version: "1.0.0" name: positioning-narrative description: >- Use when the user says "positioning", "value proposition", "our messaging is generic", "how do we differentiate", "category", "narrative", "nobody understands what we do". Runs April Dunford's five steps against enterprise buyers, including the do-nothing alternative, and produces a positioning statement plus the enterprise narrative arc. Writes workspace/program/positioning.md. Never reorders or skips the five steps.

Positioning & Narrative

Establish what you are, for whom, against what alternative, and why it matters, in an order that produces a defensible answer rather than a slogan.

When to use

• Before any messaging or creative work in the program
• Reps describe the product differently from each other and from the website
• Losing to "no decision" more than to a named competitor
• Entering a new segment where the existing positioning does not land

Inputs

• Reads: workspace/program/icp.md, workspace/program/charter.md, workspace/accounts/dossiers/ if any exist
• Needs from user: win/loss notes, three to five customer conversations, the current website and deck, the competitor set as sales actually experiences it, and the honest view of what the product does not do

Workflow

Run the five steps in order. The order is the method. Skipping to differentiators produces a feature list, and skipping to category produces a slogan.

1. Competitive alternatives

What would these buyers do if you did not exist? Not "who are our competitors" as marketing lists them, but what the buyer would genuinely do instead.

Always include the status quo and the internal build. In enterprise, no-decision is the most common loss, frequently a large minority of everything that does not close. If your positioning only argues against named vendors, you are ignoring your biggest competitor. Ask the sales team what buyers say when they stall, and write those answers down as alternatives.

Group alternatives into three to five real buckets. For each, note honestly what it is good at. Positioning built on a strawman falls over in the first objection.

2. Unique attributes

What do you have that the alternatives do not? Ruthless honesty here. The test for each candidate: could a competitor put this exact sentence on their website tomorrow without lying? If yes, it is table stakes, not a differentiator, and it belongs in the credibility section rather than the positioning.

Include the boring ones. Deployment model, data coverage, integration depth, a certification, a support model, a contract structure. In enterprise these frequently matter more than product capability.

3. Value, translated

For each attribute, ask "so what" until you reach a business outcome the economic buyer cares about: revenue, cost, risk, speed, or compliance. Then ask it once more.

Attribute: <capability>
So what: <what it enables>
So what: <what that changes operationally>
So what: <the business outcome, in their metric>

Stop when you reach a number a CFO recognizes, or a risk a general counsel recognizes.

4. Who cares most

Which buyers find this value disproportionately important? Not everyone who benefits. The people for whom it is urgent, expensive, and currently unsolved. This should sharpen icp-definition, and if it contradicts it, that is a finding to reconcile, not to smooth over.

5. Market category

The context that makes your value obvious. Three strategies, with an honest cost attached to each:

Default to big fish, small pond unless there is clear evidence otherwise. Category creation is a one-way door and should be treated like one.

6. Write the positioning statement

For <who cares most>
who <the urgent problem, in their words>
<product> is a <category>
that <the single most differentiated value>
unlike <the primary alternative, including status quo>
because <the attribute that makes it true, provable>

One page maximum, with the evidence for each line beneath it.

7. Build the enterprise narrative arc

Positioning is the foundation, the narrative is what gets told in a room:

1. A shift in the world the buyer already believes, evidenced with something external, not your data
2. What that shift breaks in how they operate today. Their pain, in their language
3. The cost of doing nothing, quantified in their metrics. This is where the no-decision competitor gets beaten
4. What good looks like, described as capability rather than product
5. How you deliver it, with proof
6. What to do next, specific and small

Never open with the company or the product. The buyer has to agree with steps 1 and 2 before step 5 means anything.

8. Test it

• Read it to a seller. Can they repeat the core claim without the doc?
• Read it to a customer. Do they recognize their own problem?
• Give it a hostile read. Which line would a competitor attack first, and what is the answer?

Output

• Writes: workspace/program/positioning.md including the five steps, the statement, the narrative arc, and the evidence
• Prints: the positioning statement, the alternatives including status quo, and the differentiators that failed the website test

Rules & quality bar

• Five steps, in order, never skipped or reordered
• Status quo is always a listed alternative. A positioning doc without it is incomplete
• Every differentiator passes the website test, or it moves to credibility
• Value translated to a business outcome, not to a feature benefit
• Category creation requires evidence and funding, and the doc says so out loud when it recommends against it
• No claim without evidence beneath it. Marked as customer-stated, data-backed, or hypothesis
• All copy runs through `writing-quality` before it leaves

Related skills

• Reads: icp-definition
• Hands off to: messaging-hierarchy (the order), battlecards (alternatives become cards), air-cover-ads and outbound-cadence (the language)