Positioning strategy

positioning-strategy

When to use

• A category sentence is missing or contested and the next artefact (messaging, launch, pricing page) is about to inherit the ambiguity.
• The team can name what the product does but cannot name who it is for, against what alternative, or what it refuses to be.
• An opposable-positioning audit is needed: every claim has to survive "a reasonable competitor would argue the opposite".

Do NOT use for peer-versus-peer feature comparison (route to competitive-positioning), copy generation (route to messaging-architecture), or pricing-tier construction.

Cognition cluster

• Mental model 1 — First-principles thinking. Strip the category to the underlying job: who fires what, to make what progress, under what pressure. Inherited category labels are the trap; the unit of positioning is the job, not the label. See docs/contracts/mental-models.md § 1.
• Mental model 30 — Inversion. For every positioning claim, ask "what would a competitor with a credible alternative argue against this?" A claim that has no opposable counter is either trivially true or invented — drop it. See mental-models.md § 30.
• Context-spine — product + customer-segment. Read the product slot for non-goals and the customer-segment slot for the ICP shape before locking the frame. Positioning that contradicts either slot fails its own audit. See context-spine.

Procedure

Step 0: Frame the job

Write one sentence: "<Segment> hires <category> to make progress in <situation>, when motivated by <pressure>, expecting <outcome>." If you cannot finish the sentence, route to customer-research; positioning without job-evidence is invention, not earning.

Step 1: Lock the four anchors

Each anchor is one sentence; ambiguity here propagates.

1. Category. "We are a <category>." The category must be a noun that the segment already uses to describe the budget line the purchase comes out of — not a coined term.
2. Segment. "For <segment>." Specific enough that a single buyer recognises themselves; broad enough that the segment has shared switch-events.
3. Alternative. "Instead of <alternative>." Name the single most-likely incumbent — usually a manual workflow, a spreadsheet, or a competing product. "Doing nothing" counts.
4. Point of view. "Because <load-bearing belief>." The belief must be opposable — a credible peer holds the opposite.

Step 2: Validate via the opposable audit

For every anchor, write the strongest counter a credible peer would make. Validate each anchor against the rule "a credible peer holds the opposite" — if no counter exists, the anchor is unfalsifiable (either trivially true or invented) and must be replaced before continuing.

The four counters become the assumption ledger: explicit beliefs the positioning rides on. Each gets a re-evaluation trigger (event + metric + threshold) the team will watch for.

Step 3: Identify non-goals

Write three sentences in the form "We are not for <adjacent segment>, even though <surface similarity>, because <reason grounded in the product slot>." Non-goals are how positioning earns its category — without them every prospect looks like a fit and the segment dissolves.

Step 4: Stress-test the frame

For each anchor, walk the chain "if this is true, then…" through two consequences. If a consequence contradicts the product slot, the segment slot, or a shipped commitment, the anchor is wrong — fix the anchor, not the consequence.

Step 5: Hand back

Hand the four anchors + assumption ledger + non-goals to messaging-architecture for primary-message construction. Do not write copy inside this skill — that is messaging-architecture's job.

Related Skills

WHEN to use this

• The unit of work is the four-anchor frame, not a copy block.
• A category sentence is contested and the next artefact rides on it.
• An opposable audit is overdue and the team is shipping claims on faith.

WHEN NOT to use this

• Peer-vs-peer ours-vs-theirs verdict table — route to competitive-positioning.
• Primary message + supporting proofs construction — route to messaging-architecture.
• Fundraising "why now / why us" framing under capital constraint — route to fundraising-narrative.
• Pricing-tier construction or unit-economics modelling — route to unit-economics-modeling.

When the agent should load this

• "Wer sind wir eigentlich für?"
• "Lock the positioning before we write the launch deck."
• "Brauche eine Category-Sentence für die Pricing-Page."
• "Run an opposable-positioning audit on the homepage frame."
• "Welche Alternative ranken wir uns gegen — Doing Nothing oder ein konkreter Wettbewerber?"

Output

1. positioning.md — the four anchors (category · segment · alternative · point-of-view), one sentence each, opposable.
2. assumption-ledger.md — one row per anchor: the strongest peer-counter, the load-bearing belief, the re-evaluation trigger (event + metric + threshold).
3. non-goals.md — three sentences naming adjacent segments the product refuses to serve, each grounded in the product slot.

Gotcha

• A category sentence the segment does not already use is a coined term, not a category — the segment will route around it.
• "Doing nothing" is the most common alternative and the most often skipped. If the buyer's status quo is free, the alternative is free, and the positioning has to clear that bar.
• A positioning frame without non-goals expands until everyone is a prospect; that is the failure mode, not the success state.

Do NOT

• Do NOT invent a category to differentiate — earned categories beat coined categories; category theatre is the council Q1 out-of-scope.
• Do NOT collapse positioning into a tagline; the four anchors are the artefact, the tagline is a downstream condensation.
• Do NOT decide pricing tiers from positioning — hand off to pricing / unit-economics work.

Runnable example

Mid-market HR analytics tool, contested category:

• Frame: "<HR leaders at 200–2000-person companies> hire <workforce-analytics> to make progress in <board-quarter retention reporting>, when motivated by <exec ask for cohort attrition>, expecting <one-click roll-up by tenure band>."
• Anchors — category: workforce analytics. Segment: HR leaders at 200–2000-person, growing-headcount companies. Alternative: a manually maintained spreadsheet plus the HRIS-vendor's basic report. Point of view: retention beats acquisition as the lever in this segment.
• Assumption ledger — peer counter to point of view: "acquisition velocity dominates at < 500 headcount." Re-evaluation trigger: new-hire-rate > 30 % year-on-year AND retention-flat → revisit.
• Non-goals — "We are not for enterprise (5000+); not for workforce-planning (capacity modelling); not for engagement-survey tooling." Each grounded in the product slot's non-goals list.
• Hand-off: four anchors → messaging-architecture for primary message + audience-by-message matrix.