Working document
Positioning brief
Carry-in-your-head document. Who you're for, who you're not, the category context, the point of view.
Positioning & Messaging
Say what the market needs to understand — not just what the product does.
Sharpen how the business explains itself. Buyers grasp relevance fast, sales and marketing share a language, and every downstream decision gets easier. Usually the highest-leverage first step.
Positioning isn't a tagline. It's a set of choices about who you're for, what you're not, and what makes that worth a buyer's time. Working principle
Who it is for
A good fit if…
One or two will look familiar. Three or more, and the issue is almost certainly messaging clarity, not channels.
- Buyers struggle to understand value quickly.
- Sales explains the product better than the website.
- The company is entering a new market or segment.
- Competitors all sound the same — including you.
- The homepage feels vague even to people inside the business.
- Product marketing is underdeveloped or absent.
- The founder's best pitch has never become messaging.
- Teams describe the business in different ways.
What gets clarified
Eleven moving parts of a positioning system.
Most engagements work through these in order. By the end, the business uses the same words across website, sales deck, and campaign.
ICP
Who the business is most valuable for, in priority order.
Buyer pains
The frustrations, frictions, and risks the buyer carries today.
Category context
How the buyer mentally categorizes the offer — and whether that helps or hurts.
Competitive alternatives
What the buyer actually compares you to — including doing nothing.
Differentiation
What's credibly true of you and credibly not of the alternatives.
Value proposition
The clearest statement of what the buyer gets and why it matters.
Message hierarchy
Supporting reasons to believe, in the order they should land.
Proof points
Evidence that earns each claim — case studies, data, examples.
Objections
Recurring beliefs that slow deals down, and how the messaging answers them.
Website narrative
What the homepage and core pages need to argue, in what order.
Sales narrative
The story sales is licensed to tell — same source as the marketing.
Deliverables
What you walk away with.
Concrete artifacts. Not decks-for-decks-sake — working documents the company keeps using after the engagement ends.
Working document
Messaging hierarchy
Value proposition, supporting messages, reasons to believe. The language the team uses.
Working document
Homepage narrative
The argument the homepage makes. Buyer situation, position taken, next step described.
Working document
Persona message notes
Variants for key segments — what to lead with, what to de-emphasize.
Working document
Proof-point map
Claims paired with the evidence that earns them. Closes the gap between language and credibility.
Working document
Competitive framing
How to talk about alternatives without sounding defensive or comparative-spreadsheet.
Working document
Sales narrative guide
The message hierarchy built for sales calls. Same source, different format.
What success looks like
Measured, not overclaimed.
Not a magic upgrade. A quieter, compounding win — the business becomes easier to explain, and downstream work gets easier.
- The business is easier to explain — inside and out.
- Sales and marketing use the same language for value.
- Website copy gets easier to write — the hierarchy makes the choices.
- Campaign hooks get sharper. Each inherits a clear point of view.
- Content priorities clarify — some topics drop, others get weight.
- Buyers understand relevance faster. First calls start in a different place.
Next step
Clarify your market story.
Where does the messaging break down — the website, sales narrative, or founder POV that was never written down?