Positioning is not a tagline

Every few months a team tells us they've 'done positioning.' What they usually mean is that someone wrote a new headline. A tagline is an output of positioning. It is not the work.

What positioning actually decides

Positioning is a set of choices about who you're for, what you're an alternative to, and what makes that alternative worth leaving. Those three choices ripple into pricing, roadmap, hiring, and every sales conversation.

• The competitive alternative — including 'a spreadsheet and a Tuesday meeting'
• The capabilities only you have relative to that alternative
• The value those capabilities produce, in the customer's words
• The segment that cares most about that value

If two competitors could put your positioning statement on their site without lying, you don't have positioning yet.

How to tell if it's working

The test isn't whether leadership likes it. It's whether a new sales rep can explain it in week two, and whether customers repeat it back unprompted in interviews. Everything else is decoration.