Many tech CEOs see missed revenue targets and immediately pressure the sales team to “sell harder,” assuming sales execution is the core problem. In reality, when customers do not quickly understand what a company does, why it is different, and why it matters to them, no sales process can fully compensate for poor positioning. This blog argues that the root cause of slowing sales is often a positioning problem, not a sales problem, and explains what tech CEOs get wrong—and how to correct it.
Understanding Positioning
Positioning describes how customers perceive a company or product in relation to the problem they are trying to solve and the alternatives they know. It is not just a tagline or messaging exercise; it is the mental “slot” a solution occupies in a buyer’s mind, including category, use case, and relative value. When positioning is clear, buyers can quickly connect their need to the solution and place it correctly among competing options.
Positioning also acts as a leading indicator of brand health because it shapes awareness, consideration, and preference long before a specific deal is in play. If customers routinely confuse a company with unrelated brands or struggle to describe what it does, that confusion signals misaligned positioning, no matter how strong the technology is.
Why Positioning Matters to Tech CEOs
For tech companies, positioning heavily influences how easy or hard it is for customers to buy. When buyers immediately understand the category, problem, and primary benefit, they face less risk and friction, which shortens sales cycles and improves win rates.
Strong positioning also accelerates product–market fit by forcing clarity about which customers are being served, what problem is being solved, and how the solution compares to alternatives. This clarity, in turn, supports higher revenue growth, better capital access, and a more defensible competitive story that investors and acquirers can understand quickly.
Common Positioning Mistakes Tech CEOs Make
Many tech CEOs underestimate how often customers confuse their company with other brands, including those outside their core competitive set, because their positioning sounds generic or interchangeable. When a brand’s description could apply to dozens of vendors, customers struggle to recall or distinguish it, which weakens preference and price power.
Another common mistake is allowing complex, drawn-out buying processes—heavy RFPs, lengthy pilots, and multiple demos—to become the norm simply because customers cannot easily understand where the solution fits. Internally, CEOs may also dismiss persistent “messaging problems” as a marketing execution issue rather than recognizing that inconsistent or confusing narratives usually reflect deeper positioning gaps.
The Role of Category in Positioning
Category is the basic label buyers use to organize solutions in their minds, such as ERP, CRM, or ride-sharing. Clear category association helps customers quickly understand what a product does at a high level and which other brands it should be compared against.
For example, buyers often group providers into familiar categories like ERP, CRM, or ride sharing. When a tech company avoids or muddies its category, buyers are forced to do extra work to figure out where it fits, which increases friction and slows decisions.
The Ladder Metaphor: Positioning in the Customer’s Mind
A useful way to think about positioning is a “ladder” inside each category, where customers mentally rank the leading brands from top to bottom. Brands that own the top rungs tend to capture outsized attention, trust, and budget.
If a company is not clearly in the top set of options in a buyer’s mental ladder, it may effectively not exist in that buyer’s consideration set at all. This is why customers lean on comparison tools, RFPs, and complex evaluation processes when they cannot easily place a vendor; they are trying to build the ladder themselves, which increases decision fatigue and makes it harder for weaker or unclear brands to win.
Strategic Steps to Fix Positioning
Fixing positioning starts with rigorous insight work on customers, competitors, and the broader market to understand how buyers think about the problem and existing solutions. This includes identifying which segments have the strongest need, how they describe that need, and how they perceive the competitive landscape today.
A proven way to convert these insights into a clear narrative is Geoffrey Moore’s positioning template, which structures the core story as a statement for a defined target customer, with a specific need, where the product is explicitly named, placed in a clear product category, delivers a primary benefit that is a compelling reason to buy, and is differentiated in a specific way versus the main alternative.
- For (target customer)
- Who (statement of need or opportunity)
- The (product name)
- Is a (product category)
- That (statement of key benefit – compelling reason to buy)
- Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (primary differentiation).
Once an initial positioning statement is drafted, it should be tested with real customers to see whether it is immediately understood, credible, and distinctive. Feedback from these conversations should drive multiple iterations until the message is both simple and sharp, and then it should be rolled out consistently across teams so employees, partners, and customers all describe the company in the same way.
Benefits of Strong Positioning
When positioning is clear and compelling, sales conversations start further down the funnel because prospects already understand the problem–solution fit and core differentiation. This typically leads to shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and less reliance on heavy discounting to close deals.
Internally, strong positioning creates alignment across product, marketing, sales, and customer success, since everyone is anchored on the same target customer, problem, and value proposition. Externally, it strengthens employer branding, attracts talent that believes in the mission, and gives investors and potential acquirers a crisp story they can quickly evaluate.
Conclusion
Tech CEOs who focus solely on sales execution while neglecting positioning risk fighting the wrong battle. When customers cannot easily place a solution in a category, understand the core benefit, or see how it differs from alternatives, growth stalls regardless of how skilled the sales team is.
By doing the hard work of research, clarifying category, sharpening differentiation with a structured template, and aligning the entire organization around a simple, validated positioning statement, CEOs can remove friction from buying, strengthen their brand, and make their companies more attractive to investors and acquirers.