Last week we were invited by KACE CEO Rob Meinhardt to speak at a High-Growth CEO Forum –an expert-led, invitation-only group of CEOs that meets quarterly to brainstorm, solve problems and exchange ideas.
After introductions, we sat down to a cozy dinner at the Warwick Hotel in San Francisco to get to know each other and talk about positioning. Ellie asked each CEO to tell the group in 10 words or less what is their business and what makes them unique. For extra credit, they could give metrics to back up what makes them unique. Rob was the only one who met the challenge, telling the group that KACE’s KBOX is a systems management appliance that saves users time and their companies money. Mind you, it was a bit of a cheat since KACE got themselves ZOOMed last year, but we didn’t complain.
The reason the others couldn’t meet the challenge is what we call “positioning altitude.” Either the thinking was at too high an altitude and thus generalized (ie, “we do customer service”) or too low and granular (endless details about features and functions). Our rule of thumb for Positioning Altitude is that it should be high enough so everyone can see it, but low enough that it doesn’t go crashing into interminable digression.
To back up our point, we prepped by surveying CEOs on what they see as their role in strategic positioning. That, we found, boiled down to four key points:
You can download the full report in PDF form here (it’s not too long, and has some amusing pictures), so go for it, we say. And as ever, please let us know what you think.
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