{"id":10564,"date":"2025-11-14T18:01:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T00:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10564"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:01:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T00:01:26","slug":"the-quiet-positioning-mistakes-that-kill-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10564","title":{"rendered":"The quiet positioning mistakes that kill growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many teams position around what sounds compelling instead of what\u2019s true. It works for a moment \u2014 demos spike and early reactions look positive. However, the gap between the pitch and the product is always evident during onboarding. That gap is where credibility breaks.<\/p>\n

A chocolate ad struck me as funny \u2014 and not in the good could-go-viral way. It claimed a piece of chocolate could make women instantly more attracted to men. It even showed videos of women eating it and becoming flirtatious. The copy warned that it contained oxylurexin, a concentrated form of oxytocin so powerful that the FDA was forcing them to stop sales permanently, so act fast.<\/p>\n

The FDA never reviewed oxylurexin. And although the company claims to offer a 60-day money-back guarantee, I doubt the funds will be forthcoming. It was all a cleverly marketed scam. This one ad is everything that\u2019s wrong with marketing today.<\/p>\n

The danger of selling what you can\u2019t deliver<\/h2>\n

The chocolate scam follows advice I hear constantly from marketing coaches and thought leader wannabes. \u201cSell what sells. Build demand first. You can build the deliverable later.\u201d In other words, cash now, product later.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s short-term thinking at its worst. At first, it looks like it\u2019s working \u2014 more demo requests, better focus group scores and a CEO who loves how bold it sounds. But you\u2019re playing with gasoline next to a propane tank and you\u2019re holding a lit match. It will all come back to haunt you.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re creating high customer churn by promising something you don\u2019t know how to and likely can\u2019t deliver and you\u2019re destroying your brand reputation in the process. Those customers who walk away don\u2019t do so quietly. They tell their network, which makes them more sensitive to anything that even resembles a scam.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: If your value prop sounds like everyone else\u2019s, you\u2019ve already lost<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I see this pattern constantly. A company positions its platform as \u201cAI-powered sales intelligence that identifies your best opportunities.\u201d What they actually deliver is a database with basic scoring \u2014 useful, but requiring significant analyst time to extract value.<\/p>\n

Sales doesn\u2019t clarify because, if you squint, it could work that way. Customers sign up expecting automation \u2014 but get disappointed. Within three to six months, they leave and tell everyone.<\/p>\n

These companies rarely break the eight-figure mark. When they do, it\u2019s because the founding team has personally muscled every deal or because customers are trapped in annual contracts, marking calendar days until they can escape.<\/p>\n

Positioning that works<\/h2>\n

The solution is simple. Marketing, sales and product rely on each other the same way your heart, lungs and liver do. In the body, these organs constantly send and receive chemical signals, adjusting and responding to the needs of each other. But I don\u2019t see anything similar happening inside most companies.<\/p>\n

I see the opposite. Somewhere between 50 and 100 employees, those signals stop being transmitted or received. It\u2019s not malicious. People get busy and slip into survival mode. Marketing stops listening to product. Product treats sales\u2019 customer feedback as an annoyance to deal with later, if at all. Sales promises whatever it takes to close the deal, leaving product to clean up the mess. The fix has four parts.<\/p>\n

Listen and respond<\/h3>\n

This sounds obvious until you look back and realize it\u2019s been months since:<\/p>\n