Positioning Statement Builder

Work out who you are for, what you replace, and the one thing you do better — then get the positioning statement and the messaging that follows from it.

The Prompt — replace [BRACKETS] with your details

Act as a positioning consultant. Help me position my product against the alternatives my buyers actually consider.

The product:
- What it does, plainly: [DESCRIPTION]
- Who gets the most value from it today: [YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS, SPECIFICALLY]
- What those customers used before buying: [INCLUDING SPREADSHEETS, AGENCIES, HIRING SOMEONE, OR DOING NOTHING]
- Why the ones who stay, stay: [IN THEIR WORDS IF YOU HAVE THEM]
- Why the ones who leave, leave: [HONESTLY]
- Capabilities we have that alternatives do not: [LIST]
- The market category buyers put us in: [WHAT THEY CALL US]

Deliver:
1. The competitive alternatives, ranked by how often a buyer really weighs them — include the non-software ones
2. For each alternative, what we do differently and whether that difference matters to the buyer or only to us
3. The capabilities that are genuinely unique versus the ones every competitor also claims. Be blunt about the second list
4. The value those unique capabilities produce, expressed as an outcome the buyer would pay for
5. Who cares most about that value — a segment defined by an observable characteristic, not a persona with a name and a photo
6. The market category we should frame ourselves in, with the trade-off of that choice
7. A positioning statement in one paragraph, and a one-sentence version
8. Three messages that follow from it: the homepage headline, the sales opener, and the line a happy customer would use to describe us to a colleague
9. What we must stop saying because it is true of every competitor

Push back on anything I claimed that is not actually differentiated.

How to use this prompt

Answer the "why they leave" field honestly. Positioning built on the flattering half of the truth breaks on contact with a sales call.
Define the segment by something you can observe and target — team size, tooling, industry — not by a personality sketch.
Section 9 is the actionable one: delete those claims from your site this week.

Why this prompt works

Positioning goes wrong when a company compares itself to the competitors it admires rather than the alternatives buyers weigh, which usually include doing nothing. Ordering the work as alternatives, then differentiators, then value, then segment means the statement is derived rather than invented — and the "true of every competitor" list is the fastest cleanup you can do.

Variations to try

Run it separately for two customer segments and compare — if the positioning is identical, one segment is not real.
Add "we are the cheaper option in a mature category" for positioning that does not depend on being new.
Ask it to rewrite your current homepage headline using the finished positioning.

Common mistakes to avoid

Listing capabilities every competitor also has and calling them differentiators.
Positioning against the market leader when most of your losses are to spreadsheets and inertia.
Inventing a category nobody searches for, so buyers cannot find you.

Works well with

ChatGPT

Claude

Gemini

Need a custom version of this prompt?

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