Most positioning advice assumes you have market research budgets, hundreds of customers to survey, and time for comprehensive competitive analysis.
Early-stage PMMs have none of these. You have twelve customers, sales calls from the last three months, and maybe some G2 reviews if you're lucky.
And yet stakeholders still ask: "What's our positioning?" You need an answer. Here's how to create positioning that actually works with limited data.
Start With Your Best Customers
You don't need 100 customer interviews. You need deep conversations with 5-7 customers who represent your ideal future state.
Not your biggest customers. Not your oldest customers. Your best customers—the ones who:
- Get value fast
- Use your product the way you intended
- Would be upset if you disappeared
- Represent where you want the business to go
Call them. Don't send surveys. Surveys give you shallow data. You need depth.
Ask three questions:
"What were you doing before us?" This reveals the real competitive set—often not who you think.
"What almost made you choose something else?" This exposes your actual differentiation, not what you wish it was.
"How do you explain us to others?" This shows how real humans talk about your value, which is usually simpler and clearer than your marketing.
Record these conversations. Listen for patterns. When three customers use the same phrase to describe your value, that's signal.
Map Your Actual Competitive Set
Most early-stage companies compete with spreadsheets, manual processes, and "doing nothing" more than they compete with other vendors.
Figure out what customers are actually comparing you to, not what the market landscape slide says.
Review your last 20 lost deals. What did they choose instead? Track: other vendors, built it themselves, decided to wait, kept using their current process.
If 70% of losses are "status quo" and only 30% are competitor tools, your positioning problem is different than if you're losing head-to-head against specific vendors.
Your positioning must acknowledge the real comparison set. If you're mostly competing with Excel, talking about how you're better than Competitor X misses the point.
Find Your Differentiation in Deal Data
You don't need fancy research to understand why you win. You need to talk to people who chose you.
Pull your last 15 wins. Read the sales notes. Look for the moment the deal flipped from "maybe" to "yes."
Common patterns that reveal differentiation:
- Specific features mentioned repeatedly in close notes
- Objections that disappeared after a particular demo
- Economic buyers who approved budget based on specific outcomes
- Implementation concerns that your team addressed uniquely
Interview 3-4 sales reps: "When you're competing against [competitor], what wins the deal?"
The answer is rarely your official differentiators. It's usually something practical: faster implementation, specific integration, pricing structure that matches their budget cycle, or responsiveness during the sales process.
That's your real differentiation. Position around what actually closes deals, not what sounds strategic.
Build Positioning Around Outcomes
Without extensive market research, outcome-based positioning is safest and most defensible.
Instead of: "We're the leading AI-powered platform for X."
Try: "We help [specific persona] achieve [specific outcome] without [specific pain]."
Example: "We help sales teams update CRM data in real-time without making reps do manual data entry."
This works because:
- You can validate it with 5-7 customer interviews
- It's specific enough to be meaningful
- It doesn't require market share claims you can't prove
- It focuses on the problem you solve, not product features
Test this positioning on your next 3-5 sales calls. Watch how prospects react. If they say "that's exactly our problem," you're onto something.
Use the Positioning Canvas
April Dunford's positioning canvas works brilliantly for early-stage companies because it forces you to work with data you have, not data you wish you had.
The five components:
Competitive alternatives: What would customers use if you didn't exist? (You can answer this from 5-7 customer interviews)
Unique capabilities: What can you do that alternatives can't? (Pull this from product capabilities and customer conversations)
Value: What's the benefit of those capabilities? (Listen for this in win/loss conversations)
Target market: Who cares most about that value? (Look at your current best customers)
Market category: What context do buyers need? (Test different framings in sales conversations)
Run through this canvas with your CEO, head of product, and top sales rep. You'll disagree. That's the point. The disagreements reveal assumptions to test.
Test Fast With Sales Calls
Don't spend three months perfecting positioning. Create a hypothesis and test it this week.
Draft three positioning statement variations. Give them to your top two sales reps. Have them test different versions on their next 10 calls.
Track: Which version resonates most with prospects? Which generates the most questions? Which leads to fastest deal progression?
After 10 calls per variation (20 calls total), you'll have signal about what works.
This is faster and more reliable than focus groups or surveys. Real money is at stake. Reactions are authentic.
Validate With Lost Deals
Your lost deals are positioning laboratories. They evaluated you and chose differently.
Call 5 recent losses. Ask: "When you were comparing options, how did you think about us versus what you chose?"
Listen for:
- Misunderstandings about what you do (clarity problem)
- Accurate understanding but wrong audience (targeting problem)
- Feature gaps that mattered (product problem, not positioning)
- Price misalignment (pricing or value communication problem)
If prospects consistently misunderstand what you do, your positioning lacks clarity.
If they understand but don't care, you're targeting the wrong audience or solving the wrong problem.
Create Your Positioning Document
Once you've gathered these inputs, write a simple one-page positioning doc:
For: [Target customer based on best customer analysis]
Who: [Their specific problem from customer interviews]
Our product: [What you actually do]
Unlike: [Real competitive alternatives from deal data]
We: [How you're different based on win analysis]
Share with 5 stakeholders and 3 customers. If they understand it immediately and agree it's accurate, you're done.
If they're confused or disagree, you need more customer conversations.
The 80/20 of Positioning Research
With limited data, focus on:
Must have (80% of value):
- 5-7 deep customer interviews
- Analysis of last 20 wins and losses
- Sales call shadowing to hear real objections
- Competitive alternative mapping from actual deals
Nice to have (20% of value):
- Market sizing research
- Comprehensive competitive analysis
- Brand perception studies
- Customer segmentation research
Do the first list now. Do the second list when you have budget and scale.
When to Revisit
Positioning at early-stage companies needs revision every 6-12 months because:
- Your product evolves
- Your best customers change
- Competitive dynamics shift
- You learn what messaging actually works
Don't try to create permanent positioning. Create positioning that's accurate today and commit to testing and refining it.
Good enough positioning that you test and improve beats perfect positioning that takes six months to create.
You need to position your product this quarter. Use the data you have. Test fast. Refine based on results.
That's how early-stage positioning actually works.