---
title: "Brand Positioning Workshop: How to Run One in Six Steps"
description: "Run a brand positioning workshop in six steps: what to prepare, the exercises to use and how to end with one positioning statement your team can use."
---

[The Propello Blog | Go-to-Market, AEO and RevOps](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog)

# [Brand Positioning Workshop: How to Run One in Six Steps](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/positioning-workshop)

 Written by [Tumisang Bogwasi](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/author/tumisang-bogwasi) | Oct 13, 2026, 4:29:39 PM

A brand positioning workshop is a working session where sales, marketing and customer success agree on who you are for, what you are up against and why you are different. You run it in six steps and leave with one written positioning statement. Positioning is often one session of a wider [go-to-market workshop](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/go-to-market-workshop).

This guide is for CEOs, founders, CROs and marketing leaders at B2B companies. You get a checklist of what to prepare, six steps that each end with what done looks like, an example statement and the mistakes to avoid. Brand positioning describes the place you hold in your customers' minds, so keep the output short.

 

| **Positioning Workshop** A positioning workshop is a facilitated session where a cross-functional team decides which customers it serves, which alternatives it competes with and what value only it delivers, then records the answer as a positioning statement. |
| --- |

## By the end you will have a positioning statement your whole team can use

When the session is finished you will hold five things:

- A named list of the real alternatives your buyers consider, including doing nothing.
- A short list of the capabilities only you have, each tied to what it does for a customer.
- A description of the target customers who care most about that value.
- A market category that makes your value obvious at a glance.
- One brand positioning statement, written down, dated and owned by a named person.

April Dunford, author of Obviously Awesome, defines positioning as how your product is different and better than the alternatives for a particular set of customers. She says it is the starting point for messaging, branding, lead generation and sales strategy. That is the standard your statement has to meet. Her full site is at [aprildunford.com](https://www.aprildunford.com/).

## Why brand positioning is important before you spend on campaigns

Business buyers are consumers of information too, and consumers perceive a company through whatever they see and hear first. Other brands in your category are already telling buyers who they are for.

Effective brand positioning gives buyers one clear idea to hold. Without it, prospective customers fill the gap themselves, often by comparing you with the cheapest option.

It also helps your internal teams. Sales teams, marketers and customer success staff make small choices every day about what to say. A shared statement tells them how different teams should describe the company, so the buyer hears one story and customer engagement stays consistent.

It matters for staying competitive, too. When similar products look alike, a purchase decision falls back on price. A clear position lets you differentiate on something else and communicate it in a sentence.

## What to have in place before you start

A workshop is only as good as what people bring into the room. Check these five things first.

- **The right people.** Invite the leader who owns revenue, a salesperson who talks to buyers weekly, a marketer who writes the words and someone from customer success. Keep the group small enough that everyone speaks.
- **Real customer evidence.** Bring notes from sales calls, win and loss reasons, support tickets and customer interviews, the raw insights that show what customers actually say. Opinions from the leadership team are a starting point, not proof.
- **A draft of your target market.** If you have not defined your ideal customer yet, use an [ideal customer profile template](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/ideal-customer-profile-template) to write a first version. The workshop will sharpen it.
- **Your current messaging.** Print your website homepage, your sales deck and your last three proposals. Differences between them show where your positioning strategy is unclear today.
- **A facilitator who does not own the answer.** Someone neutral keeps time, asks for evidence and stops the loudest voice from winning. This can be an outside guide or an internal person with no stake in the outcome.

Positioning is different from brand identity. Brand identity is how you look and sound: your name, logo, colors, brand personality and brand voice, shaped by your brand values. Positioning is the strategic choice about where you stand in the buyer's mind. Decide positioning first, then write your [brand voice guidelines](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/brand-voice-guidelines) to match it.

## How to run a brand positioning workshop in six steps

Each step is an instruction and ends with what done looks like, so the group knows when to move on. The order follows the five components Dunford describes in her [quickstart guide to positioning](https://www.aprildunford.com/post/a-quickstart-guide-to-positioning), where each component depends on the one before it.

