positioning-canvas

Positioning Canvas (B2B SaaS)

Positioning fails as a wording problem and succeeds as a decision problem. The output of this skill is a set of decisions someone can disagree with, not a paragraph of adjectives.

Setup

Ask for, in this order, and stop at the first two if that is all they have:

1. The product URL
2. Two recent won deals and two recent lost deals, in one line each
3. What the buyer was doing before they bought (the real alternative, including spreadsheets and doing nothing)

If they offer a competitor list instead of buyer language, take it, but say plainly that competitor lists produce competitor-shaped positioning.

Build the canvas

1. The buyer, narrowed until it hurts

Not "B2B SaaS companies". Name the role, the company shape, and the trigger that makes this urgent now. Write the sentence: "This is for X, at Y, when Z just happened." If Z is missing, the positioning has no urgency and every campaign will have to manufacture it.

2. The alternative you actually replace

Every purchase displaces something: a tool, a contractor, a spreadsheet, or inaction. Name it. Positioning that does not name the alternative cannot explain why switching is worth the cost.

3. The one claim you will defend

One sentence. It must be falsifiable, and a competitor must be unable to copy it onto their homepage without lying. Test it: if you swap in the three closest competitor names and the sentence still reads true, it is not positioning, it is category description. Rewrite until it fails that swap.

4. The claims you refuse

Three claims that are true of the category and that this company will not make, because everyone makes them. This section is what makes the canvas usable: it tells writers what to cut.

5. Evidence under each claim

For every claim, name the proof: a number, a customer, a demo moment, a published method. A claim with no evidence line is a hypothesis. Mark it as one.

6. The words the buyer uses

Pull five phrases from the won and lost deals verbatim. These are the words the homepage should use. Flag any internal term that never appeared in a buyer's mouth.

Output

A single markdown canvas with the six sections above, then:

• One-liner: the sentence a champion repeats internally when you are not in the room.
• Homepage hero draft: headline, subhead, primary action.
• What to change first: the one surface where the current story is costing the most money, and why.
• Open questions: what evidence would change these decisions.

Rules

• Never invent a customer quote, a number, or a case study. If the evidence is missing, write "no evidence yet" and treat the claim as unproven.
• Prefer a narrower claim that is provable over a broad claim that is impressive.
• No em-dashes, no "leverage", no "unlock", no "seamless".
• If the user's product genuinely does the same job as its competitors, say so and shift the work to proof, price, or service. Fake differentiation loses deals later, in the room, without you.

Related skills

icp-sharpener-b2b before this if the buyer is fuzzy. landing-page-teardown after, to apply the canvas to the page. sales-one-pager to carry the same claim into the deal.