Step ten - capture your positioning so it can be shared. 

1. product name and one-line description.
2. market category and subcategory.
3. competitive alternatives - if your product didn't exist.
4. unique attributes - stuff that alternatives don't have.
5. value that those attributes enables for customers.
6. what type of customer cares a lot.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Aligned to Achieve by Tracy Elier and Andrea Austin

Aligned to Achieve by Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin is subtitled How to Unite Your Sales and Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth and is from two people who have done impressive work. Eiler and Auston are founding members of the non-profit organization Women in Revenue, with its website noting focus on (A) education and awareness of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, (B) giving back to women through mentorship programs, opportunities and access to resources, and (C) moving members careers forward.

It's noted in the book that Eiler and Austin met when working together at a San Francisco-based SaaS company, with Eiler CMO and Austin Sales VP, and they they wrote of how customers don’t see sales and marketing, they see a brand and customers are getting much of their information on their own, not from a sales rep. Additionally, the purchasing process is no longer a simple funnel, it’s now a series of touchpoints and handoffs across the customer journey. For these reasons and others, it’s so important that sales and marketing be aligned in their goals, approach, and actions. Some of the specific areas to align on include lead scoring, internal systems, pipeline measurement alignment, win rates, and SLAs for both teams. 

Eiler and Austin detail that probably the most impactful thing to bring about alignment is communication, sales and marketing talking to each other, getting to know as people those in the other group within the company. On a more tactical level, part of bringing about alignment is a focus on the data. It’s detailed in the book how data can easily become siloed, and if it not paid sufficient attention to and kept current in one system, data can drive a wedge between sales and marketing. They also note how in terms of systems utilized, it’s good to have IT involved because that can help head off data silos with sales and marketing using their own systems.

Also is the book is the results of a survey Eiler and Austin ran, revealing the biggest obstacles to sales and marketing were, in order: communication shortfalls, processes are broken/flawed, measurement done by different metrics, and a lack of accurate data on target accounts. It’s certainly not an easy endeavor to reach sales and marketing alignment, but Eiler and Austin provide some good content to help.

Monday, September 07, 2020

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

The Story of More by Hope Jahren is a good book following up on her biography Lab Girl and this effort subtitled How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here.

Part One: Life - Jahren notes how in 2009 she was asked to teach a class on climate change and the research for that led to The Story of More. The point is made that the problem we have with resources in the world today is one of distribution, many of us consume beyond our needs and many don't have enough resources. The vast majority of deaths in the world come from illness, with in the developed countries those coming from heart disease and cancer, and in less developed countries, from things linked to lack of access to clean water, sewage systems, vaccinations, and antibiotics. Jahren covers that there have been definite improvements in access to clean water and immunizations, but it still a large problem in much of the world.

Part Two: Food - Jahren starts this section by detailing how eating meat requires an enormous amount of resources. Six pounds of grain fed to an animal results in one pound of meat harvested. She makes the point that people don't necessarily need to become vegetarians, they just need to eat less red meat and poultry, as eating less meat means less grain that goes into feeding the animals that are eaten. If the 37 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cut meat consumption by half, it would free up 120 millions tons of grain per year to feed the hungry. Additionally, there's a similar problem with fish that there is with meat as most fish eaten today are harvested via aquaculture rather than line-caught, and require large amounts of fish food, one pound of salmon requires three pounds of fish meal. Jahren also notes the negative impact of waste, 20% of what American families send to the landfill each day is edible food, around 2/3 pound a day.

Part Three: Energy - Detailed in the book is how we use energy for everything, and energy, just like food is heavily weighted towards developed countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, has just over 13% of the global population and less than half the people there live without electricity. The region also has half of all people globally who live without access to clean water. Back to the idea of distribution, Jahren notes that if all the fuel and electricity used today were distributed equally to every person on the globe, they would have plenty, consuming the same amount as the average person in Switzerland in the 1960s. The mantra around this, and many other things in the book is use less and share more. It's also covered how cars and airplanes are enormous energy hogs, as well as outrageously dangerous, and how most discussion around energy is around how we can get more, not how we can use less.

Part Four: Earth - Jahren writes of how the burning of fossil fuels leads to more carbon dioxide, warmer temperatures, melting ice, and rising waters. We're at a risk for a sixth mass extinction of species, with the last sixty-six million years ago wiping out the dinosaurs. There are wide-scale geo-engineering projects being talked about, and those discussions should occur, but energy conservation requires the least effort of any approach. There is reason for hope, we can foster that by looking at our own lives and how we use.

Appendix: The Action You Take - She closes the book with the notion that each person should think about what matters to them, learn about it, make a change that they can make. Even seemingly simple changes like buying less food so there's less waste and keeping the heater or A/C in the house turned off or down matter. It's noted that home energy use largely driven by the water heater, if someone can go from a fifty gallon heater to twenty, energy usage in the house can be cut a great deal. It's a sobering book to be sure, but also one with reason for hope and tangible ideas that can be implemented.

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost is a solid memoir from the fifteen-year Saturday Night Live veteran, hired as a staff writer, and then head writer and for the past six years, also co-host of Weekend Update.

Jost provides interesting and entertaining stories of his life, starting with growing up on Staten Island, and at the age of 14, getting accepted into Regis, a free Catholic high school in Manhattan. The school is one of the best in the country, with each year tens of thousands of kids applying for 120 spots in each class. It's covered in the book how it would take Jost at least 90 minutes one-way to commute to and from school, with him on his own taking a bus, ferry, and subway. He and his friends then would often roam New York City after school and Jost while at Regis did speech and debate, something that required having a short-term memory of success or failures, which he noted as helping later while at Saturday Light Live.

Jost got into Harvard and covers in the book how he didn't fit in for much of his freshman year, and then discovered the Harvard Lampoon magazine. He learned he wanted to be a comedy writer and, just as with Regis, it was difficult to get accepted, with hundreds applying every semester and usually only three or four writers being accepted into the Lampoon based on the strength of their writing. He got in on his third attempt and over the course of two and a half years on staff, had more than a hundred pieces published in the magazine. He was elected president in his junior year and notes in the book how he found others who cared about comedy as much as he did.

He graduated Harvard, with his studies in Russian Literature, and got a job as a night editor with a Staten Island newspaper. He wanted to be in comedy so even though he liked the job, saved up enough money to cover rent for two months and quit, sending letters to TV shows asking them to read his writing samples. He took a job writing for a now-defunct company called Animation Collective and while there, got a call from Saturday Night Live based on a submission, and was hired as an SNL staff writer at the age of twenty-two.

There's great stories from Saturday Night Live, as well as his stand-up comedy, which Jost notes that he's been doing for sixteen years, thousands of shows and still fifty to a hundred a year. It was tremendously interesting reading of how Jost after graduating Harvard worked so hard for little money to get started in entertainment, and about his insecurities, being afraid of being boring. Jost also writes about his mom, who was Chief Medical Officer for the New York City Fire Department during 9/11, and what she went through that day and immediately after. It's an excellent book that's insightful and has great stories.

Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen

Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen is another entertaining work of fiction from the author, with the book featuring several of his recurring characters as well as many new in the zany state of Florida. This is the 11th book of Hiaasen's I've read and it's a funny one that doesn't disappoint.