### 1. List what your buyers would do if you did not exist

Start with the competitive alternatives. Ask the room what a customer would do if your offer disappeared tomorrow. Dunford points out that the answer is often the status quo: a spreadsheet, an internal process or doing nothing.

Write down every alternative on a wall or shared board. Then strike out the competitors your buyers never actually consider. Positioning against a rival nobody shortlists dilutes your message.

You are done when the board shows the three or four alternatives that appear in real deals, backed by a recent example of each from sales.

### 2. Plot where you and your competitors sit

A perceptual map makes the market visible. Draw two axes, each an attribute your target audience cares about, such as speed against depth of service or price against specialization. Harvard Business School Online describes this as a way to [see where your brand and its rivals sit](https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/brand-positioning-statement) before you write your statement.

Place your company and the alternatives from step one on the map. Let each person place the dots on their own first, then compare. Disagreement here is useful, because it shows where your team does not share a view of the competition.

You are done when the map shows an open area that matches something customers value and your team can credibly claim.

### 3. Isolate what only you can do

Now list your unique attributes. Dunford's [product positioning exercise](https://www.aprildunford.com/post/a-product-positioning-exercise) asks the group to list everything the company has that makes it unique, without judging whether it is good or bad yet. Include capabilities, assets, data, methods and people.

Be strict. An attribute is unique only if the alternatives from step one do not have it. Speed, quality and good service rarely survive that test, because every competitor claims them. The strongest attributes are the ones competitors cannot copy quickly.

You are done when the list holds a handful of attributes that no listed alternative can match, each with a piece of evidence behind it.

### 4. Turn each unique attribute into value for the customer

A capability is not a benefit until it changes something for the buyer. For each attribute, ask what it lets a customer do or avoid. Dunford's exercise frames this as capturing what value your unique attributes could enable for customers.

This is where your unique value proposition takes shape. Write each one as a plain sentence a customer would recognize, and name the reason to believe it: a proof point, a process or a customer story you are allowed to share.

You are done when each unique attribute has a one-sentence customer benefit and one reason to believe it, and the group has picked the one or two benefits that matter most.

### 5. Choose the target customers who care most

Not everyone who could buy from you should be your focus. Ask which customers care most about the value from step four. Dunford describes the aim as finding the prospects who care deeply about your unique value, and getting more specific than a broad segment.

Identify them by traits you can spot before the first call: industry, size, a trigger event, the problem they live with. Compare your list with the ideal customer profile you brought in, and update it where the evidence disagrees.

You are done when the group can describe the best-fit target customer in three or four traits and name five real accounts that match.

### 6. Pick the market category and write the positioning statement

The category you name sets the buyer's expectations. If you call yourself a member of the wrong category, buyers compare you with the wrong competitors. Choose the market frame that makes your value most obvious to the customers from step five. This is your market positioning: the category you ask buyers to put you in.

Then write the statement. A common structure, described by Harvard Business School Online, reads: for your target market, your brand is the only one among your competitive set that delivers a stated point of difference, because of your reasons to believe. Create two or three drafts in pairs, read the versions aloud and choose one.

You are done when one positioning statement is written, the room can repeat it from memory, and a named owner has the job of keeping it current.

## What a finished brand positioning statement looks like

Here is an invented example to show the structure. A firm that audits freight invoices might write: "For finance leaders at mid-sized logistics companies, Ledgerline is the only freight audit service built around contract terms, because every invoice is checked against the signed rate agreement before it is paid."

Notice what it does. It names the target market, picks a competitive set, makes one claim of difference and gives a reason to believe it. It does not use words such as innovative or best-in-class, which any competitor could print.

If you want positioning statement examples from established companies, Harvard Business School Online walks through three bottled water brands that aim at three different kinds of buyer. Studying real world examples like these helps a team see how one category can hold several distinct positions.

A positioning statement is an internal guide, not website copy. You turn it into public words afterward. Your brand promise, your messaging and your sales pitch should all be traceable back to it, and so should the core values you choose to emphasize.

