Do I Have a Positioning Problem? A 3-Question Test for Founders

Here's the quickest way to find out if you have a positioning problem.

Answer these three questions about your product. Then ask your leadership team to answer the same three, separately, without conferring. If the answers come slowly, or you get three different versions back, you have a problem.

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The three questions:

1. What is it?

Say exactly what your product is, in one plain sentence. Not the vision, not the category you're hoping to grow into, the thing a customer uses today. If you need a run-up to explain it, your buyers won't get there either.

2. So what?

What changes for the customer because you exist? This drags you out of feature-speak and into value. "We do X" isn't an answer. "You get Y" is.

3. Who cares?

Who feels this problem badly enough to pay to fix it? "Everyone" is a positioning problem in disguise. The sharper your who, the sharper every decision downstream of it.

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Now check two things

Did the answers come easily? If you hesitated, so will your buyers. They give you seconds, not paragraphs.

Did your team answer the same way? Get the founder, sales, marketing and product in a room and ask them cold. Four versions in the room means four versions reaching your market.

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The signs you've probably already felt

• Deals drag because prospects "don't quite get it".
• Your homepage, your deck and your sales calls each say something slightly different.
• You explain what you do and get a polite nod instead of "oh, I need that".
• Sales and marketing quietly disagree about who the customer even is.

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What to do about it

A positioning problem you can name is already half solved.

The next question is why it happened, and it's usually one of a handful of mistakes founders make without noticing.

I've written up the three I see most, and the fix for each here.

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And if you'd rather not untangle it on your own, that's the work I do. Book a call to see how I could help.