Positioning for a small B2B business: how to say what you do better than the alternative 

Positioning is a clear statement of who you serve, what you do for them and why they should choose you over the alternative. For a small B2B business it comes from the deals you win and why, not from a workshop. If nobody in the market can say what you do better, every sale becomes a price negotiation.

Why does every deal become a price conversation?

When a buyer cannot tell two suppliers apart, the only difference left to compare is price. This is the most common reason small B2B firms feel squeezed. The work itself is often good, but the website, the proposal and the sales call sound like everyone else's, so the buyer asks for a discount.

The signs are usually familiar.

• Buyers ask for three quotes and pick on price.
• Your website could belong to any of your competitors with the name swapped.
• Different people in your business describe what you do in different ways.
• Referrals arrive, but the referrer cannot explain why they sent them to you.
• You win work you did not want and lose work that suited you.
• Proposals compare you with the cheapest alternative, not the best fit.

Positioning does not guarantee a higher price. What it does is give the buyer a reason to choose you that is not price, so the price conversation becomes a smaller part of the decision.

What positioning is, and what it is not

Positioning is the place your business holds in the buyer's mind compared with the other ways they could solve the same problem. Those other ways include competitors, but also doing nothing, hiring a person or buying a tool.

It is just as useful to be clear about what it is not.

• It is not a logo, a colour or a tagline. Those express positioning, but they do not create it.
• It is not a list of everything you can do. A long list tells the buyer you do anything, which means you stand out at nothing in particular.
• It is not a claim such as the best or the leading, which buyers neither believe nor can check.
• It is not what you wish to be. It starts from what is true today and can stretch only a little ahead of it.
• It is not for everyone. Choosing who you serve means accepting that some buyers are not yours.

A positioning statement has four parts: the buyer, the problem, what you do about it, and why you are a better choice than the alternative. If any part is missing or generic, the statement will not help you.

Find what you actually win on

Do not start with a brainstorm. Start with the evidence in your own sales, because your won and lost deals already hold the answer and nobody has to guess.

1. List your last ten to twenty deals, including wins, losses and the ones that went quiet.
2. For each win, find out why the buyer chose you by asking them in a short call or message. Keep the questions open: what made you pick us, and what did you consider instead?
3. For each loss, ask the same. Many buyers will answer honestly if you ask kindly and keep it brief.
4. Write the answers down in the buyer's words, and resist tidying them into marketing language for now.
5. Look for repeats. Which reasons show up in three or more wins, and which kinds of buyer, by size, industry or situation, do you win most often?
6. Study your best customers. Which ones pay on time, refer others and come back for more work, and what do they have in common?
7. Name the alternatives. What did buyers compare you with, including doing the work in-house or not at all?

Patterns will appear. You might find that you win when the buyer is of a certain size, when speed matters, when they need someone who understands a particular industry, or when they want one accountable person. You might also find that you lose to larger firms on brand and to cheaper firms on price, and that those losses hardly hurt because those buyers were never a good fit.

If you have too few deals to see a pattern, talk to existing customers instead. Ask what problem they had when they called you, what they tried before and what they would tell a friend about working with you.

Write it in one sentence

Once the pattern is clear, write one sentence that holds all four parts. A simple frame helps.

For [this kind of buyer] who [has this problem], we [do this], unlike [the usual alternative], because [the reason that is true].

Then put it to the test.

• Can a stranger repeat it after hearing it once?
• Does it name a real buyer, or does it say businesses of all sizes?
• Is the reason something you can prove with a story, a process or a record, rather than an adjective?
• Would a competitor find it hard to say the same thing truthfully?
• Would the best of your existing customers say yes, that is why we hired you?

Expect to write ten versions and throw most of them away, because the first ones will be too broad. Narrow the buyer, narrow the problem and replace each adjective with a fact.

Carry it through the site, proposals and sales conversation

A sentence on a slide changes nothing. It works only when buyers meet it at every point of contact and everyone in the business says the same thing.

The website

The top of the home page should say who you serve and what you do for them, in the buyer's words, and each service page should speak to a named problem. Use the customer language you collected in the deal calls rather than your own industry's terms, and remove any claim a competitor could copy.

Proposals

Open the proposal with the buyer's problem in their words, then set out your approach and why it suits them. Compare yourself honestly with the real alternative. A proposal that explains how it is different is much harder to judge on price alone.

The sales conversation

Prepare a short spoken version of the sentence and practise it. Ask questions that bring out the problem you solve best, and qualify out the buyers who are not a fit. Saying no politely to the wrong buyer saves time and protects your position.

Referrals and partners

Give your referrers the sentence. People send work to those they can describe in one line, and a referrer who cannot say what you are best at will not send you the right work.

Inside the business

Everyone who talks to customers should know the sentence and the reasons behind it. Review it once a year against new wins and losses. Positioning is not fixed forever, but it should change because of evidence rather than mood.

Why delivery has to be right first

Positioning makes a promise, and if your delivery does not keep it, the positioning makes things worse, because a clear promise that is broken is remembered. Check that the thing you say you are best at is something you can do every time, with the people and process you have today.

• If you promise speed, have a real way to deliver quickly and a measure that shows it.
• If you promise a senior person on every job, make sure it happens.
• If you promise deep knowledge of one industry, keep that knowledge current.
• If delivery is uneven, fix delivery first and only then turn up the message.

This is also why positioning work and operations work belong together. Brand and growth work sits beside strategy because what you say has to hold true in how the business actually runs.

What if you serve several kinds of buyer?

Many small firms do, and a common worry is that a narrow statement will turn work away. In practice a narrow statement attracts the right work, and you can still take on other work that arrives by referral.

• Pick one lead buyer for the website and the first line of every proposal, meaning the buyer you win most often and most enjoy working for.
• Keep a second line for other buyers on their own pages, so they find an answer written for them.
• Do not mix messages on one page, because a page that speaks to everyone speaks to nobody.
• Test the lead buyer for a few months. If enquiries from that group rise, you chose well, and if they do not, review the evidence and adjust.

How do you check that positioning is working?

Positioning shows up in small changes well before it shows up in revenue. Look for these signs over a few months.

• Buyers repeat your words back to you on the first call.
• Fewer enquiries ask only for a price.
• Referrers describe you correctly to their contacts.
• More of your new work comes from the buyer you chose to serve.
• You say no to poor-fit work more easily, and it hurts less.
• Sales conversations get shorter because buyers arrive already understanding what you do.

Keep a simple record of each new enquiry: who they are, how they found you, what they asked for and whether you won the work. After a quarter, compare it with the record you made when you started. That is your evidence, and it will shape the next version of the sentence.

Frequently asked

Short answers to the questions we hear most often follow below.