Positioning statement

Positioning sits behind every message: sales pitches, ad copy, the home page, onboarding emails. Without a shared statement each team fills the gap itself, one stressing flexibility and another price, and prospects cannot tell what the company stands for. A vague statement also blurs targeting, so sales spends time on accounts that were never a fit. A sharp one lets a company own a niche and charge for it, instead of competing on price.

A positioning statement is not a slogan and customers rarely see it as written. It is the internal reference every message is checked against. A widely used template comes from Geoffrey Moore's book Crossing the Chasm: "For [target customer] who [need], [product] is a [category] that [key benefit]. Unlike [alternative], it [main difference]."

Say an inventory software company has been describing itself as "a comprehensive platform for businesses". Reviewing closed deals, the sales lead finds most wins are regional manufacturers rolling out their first ERP system. The new statement names that customer and the problem of production-line disruption, and says what the product deliberately does not do.

• Read the target customer from closed-won deals, not from opinion.
• Interview customers about their worst problem, not about the product, and note the words they use.
• Choose the one problem that is most painful and closest to the product's core value.
• Write the difference as a trade-off, saying plainly what the product is not built for.
• Check that competitors do not already claim the same words.
• Share the final version with every team and use it to test new copy.

• Trying to describe every customer, which describes none.
• Using superlatives such as "best" that nobody can verify.
• Writing it once and never checking it against new deals.