Anthony Pierri 🎸

Ladies and gentlemen...
we have found the number 1 software platform.

In what category?
Doesn't matter.

By what criteria?
Who cares.

Of all the platforms, there can only be one number 1.
And Okta is it.

Look at your homepage and see how YOU answer this question:
"what is your product?"

Do you at least say what product category you're in?
Or do you at least list the main use case of your product?

And are both of these specific enough that your ICP would immediately "get it"?

It may surprise you to find how few companies actually pass this simple test.

You will find far more answering the way the gigachads answer in the right side of the diagram:

1) outcomes-only
2) vision-only

Many will attempt the left side, but will make a category name that no one has ever heard of (i.e. "intelligent agreement management") which is the same as not saying any category at all.

Or they will pick a product use case that is so broad it doesn't actually tell us anything concrete:

"Our product is for marketing!"

If you don't adequately answer "what is it," then no one will care about anything else you have to say.

Me: "Maybe if I keep making fun of vague homepages, software companies will stop making them."
Software companies:

There's one thing that almost everyone overlooks when it comes to positioning...

And that's CATEGORY awareness.

I'm not talking about the five stages of awareness concept.

(I don't think that people move linearly through those, but that's a topic for another day)

I am talking about whether people know the category exists, know what it does, know why they'd want it, etc.

Those people need to be sold to fundamentally different than to people who do NOT know the category exists.

Each of these strategies requires a completely different GTM.

They BOTH have their own five stages of awareness starting with "problem unaware" — the people who have the category already may not be aware that that category has an issue at all.

There have been plenty of companies who have primarily gone to market for either the category-aware side or the category-unaware side. I've provided some examples in the carousel below.

We just sent the very first Fletch newsletter ever.

I'm putting it here, so it's likely not a single person will see this post.

There's so many technical things I need to figure out still (switching it to our domain, having these live on our Fletch website for SEO purposes, what the format should be, etc.)

But here's our first stab!

https://lnkd.in/gPvxQtU8

Any feedback would be appreciated 🙏🏻

If you want to sign up for it, you can at fletchpmm . com / newsletter.

I'm not saying all marketers are liars,
but... 😬 😬 😬

A LOT of what we do is promise things that go far beyond what we can guarantee.

We've been trained to "sell the outcome."

And in business contexts that means selling the BUSINESS outcome.

Things like "getting more customers," "increasing revenue," "business growth," etc.

Here's the problem:
business outcomes are never driven by one thing

Every BUSINESS outcome is determined by an interlocking set of factors that span the entire BUSINESS.

Whether or not a B2B software company "wins more customers" is a function of...

• Precise ICP targeting and segmentation
• Marketing reach within target roles and industries
• Executive thought leadership and content
• Case studies, logos, and peer validation
• Brand credibility
• Differentiation from legacy tools or point solutions
• Positioning [WHAT WE DO]
• Competitive landscape
• Free trials, pilot programs, or POCs
• Pricing and contract flexibility
• Sales execution and account-based strategy
• Tech stack & ecosystem fit
• Regulatory and compliance readiness (SOC 2, HIPAA)
• Procurement process alignment
• Product breadth and roadmap confidence
• Channel or partner integrations
• Market timing and budget cycles
• Platform stability & uptime
• User experience
• Implementation onboarding support

And on and on and on.

No product/service impacts all these factors.

And so... no product can guarantee a business-level outcome.

To tell someone that adopting a CRM will make them "win more customers" is simply a lie.

They will win more customers provided that...

ALL THOSE OTHER FACTORS THAT ARE UNRELATED TO A CRM ARE WORKING PROPERLY.

If you take someone who is just starting out and has no product yet and they buy a CRM...

...they will not "win more customers."

So what are TRUE outcomes that CRMs can guarantee?

They can help teams be more organized.
They can help teams do forecasting.
They can help teams see all customer touchpoints.

These are the REAL reasons customers purchase CRMs.

Notice that these outcomes are very "functional."

This is because all B2B software is, in essence, "workflow software."

Workers get software to help them do their work
(hence it's "workflow software")

A rule of thumb...

if you would feel very uncomfortable putting "increase revenue" in your contract as a guaranteed outcome...

...maybe avoid saying it in your marketing materials.

I understand you might think I am a hack for saying this.

But my co-founder and I do roughly $1.7m a year as a three-person consultancy, and we have never once promised any of these business outcomes.

We ONLY promise what we can GUARANTEE:
→ a clarified positioning strategy documented in a crystal clear homepage

If everything else is working,
then you WILL get those good business outcomes.

But it won't be as a result of us:
it will be the result of us + the thousands of other things you're doing that we won't touch.

They say it takes 10 years to build a startup.
I wonder if you could do it in 5 if you stopped changing your positioning every three months.