Speaker: Ganesh Subramanian, Director Product Marketing, Snowflake
When do you "position" your product? Is there a right time or is it a continuous process?
Ganesh Subramanian: So the question around positioning, great question and something that all of us face on a day to day basis, uh, thinking about the right time or a continuous process. My personal belief is it's a continuous process. You start very early on, perhaps with your first customers. You're in very tight partnership with them and understanding their value proposition very deeply. Of course, as you scale and you don't know your customers on a 1 to 1 basis anymore, it remains equally important to somehow put yourself in your customer's shoes and make sure that the day to day of working with your internal teams and functions doesn't get you away from understanding the value you're driving for your end users and customers. A few questions that I always think about who are our buyers, the person with the budget, and be to be obviously a very important persona. Any influencers people that are not directly involved with the transaction but can often accelerate or decelerate your your your velocity and deals and three year end users, making sure that they have a phenomenal experience in working with your product. So thinking about their needs, the value that you're driving for them on at all three levels becomes extremely important. Another thing that I always try to think about is what is the ecosystem that we're playing with it? Uh, you know, oftentimes, if you're a smaller company and you're trying to get traction, there is a core system of technology at this point that almost everyone that we're selling to is working with it. And we need to be very clear with our positioning. How do we work with the systems that are? Buyers and users and influencers are currently in on a day to day basis and fully bought in and invested. So a few thoughts there around positioning, obviously a deep topic and excited to go really deep on this with with others in the community.
How do you change your positioning successfully?
Ganesh Subramanian: so changing. Positioning? Uh, let's think about why this might happen. Um, two scenarios that might come up. One. You may be facing competition, or there might be changing market dynamics where your fit for your buyers is shifting. Um, or you might need to shift proactively in order to continue driving value for your customers over time. Three. Other is a bit more optimistic scenario where the value that you're driving for your customers could be expanding and you could actually address Ah, wider addressable market. And you need to change what you mean to your customers on That becomes very important. Um, two examples in my past, one at gained sight and now it Snowflake. We had the lock and good fortune as well as hard work toe get to a certain level of product market fit with our core personas. And there came a time where we believed our platform could serve wider value and there's an opportunity there, and what we did is try to think about what are those broader value points that we can serve who are those buyers and their needs and ultimately reposition accordingly? Um, and again, the other reason why this is important beyond just addressing a wider market or defending your existing market is that when even in B two B purchase decisions can become very emotional and very trigger based, right. And when you start a sale cycle with your organization, it's often marketing sales solutions, consultants, others all working together on delivering for your customer so your internal team needs to be aligned on what your value proposition is. Your all speaking the same message and changing a positioning are up leveling your message. It's really critical to nail that so that your team can execute to the highest degree possible. And the second reason is from the customer's perspective. Very quickly, your product and your business will fit within an existing brand perception, uh, in your customers minds. So do you fit as a lower level industry or persona specific solution? Or are you an enterprise wide technology? That's one example of where the brand quickly pigeonholes you or positions you at a much higher level, and so to reposition, it really drives value very quickly. If you can nail this and do this on, reinforce it over time, your customers the market will reinforce it for you and you will start driving more revenue at a higher level at a faster clip. If you're perceived to be more strategic to the business, um, as well as internal alignment, really execute to the same vision.
