How a positioning workshop saved our product
Tags: marketing, product, collaboration, remote
Published: 2019-10-29 20:17:41

We had a big vision for our product, it was going to be amazing. Then it launched, and it wasn’t. There were huge on-boarding problems and we couldn’t understand why.

I came across [‘Obviously Awesome’ by April Dunford](https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005) and it changed my world. It was so clear that we had a positioning problem, or as she puts it ‘we fell into the trap of thinking there was a default context around our offering. I would recommend any product owners and marketers read this book.

![Obviously Awesome Book](https://miro.medium.com/max/2560/1*nxXElE9TlXl5fY-aEitbaQ.jpeg)

So I set up a positioning workshop with our two directors and a member from each team (design, dev, marketing). There were five of us.

Using her book and an awesome template from [Slides Carnival](https://www.slidescarnival.com/), I created a Google Slides presentation to explain what positioning was, why it was important and the exercises we were going to work through to fix it. You can view my template [here](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QiGPvGFwkm4K5le0S96Ymul9Tk9JX34-claleo-tpgw/edit?usp=sharing).

![Positioning Slideshow](https://miro.medium.com/max/1902/1*iO09N978qrsRQHObLEYx0w.png)

We are a somewhat distributed team, with 2 out of 5 of us in the meeting working remotely. I knew, as the facilitator of the workshop, that I needed to harness the power of some awesome tool to make a remote workshop run smoothy. So I used [Miro](https://miro.com/) (Previously RealTime Board), a trusted tool in our company.

Based on the 10-step process from Dunford’s book, I set up a Miro template that I could use for all future positioning workshops. I also learnt a thing or two from [Miro’s Distributed Summit](https://go.miro.com/distributed19) recently about how to use Miro effectively within a distributed team.

![Miro - Before the Workshop](https://miro.medium.com/max/2524/1*KAfshv45qJdn4m6rW8sjvw.png)
*Miro - Before the Workshop*

One example is that instead of users having to create sticky notes from the sidebar every time they had an idea, I created a large pile of single-colour sticky notes and assigned each pile to a person, which saved time and helped identify each member.

The workshop consisted of me switching between my presentation and Miro, when collaborative work was required. We would then discuss the ideas put forward, so that everyone was aware of what was written. We also used Miro’s voting functionality to prioritise certain ideas over others.

![Miro - After the Workshop](https://miro.medium.com/max/2708/1*FONwLfHoYJFALe9ujMfgYw.png)
*Miro - After the Workshop*

The beauty of Miro is that you can see others taking action, and the freeform layout allows people to have fun.
Now, all that’s left is for us to collate everything our team came up with during our workshop and share our positioning with the world through updated marketing strategies and re-aligned messaging.

Perhaps the title of this article was a bit misleading as our product isn’t saved yet, BUT we have high hopes that a re-positioning or deliberate positioning of our product will destine it for greatness.

![Cat gif](https://miro.medium.com/max/730/1*oHOBjptAP8q4VKZm4DNBgg.gif)

Obligatory cat gif to thank you for reading.

If you liked this, please give it a clap over at Medium:
{% medium https://medium.com/@michellewalstra/how-a-positioning-workshop-saved-our-product-fb28bff9fb1c %}