Positioning statement

What a positioning statement is

A positioning statement is a short internal document that says what category your business belongs to, who it is for, which alternatives a buyer is comparing you against, what is different about you, and why they should believe it. It is written for you and your team, not for customers, and it is the decision that every customer-facing message is built on.

It is not a value proposition, which is the one customer-facing sentence that comes out of it. And it is not a competitor analysis, though it uses one: the analysis describes the field, the positioning statement decides where in it you stand.

Who this is for

A business that competes with several similar businesses and cannot say, in one sentence, why a buyer should choose it. A business that serves two or three different markets and has never decided which one it leads with. Or a business that is about to change: a new service, a new price level, a move upmarket, where the old description will be wrong the day the change lands.

A business with no real competitors in its area, or one whose buyers already know exactly why they come, does not need a positioning exercise. It needs the message written well, which is key messages or straight to home page copy.

What it contains

The statement itself is one paragraph, usually under eighty words, in a fixed shape: for this buyer, in this situation, we are the kind of business that does this, unlike the alternatives, because of this. Every clause is a decision, and the document around it records how each decision was made.

• The category. What buyers think they are shopping for when they find you. Sometimes the right move is to accept the category; sometimes it is to argue you belong to a different one, and the document says which and why.
• The buyer. One primary buyer type, chosen from the two or three you serve, with the reasoning for choosing that one to lead with.
• The alternatives. The three to five choices that buyer really weighs, including doing it themselves and doing nothing. Each gets a line on what it does better than you, honestly, and what it does worse.
• The difference. The one thing true of you that the alternatives cannot say. If there is not one, the document says so, and says what would have to change for there to be one.
• The proof. The facts that make the difference believable: a method, a guarantee, a credential, a record you can show.

The material comes from your competitors' websites and proposals, from your own material, from an hour with you, and from short calls with recent customers about what else they considered. The customer calls are the most useful part, because buyers compare you against things you have never heard of.

What you get

The statement. One paragraph, on one page, with the five decisions listed under it.

The reasoning document. Six to ten pages: the category question, the buyer choice, the alternatives with their honest strengths, the difference and its proof, and the two or three positions that were considered and rejected.

The alternatives table. One spreadsheet, one row per alternative, with columns for what they claim, what they charge where it is public, what they do better, and where they leave a gap. It is the start of a competitor file you can keep adding to.

A one-hour call. With you and anyone who sells, working through the statement and the objections to it.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A bookkeeping practice of four people serves restaurants, construction subcontractors and a scatter of retail shops. Its website says "bookkeeping for small business". Twelve competitors within an hour's drive say the same. Calls with six recent clients show that the construction clients chose the practice because it already knew the holdback rules and the progress-billing forms, and that two of them had first tried a national online service and left after a year of explaining their trade to a new person each quarter.

The statement leads with construction subcontractors, names the online services and the generalist local firms as the alternatives, and states the difference as bookkeeping by people who already know holdbacks and progress billing, proved by a named list of the forms handled. The restaurant and retail clients are kept, but the website stops leading with them. Two of the rejected positions, "affordable" and "cloud-based", are recorded with the reason: every alternative can say both.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, who buys it, who else they consider, and what is about to change. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Scope, number of alternatives to study, and the price agreed before anything starts.
3. Research. Competitor sites and material, your own, a recorded hour with you, and calls with four to six recent customers about what else they weighed. Two weeks.
4. Options. Two or three candidate positions, each with what it commits you to and what it gives up. We choose on a call. This is the step that takes the argument.
5. The final statement and reasoning. Delivered with the walkthrough call.

Three to four weeks from first call to final statement is typical.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, agreed in writing, and not changed without your agreement. The price depends on the number of alternatives to study, the number of markets you serve, and whether customer calls can be arranged. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works.

What happens next

The statement becomes a customer-facing value proposition, then a messaging framework if more than one person writes or sells. Where a buyer is openly comparing you with a named alternative, the alternatives table turns into a comparison page written fairly enough to be believed.