## What a brand positioning workshop gives you beyond the statement

A workshop cuts through market noise and distills what the company is into a form the whole team can act on. Because it aligns internal teams around one strategy, leaders share a vision and decide faster.

The written statement becomes a decision framework. When someone proposes a campaign, a feature or a new market, you ask whether it fits the position. That prevents months of misdirected marketing and helps you judge new business opportunities.

Practical exercises turn insight into next steps, and customer pain points and motivations drive each one. Customer feedback after the session then refines the position instead of defending it.

Defining your core values and mission also shapes brand identity and keeps messaging consistent in every communication. A clear position guides marketing and product development, shapes buyer preferences and loyalty, and builds brand equity over time.

## Mistakes that turn a positioning workshop into a branding debate

Most failed sessions fail in the same few ways.

- **Starting with the logo or the tagline.** Creative work belongs after the strategic choice. If the group argues about colors in the first hour, stop and return to the alternatives.
- **Trying to serve everyone.** A statement that fits every customer fits none of them. Choosing a target market means saying no to some buyers.
- **Leaving customers out of the evidence.** If nobody has spoken to a customer in months, run five short interviews before you book the room.
- **Writing the statement and filing it.** If sales and marketing teams do not receive it with a plain explanation, it changes nothing. Walk each team through it within a week.
- **Treating it as finished.** Markets move. Review the statement every quarter and rerun the session when a new competitor, product or customer segment appears.

## From positioning statement to brand positioning strategy

A brand positioning strategy is the plan for making the position true wherever a customer meets you: your website, your sales calls, your onboarding and your pricing. The statement is the decision. The strategy is the work that follows: develop the proof, address the objections buyers raise and decide which key messages lead.

Done well, the strategy improves how visible the brand is, and how well buyers perceive it, in the places they look.

Share the statement with every stakeholder who will carry it, then agree the communication strategy that turns it into words.

### Market positioning and product positioning are different layers

Market positioning places the whole company in a category. Product positioning explains one offer to the customers who need it. New brands usually need the first before the second, and a company with several offers needs both, kept consistent.

### What are the three C's of brand positioning?

A common way to frame it is company, customers and competitors. Your strengths, the needs of your buyers and the alternatives they weigh must all point the same way. The six steps above cover each one.

## How a positioning workshop connects to your go-to-market plan

Positioning is one decision inside a wider go-to-market strategy. Once you know who you serve and why you win, the next choices are the channels, the sales motion and the offer. If you are working through those, read [what a go-to-market strategy is](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/what-is-go-to-market-strategy) and how the parts fit.

Without clear brand positioning, each team fills the gap with its own story. Sales emphasizes price, marketing emphasizes features and customer success promises whatever keeps an account happy. The workshop replaces three stories with one.

## What you gain when this is done properly

A clear positioning statement is shared language. It saves time every week because fewer meetings are spent re-deciding who you are for.

### Sales

Reps can open a conversation with the customers most likely to buy and explain the difference in one sentence. They lose fewer deals to doing nothing, because they know which alternative they are really up against and can speak to it.

### Marketing

Marketing writes from a decision instead of a guess. Every campaign, landing page and email has a clear audience and one claim to make. Product positioning and messaging stay consistent across channels, so buyers meet the same company everywhere.

### Customer success

Customer success hears the same promise sales made. Onboarding can be built around the value you said you deliver, and renewal conversations return to it. Customers who joined for the right reason are easier to keep.

## Put the statement to work in the next thirty days

After the workshop, rewrite your homepage headline, your sales opening and your proposal summary to match the statement. Then check, a month later, whether the first calls sound different.

Judge the effectiveness of the statement by whether reps, marketers and customers use the same words, and whether potential customers repeat your point of difference back to you.

Propello is a [HubSpot partner](https://www.finemediabw.com/about-us) and designs and builds connected go-to-market systems on HubSpot. If you want an outside view of whether your positioning, messaging and sales process tell one consistent story, an audit is the place to start.

[Book a Propello GTM Audit](https://www.finemediabw.com/contact)

## Frequently asked questions

[View full post](https://www.finemediabw.com/blog/positioning-workshop)

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