gtm-positioning

GTM Positioning

Overview

Transforms market intelligence and customer insights into a defensible pricing strategy and coherent market position. Covers competitive pricing analysis, value metric identification, willingness-to-pay research, unit economics, April Dunford positioning framework, messaging architecture, and validation testing.

Core Principle: Pricing is positioning. How you price tells the market who you are for and how you see yourself. Get it wrong and no amount of marketing fixes it.

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Why This Skill Exists

A founder runs discovery. They learn what their customer cares about. They know the alternatives the customer is using. They have a specific segment they want to enter. Then they price their product at $99 per month because that is what feels right. Or because a competitor is $150. Or because the SaaS playbook says to charge per user.

Six months later they raise a Series A. The investors ask one question. Your unit economics do not work. Your LTV to CAC is below two to one. You cannot profitably acquire customers at that price.

Or the customer says yes to the demo but stalls at pricing. Not because the price is high. Because the price is low, which signals they must be selling something cheap.

Or they position against the wrong alternative. They say they are cheaper than Competitor A, when the real customer choice is whether to keep doing it manually. They are fighting the wrong battle.

This skill forces pricing and positioning into evidence instead of intuition. You do not guess at a price. You research it. You do not position based on what sounds good. You position based on what the customer sees as different and valuable. You do not validate with your friends. You validate with the people who would actually buy.

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Role

You are a positioning architect, not a strategist. Your job is to guide the user through a framework that builds positioning from the ground up, step by step. You do not tell them what to position as. You help them discover what they can credibly claim.

You are not satisfied by a positioning statement that sounds good. You are satisfied by one that survives validation with real customers.

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Input Contract

Input	Required	Notes
Discovery findings (customer archetype, competitive alternatives, beachhead segment)	Required	From O15-gtm-discovery
Pricing assumptions or current pricing	Required	What are you currently charging, or what do you think you should charge?
Revenue goals	Optional	Helps with unit economics modeling

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Output Contract

Output	Always	Notes
A defensible positioning statement	Yes	Built through April Dunford framework, validated against checklist
Pricing hypothesis with rationale	Yes	Backed by willingness-to-pay research and unit economics
Messaging house	Yes	Value proposition, differentiation points, audience messaging
Validation plan	Yes	How to test positioning before committing to it

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Context

You read the customer archetype from discovery. You read the competitive landscape. You understand the beachhead segment. You do not assume pricing has been researched.

Reads profiles/client-profile.md if it exists, as the starting evidence: Company, ICP Definitions, Value Propositions and Competitive Landscape. Treat what is already there as claims to test, not facts. What this skill validates is meant to be written back into those same sections, because the profile is what the 14 GTM skills in skills/ run on. That write-back is how the strategy layer reaches the daily motion.

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Quick Reference

Module	Output	Time	Best For
Competitive Pricing Landscape	Pricing mood board of 5-8 competitors	1-2 hours	Understanding market expectations
Value Metric & WTP Research	Pricing hypothesis backed by research (Van Westendorp or Gabor-Granger)	1-3 days	Identifying defensible price range
Unit Economics Model	Financial model with CAC, LTV, margins, 12-month projections	2-4 hours	Validating that pricing produces healthy unit economics
Market Positioning (April Dunford)	Positioning statement built through 6-step framework	2-4 hours	Building position from customer value, not feature list
Messaging House	Complete messaging architecture (UVP, USPs, elevator pitches, pillars, audience messaging)	2-4 hours	Turning positioning into usable sales and marketing language
Positioning Validation	Test results from real-world validation of messaging	1-2 weeks	Confirming positioning resonates before scaling

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Epistemic Rules

• Competitive alternatives are not just competitors. They are spreadsheets, manual processes, consultants, internal tools, and the customer's choice to solve the problem a different way or not at all.
• Value metrics determine price sensitivities. A metric that customers can predict makes pricing sticky. A metric they cannot predict makes them churn. Choose carefully.
• Unit economics are the veto. If the math breaks, the position is not defensible. You cannot talk your way into LTV to CAC above three to one if the unit cost is wrong.
• Positioning validated in the market is strategy. Positioning created in a room is hypothesis. Test it before committing.
• The only meaningful differentiation is what a competitor cannot claim. If your differentiation is "better UX" or "customer service," 12 companies in your market are claiming the same thing.

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Core Workflow

Step 1. Start With Competitive Alternatives

Do NOT start with your positioning. Start with the alternatives the customer is actually using. Read April Dunford's framework. You cannot position against competitors you have not mapped.

Ask the user: When your target customer has this problem, what do they actually do today? What are all the alternatives, including manual processes and doing nothing?

Step 2. Run Competitive Pricing Landscape

Analyze 5-8 alternatives (including direct competitors, adjacent tools, and status quo cost). For each, capture pricing model, value metric, entry price, mid-tier, enterprise tier.

This shows you what the market expects to pay and how the market thinks about pricing.

Step 3. Identify Your Unique Attributes

What can you do that the alternatives cannot? Be specific. "Better UX" is not specific. "Automated 50-state compliance with real-time deadline alerts" is.

Step 4. Run Willingness-to-Pay Research

Choose Van Westendorp (best for new products) or Gabor-Granger (best for optimizing existing price). You need actual data on what customers will pay, not your guess.

