positioning — Stage 2 synthesis skill (PMM spine)

Reads the canonical ICP + the canonical competitor aggregate and produces the positioning strategy. This is the foundational PMM spine artifact — every other strategy + execution skill reads from positioning.

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When to use

• After ICP + competitor aggregate are both locked
• Quarterly refresh
• After major competitive shift (new entrant, repositioning move) that invalidates current anchor
• After major ICP shift that changes who you're positioning for

When NOT to use

• For messaging libraries or taglines (use /product-messaging after positioning locks)
• For battlecards (use /sales-enablement)
• For landing-page copy (use /landing-page-copy after messaging locks)

How it works

1. Inputs: none required (skill reads canonical files automatically)
2. Reads: marketing/icp/ICP.md (champion JTBD + pain points + decision criteria), marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (threat matrix + where category doesn't compete), optionally marketing/brand/brand-voice.md (applies voice rules to the positioning statement)
3. Produces a positioning doc with these sections (matches the PulseAnalytics example at marketing/positioning/positioning.md):
   • Anchor — what category your product anchors to (or creates)
   • Target customer — pointer to ICP.md
   • Status-quo alternatives — what the customer does today + why each falls short
   • Key differentiators — what makes you different + why it matters to the ICP
   • Value propositions (per priority) — outcome-shaped statements ordered by ICP pain
   • What we are NOT — anti-positioning (explicit exclusions)
   • Pricing positioning — premium / mid-market / self-serve framing
   • Tagline candidates — 3-5 options + working tagline
4. Marks the file status: locked once approved
5. Writes to marketing/positioning/positioning.md (overwrites prior canonical; git history preserves prior versions)

Invoke

/positioning

Or with focus:

/positioning refresh — competitor X just launched, anchor may need to shift

Example output

See marketing/positioning/positioning.md for the PulseAnalytics seed. Notice the anchor leads ("the marketing analytics layer that traces revenue without an engineering quarter"); status-quo alternatives are named with concrete fail-modes; value props are outcome-shaped ("stop owning the pipeline-review prep") not feature-shaped.

Dependencies

• Reads from: marketing/icp/ICP.md (required, must be locked); marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (required, must be locked); marketing/brand/brand-voice.md (optional — applies voice to the positioning statement)
• Writes to: marketing/positioning/positioning.md (canonical)
• Downstream readers: /product-messaging, /landing-page-copy, /linkedin-content, /outreach-emails, /ad-creative-brief, every execution skill in the 5 workstreams

Customization

The default "binary anchor" framing comes from the Genesys positioning ontology — pick ONE primary anchor, optionally one secondary. If you're operating in a category where you genuinely need to claim two anchors (rare; usually a positioning weakness), extend the body.

The status-quo-alternatives section is the most important — most B2B SaaS positioning fails by positioning against direct competitors when the real competition is "the spreadsheet" or "doing nothing." Spend extra cycles on this section.

Where this fits in the Example 1 chain

Week 1: /competitor-research × N → /competitor-aggregate → competitor canonical locked
Week 1: /icp-research → ICP canonical locked
Week 2: /positioning (THIS SKILL) → positioning canonical
Week 2: /product-messaging reads positioning → messaging canonical
Week 3+: /landing-page-copy, /linkedin-content, /outreach-emails read messaging + positioning

Refresh cadence

Quarterly. Trigger sooner on competitive shift, ICP shift, or value-prop validation falling apart in customer conversations.