Positioning for tech companies. Author of the best-selling books Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch.

April Dunford is the world's foremost authority on product positioning for B2B technology companies. As a consultant, April helps companies make complex products easy to understand and love. After a 25-year career as a VP of Marketing at various fast-growing technology firms, she has consulted with 300 technology companies, including Google, Epic Games, Postman, and others. April is the acclaimed author of the best-selling book, "Obviously Awesome," which delves into the art of positioning, and the newly released, "Sales Pitch," which unveils the secrets to crafting a winning sales narrative in the market.

April Dunford

Can you use my positioning methodology to get yourself a date? I had a fun conversation with Brent Adamson and Shari Levitin on the Selling Isn't Everything podcast, where we talked about a bunch of things like:
♥️ Can you use my book, Obviously Awesome, to position yourself for romance (spoiler - I don't think it's a great idea, but hey, your mileage may vary!)
♥️ "Fractional CMO" is not great positioning (I mean, it's fine in the short term, but let's be honest, marketers can do better)
♥️ Why it's important to think about value and best-fit customers as a matching set
♥️ Why the "insight" step in a sales pitch is so hard to get right, but also critically important. 
This was a fun one!
Episode link in the comments

Dan Olsen

Olsen Solutions

Olsen Solutions offers training and consulting in product management, UX design, analytics, marketing, and Lean Startup. Clients include Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, Box, Microsoft, Medallia, Hewlett Packard, AT&T, One Medical Group, PayPal, Procore, Gartner, Turner, Epocrates, and Financial Engines. You can learn more at www.olsensolutions.com.

Product Management Trainer & Consultant

Wiley

My bestselling book The Lean Product Playbook provides practical guidance on product management and Lean Startup principles to help you create products that customers love:
http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Product-Playbook-Innovate-Products/dp/1118960874/
It is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
In addition to the English edition, it has been translated to Chinese, Polish, and Turkish.
There is also a paperback edition available in India.
Learn more at https://leanproductplaybook.com

Author of The Lean Product Playbook

Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup Silicon Valley

I founded the monthly Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup Silicon Valley, which has over 12,000 members. Each month I host a product thought leader to share their ideas and have a discussion with our group. Learn more at https://www.meetup.com/lean-product
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to view the videos of our awesome speakers: https://www.youtube.com/danolsen

Founder, Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup

Lean Startup Co.

Senior Faculty

Medallia

Product Management Consultant

YourVersion

CEO and cofounder of YourVersion, a start-up building "Pandora for your real-time web content." YourVersion launched at the TechCrunch50 Conference where it won the People's Choice Award. YourVersion's real-time discovery engine is the best way to stay on top of the topics you care about, bringing you the latest relevant news, blogs, tweets, and videos. YourVersion also makes it easy to bookmark and share pages via email, Facebook, and Twitter with automatic link shortening. The YourVersion product suite spans the website, free tools for every browser, and free mobile apps.

CEO & Cofounder

Friendster

Friendster is the pioneer of the social networking space, with financial backing from Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, and Battery Ventures.

VP of Product

Intuit

Quicken Brokerage was a unique start-up within Intuit's Quicken division whose strategic goal was to diversify and grow the division's revenue.  I was the second person on the team and the head of product management, responsible for determining our product offering and working with engineering to nail our aggressive development timeline.  Under my leadership, the Quicken Brokerage team launched a world-class online brokerage website from scratch in 8 months.  Designed to be the best brokerage for Quicken users, Quicken Brokerage achieved feature parity with E*Trade, Schwab, and Fidelity while providing a great user interface and unique tax-smart investing features, receiving accolades from the financial services press and analysts.  The most notable feature was the real-time tax advice proactively provided on the trading screen before the user placed a trade (on which I have a patent pending).

Group Product Manager, Quicken Brokerage

Responsible for the entire Quicken product line.
Managed Quicken Product Management Team, which I built and grew.  Coached and developed new product managers.
Led complete UI redesign of Quicken 2002 working with external design firm Fitch.
Determined long-term product strategy.

Group Product Manager, Quicken

Responsible for the Quicken for Windows product line. 
Managed Quicken for Windows Product Management Team. Coached and developed new product managers.
Led qualitative and quantitative user research.
Wrote Quicken 2001 for Windows MRD.
Main PR spokesperson on press tour with major computer, business, and financial media (i.e., Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Time, Newsweek, CNET, PC Magazine, etc.)

Senior Product Manager, Quicken

Product Manager, Quicken

Goldman Sachs

Investment Banking Summer Associate

Product Management Trainer, Author, and Speaker helping executives build great products and strong product teams

My passion is building great products. I am a hands-on trainer and consultant that helps companies build and optimize their products and product teams. I wrote the bestseller The Lean Product Playbook published by Wiley.
My clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart, Sam's Club, Box, Uber, HP, Nike, Taco Bell, One Medical Group, Medallia, and Financial Engines.
I am a Stanford MBA with a strong technical background and deep expertise in product management, UX design, analytics, marketing, and Lean Startup.

🚀 Want to improve how Product teams work? I’d love to hear from you!
🔍 I’m doing Discovery with Product teams about your workflows & pain points.
👉 To chat, please share your info (<2 min) at https://lnkd.in/ga5MHYyR
🙌 Thanks for contributing! 
#productmanagement #ux #discovery

Product Management Leader, Consultant, Trainer & Speaker helping leaders build great products and strong product teams

Open article: Dan Olsen's Research Survey by forms.gle

Was fun seeing all the awesome decorations and Oscar awards at Netflix!
Super excited to watch Stranger Things Season 5 in just 4 days! Such a great show!

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April Dunford

Dan Olsen

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The Battle

April Dunford

Dan Olsen

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}April Dunford's LinkedIn Performance

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