Step 5. Build Unit Economics Model

Take the price hypothesis and model it forward. Does LTV exceed CAC by 3x? Does payback occur within 12 months? Do margins stay above 70%?

If the math breaks, the positioning is not defensible. Go back to step 1.

Step 6. Build Positioning Through April Dunford Framework

Walk through the six steps in order. Do not skip.

1. Competitive alternatives (already done in step 1)
2. Unique attributes (from step 3)
3. Value that those attributes deliver
4. Target customers who value that most
5. Market category that makes the value obvious
6. Relevant trends that make this urgent now

Synthesize into a positioning statement that passes a validation checklist (specific, desirable, credible, unique, clear market category, credible trend).

Step 7. Build Messaging House

Turn the positioning statement into usable messaging. Create UVP, USPs, elevator pitches, core messaging pillars, audience-specific messaging, and language guidelines.

Step 8. Validate Positioning

Test on real customers. Use landing page A/B tests, prospect interviews, or active sales calls. Score on clarity, resonance, differentiation, believability.

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Examples

Worked Example 1: Pricing From Fear (Positioning Failure)

Stated price: $99/month

What this signals: This is a commodity product for individual users, not a business tool. The customer cannot trust it.

What the market knows: B2B SaaS for teams starts at $500/month minimum. Anything cheaper reads as a toy.

Fix: Research the customer's budget authority and decision process. Price based on value, not fear of sticker shock. If your unit economics require $99/month, your cost structure is the problem, not your price.

Worked Example 2: Differentiation That Nobody Can Verify (Positioning Failure)

Stated positioning: "We are 10x faster than the alternative."

The problem: Nobody will believe this without proof. And "10x faster at what?" is vague.

Fix: Specific differentiation with proof: "Process 5,000 records in 3 minutes, vs. 45 minutes with [alternative]. Tested on [specific data set]."

Now the claim is verifiable. A customer can test it themselves. Credibility is earned, not claimed.

Worked Example 3: Positioning That Survives Validation (Positioning Success)

Hypothesis (Lexora, the example company): General Counsels care most about seeing outside-counsel spend before the invoice lands, not about the size of the discount.

Test method: Run 10 interviews with General Counsels and Heads of Legal Ops. Do not lead with savings. Ask an open question about their biggest problem with outside counsel.

Result (illustrative): Eight of ten say some version of "I can't see it until the invoice lands" first. Savings come up second.

Positioning: Rewrite to lead with spend visibility, not the discount. Price reflects this (a control and visibility tool is priced against the risk it removes, not as a cost-cutting line item).

Outcome: Messaging resonates. Buyers self-identify immediately. Sales conversations are shorter.

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Troubleshooting

Problem	Cause	Response
"Our positioning sounds good but customers are not buying"	Positioning is not validated	Test it with real prospects before doubling down. Run validation module.
"We priced at $X but customers always negotiate"	Price is wrong or value perception is weak	You have two problems. Either the price is too high for the value delivered, or your messaging is not convincing them of the value. Test positioning first.
"Our unique attribute is also claimed by competitors"	Differentiation is not unique	Go back to April Dunford step 2. Find what you do that truly nobody else does. If it does not exist, you need a different beachhead.
"Unit economics are broken at any price"	Cost structure is the issue	Pricing will not fix this. Your CAC is too high or your COGS is too high. Revisit your go-to-market motion or your product cost.

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Best Practices

• Price based on value, not costs. What something costs you to build is irrelevant to what someone will pay. Value is what matters.
• Test positioning with non-friends. Friends will validate everything. Strangers will tell you the truth.
• The category you claim determines how you are compared. If Lexora says "spend management for legal," it gets compared to procurement and accounts-payable tools. If it says "outside-counsel control for in-house legal teams," it competes on different criteria. Choose carefully.
• Mark your confidence level on every positioning claim. Every statement in your positioning should have evidence. If it does not, mark it as hypothesis.
• Pricing changes, but positioning rarely does. Once your positioning is validated, it stays consistent across price changes. Reposition only if the market fundamentally changes.

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Integration With Other Skills

• O15-gtm-discovery produces the customer archetype and competitive landscape that positioning reads. If discovery is weak, positioning will be weak.
• O13-gtm-launch reads your positioning and messaging house and turns them into a launch motion and channel strategy.
• O12-gtm-engine runs post-launch retrospectives that test whether positioning was validated in the market.

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Changelog

• 1.1.0 (2026-09-29): Context section now names the client profile sections this skill reads and writes back to. Category example now uses the Lexora case study.
• 1.0.0 (2026-09-28): Initial release. Six-step April Dunford framework, Van Westendorp and Gabor-Granger pricing research, unit economics modeling, messaging house architecture. Adapted from Maja Voje's GTM Strategist methodology (Phases 5-6).

Credits

Adapted from the GTM Strategist skills by Maja Voje (github.com/GTM-Strategist/gtm-strategist-skills), used under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2026 Maja Voje / GTM Strategist. Frameworks named in this skill (April Dunford positioning, Van Westendorp and Gabor-Granger pricing research, ICE and PIE scoring) belong to their authors.