Methodology · 6 min read
Dunford's 10-Step Positioning Process
A positioning decision grounded in best-fit customer evidence.
April Dunford · View sources ↓At a glance
- Use this when
- You need a research and workshop process to arrive at defensible positioning.
- What you will work towards
- A positioning decision grounded in best-fit customer evidence.
- Bring to the reading
- A specific decision from your work and the customer evidence you have so far.
What it is
The step-by-step process April Dunford lays out in Obviously Awesome (2019) for arriving at product positioning, distinct from the 5-Component Positioning Canvas already in this category, which is the output template the process produces. Where the canvas is a snapshot you fill in, the process is the sequence of research, workshops, and validation steps that get you there: understanding who genuinely loves your product today, building an honest list of competitive alternatives, isolating what is truly unique, mapping that uniqueness to value, finding the best-fit market category, and only then writing the pitch. Running the canvas without the process behind it produces a plausible-looking document built on assumption rather than evidence; the process is what makes the canvas defensible.
When to use it
- You are positioning a product for the first time, or the market has moved enough that the last positioning exercise no longer reflects reality.
- Internal teams disagree about what makes the product unique, and the disagreement has never been tested against real customer and competitor evidence.
- You inherited positioning you did not build and cannot explain why each choice was made.
- A merger, pivot, or major product expansion has changed your competitive alternatives or your genuinely unique attributes.
- You are about to fill in the 5-Component Positioning Canvas and want the inputs to be evidenced rather than assumed.
How to run it
- Identify your best-fit customers. Start from your happiest, best-fit existing customers, not a hypothetical persona. Interview 8 to 12 of them and ask what almost stopped them buying, what they compared you to, and what they'd tell a peer considering the same purchase. This is the evidence base for every step that follows.
- List true competitive alternatives. Document what these customers say they would use instead of you, including "do nothing" and manual workarounds, not the vendor list your sales team tracks in the CRM. The customer's version of the competitive set is the one that matters for positioning.
- Isolate unique attributes. List every attribute, capability, or approach that sets you apart, then cut anything a credible alternative on your list also has. What is left is genuinely unique, not merely good.
- Map attributes to value. For each unique attribute, ask "so what does this let the customer do or feel that they couldn't before?" An attribute with no traceable value is interesting engineering, not a positioning asset.
- Determine who cares. Of all the customers who could buy the product, identify the segment that cares most about the specific value themes you just mapped. This segment, not your broadest addressable market, is who the positioning is written for.
- Find the best market category. Choose the frame of reference that makes your value obvious to that segment with the least explanation required. Test at least two candidate categories, an established one your buyer already understands and, if relevant, a narrower or adjacent one, before committing.
- Layer on a relevant trend, if there is a genuine one. A real market or macro trend (a new regulation, a shift in buyer behaviour) can add urgency to the positioning, but a forced or invented trend undermines credibility. Skip this step rather than manufacture a trend that is not real.
- Vet and validate. Take the draft positioning back to 5 to 8 target customers, cold, and ask them to describe in their own words what the product does and why it matters. If their answer does not match your intent, return to step 3 or 5, not straight to a wording fix.
- Write the pitch. Only once positioning is validated, translate it into the sales pitch, website copy, and the 5-Component Positioning Canvas as the working reference document. This is the first step where language, rather than substance, is the focus.
- Align the organisation. Brief product, sales, marketing, and support on the finished positioning and why each choice was made, not just what the final wording says. Teams that understand the reasoning defend the positioning better than teams that only memorise the pitch.
Cadence & ownership
PMM owns and facilitates the process, but it is not a solo exercise; product, sales, and customer success all contribute evidence (interview access, competitive alternative lists, win/loss context) and should be represented in the validation step. Run the full ten-step process at a major inflection point: initial positioning, a pivot, a merger, or when two consecutive quarters show declining win rate that other diagnostics (Win/Loss Analysis, Competitive Intelligence) trace back to positioning rather than execution. Between full runs, revisit steps 1 to 5 lightly each quarter as new customer and competitive evidence arrives, so the underlying canvas never drifts too far from the market before the next full exercise catches it.
Example
Ferrycloud, a fictional freight-visibility SaaS company, had positioned itself for two years as "a logistics platform" and could not explain why win rates against three larger competitors sat at 21%. PMM ran the full ten-step process. Step 1 interviews with 10 best-fit customers, all mid-size freight brokers, revealed they had all evaluated Ferrycloud against building an in-house tracking spreadsheet, not against the two big logistics platforms product assumed were the real competition. Step 3 isolated one genuinely unique attribute none of the spreadsheet workaround or the big platforms matched: automatic exception alerts triggered by carrier data before a customer had to ask. Step 5 showed this mattered most to brokers moving 200 to 2,000 shipments a month, too small for the enterprise platforms to prioritise but too complex for a spreadsheet to catch reliably. Step 6 tested two category frames, "logistics platform" and "freight exception management", and validated the second with 6 target customers; four of six repeated "exception management" back unprompted, versus one of six with the original "platform" framing. Step 9 rewrote the pitch and the positioning canvas around freight exception management for mid-size brokers. Within two quarters, win rate against the two named competitors rose from 21% to 33%, sales cycle shortened from 71 to 52 days, and discovery-call-to-demo conversion improved from 38% to 51%, the three metrics PMM tracked monthly to confirm the new positioning was actually landing rather than just reading well internally.
Pitfalls
- Starting from the canvas instead of the process. Filling in the 5-Component Positioning Canvas directly, without steps 1 through 8 behind it, produces a document that looks complete but rests on assumption. Why it matters: positioning built this way tends to read well in an internal review and fail the first time a prospect pushes back with a real objection. Recovery: if a canvas already exists, run steps 1, 2, and 8 (best-fit customer interviews, true competitive alternatives, and validation) retroactively before trusting it further.
- Skipping straight to step 9. Teams under deadline pressure often jump to writing the pitch once they have a rough sense of differentiation, skipping segment selection (step 5) and validation (step 8) entirely. Why it matters: a well-written pitch aimed at the wrong segment, or one nobody has confirmed actually resonates, wastes the polish spent on it. Recovery: block time for steps 5 and 8 explicitly in the project plan before copywriting begins, and treat "we're behind schedule" as a reason to cut scope elsewhere, not to skip validation.
- Forcing a trend into step 7 that is not real. A manufactured sense of urgency ("the market is shifting because...") is usually the first thing a sceptical prospect or an experienced analyst sees through. Why it matters: an invented trend undermines trust in every other claim in the positioning, even the ones that are well evidenced. Recovery: only include step 7 if the trend can be backed by an independent source (analyst report, regulatory filing, published market data); otherwise, omit the step entirely rather than weaken it with a stretch.
How the ideas connect
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Make it useful
Bring it back to your work.
Name one decision this guide could help you make. Write down the evidence you need, the output you would produce, and how you would know it was useful.
Check your understanding
Practise applying Dunford's 10-Step Positioning Process in five short scenarios.
5 practical scenarios. Choose an answer, explore the reasoning, and revisit the guide whenever you need.
Sources
- April Dunford, Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get it, Buy it, Love it (2019); the ten-step sequence documented here follows the process laid out across the book's chapters.
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