Positioning
Reach for Positioning when Discovery has named the customer and the claim still hasn't been tested.
- The positioning statement was written in a meeting.
- The price got picked the same afternoon.
- The sales team quietly uses its own pitch.
- A competitor could say your value proposition word for word.
Don't reach for it before Discovery. Positioning without a discovered customer is guessing with better formatting.
If you get pricing wrong, no amount of marketing fixes it. That is why this skill refuses to produce a price until the position has survived a test.
Six Steps, Strict Order
It runs a published six-step positioning framework and won't let a step be skipped:
- Competitive alternatives. What the customer would actually do if you didn't exist.
- Unique attributes. What only you have.
- Value. What those attributes deliver.
- Best-fit customers. Who cares most about that value.
- Market category. The frame that makes the value obvious.
- Relevant trend. Why it's urgent now.
The frameworks are published ones, and none of them is ours. The part that had to be enforced was the discipline of not skipping ahead to the fun steps.
The Four-Point Test
| Test | Question |
|---|---|
| Specific | Does it name an actual customer, not a market? |
| Desirable | Would that customer want it? |
| Credible | Can you prove it? |
| Unique | Could a competitor say the same sentence? |
Fail one and it goes back. Most positioning statements written in meetings fail the fourth. The skill also checks the category and the trend, two more tests that sit beside these four.
The Economics Gate
The price has to clear unit economics the skill enforces:
- Lifetime value to acquisition cost above 3:1
- Payback under twelve months
- Gross margin above 70%
If the math breaks, the position wasn't defensible enough, and the skill sends it back instead of letting a spreadsheet paper over it.
What It Writes
To the knowledge base: the statement that survived the checklist, the value proposition with proof behind each claim, the messaging pillars, and the pricing with its economics attached. Launch reads all of it.