The repair, not more strategy.
When the diagnosis comes back as a positioning problem, this is the work that fixes it. It is not another round of analysis. It is the rewrite, with the ICP that makes it possible and the architecture that keeps it consistent everywhere it appears.
- Price
- $6,000
- Turnaround
- Three weeks
- Starts with
- The intake
Who it is for
Companies whose diagnosis came back as a positioning problem. That is the usual route in, and it is the one we recommend, because the Sprint is expensive to run against the wrong problem and the Diagnostic costs a third as much to find out.
It also fits a company that already knows. If five people inside the business give five different answers to who the product is for, and everyone has known that for a year, the diagnosis is not really in doubt.
When it makes sense
When acquisition works and conversion does not. When two kinds of buyer are arriving through the same door and only one of them can be satisfied. When a channel that should work does not, and the next channel does not either. When churn is predictable from attributes visible on the day an account signed up, which means you are acquiring your own churn.
It does not make sense when the product genuinely cannot hold the customers a clear position would bring. Positioning makes a promise. If nothing can keep it, the sharper promise makes the problem faster rather than smaller, and we will say so before taking the engagement.
What it solves
One thing, precisely. The gap between what you say and who is listening.
A positioning problem is not a wording problem, which is why copy rewrites keep failing to fix it. The words change and the position underneath them stays where it was. The Sprint changes the position: who the company is for, what it claims, and who it is willing to lose in order to be legible to the rest.
What we investigate
The position is nearly always already in the business, held by the accounts that renew without being chased. The first week of the Sprint is spent finding it rather than inventing one.
- The accounts that stay
- Sorted by whether they renew without being chased, and then examined for what they had in common on the day they arrived rather than today.
- The accounts that left
- What they expected, where that expectation came from, and whether anything downstream could ever have satisfied it.
- The words in the room
- How customers describe the problem to each other, in their language rather than yours. Support tickets and sales call notes are usually better sources than interviews.
- The competitive frame
- What the buyer is comparing you against, which is frequently not a competitor but doing nothing, or a spreadsheet, or an internal hire.
- Where the promise breaks
- The specific point between the first claim and the delivered product where the two stop being the same promise.
What the Sprint includes
Five artefacts, all written, all usable by somebody who was not in the conversation. They arrive as one document with the pieces separable, because different parts of them go to different people.
ICP definition
Written to disqualify, not to describe. It names firmographic and behavioural attributes visible before an account signs, so it can actually be used by marketing and sales rather than admired in a document. It will exclude customers you currently have. That is the point of it.
Positioning statement
One paragraph. Who it is for, what changes for them, what it replaces, and why the alternative fails them. Short enough to be remembered and specific enough to be wrong, which are the same property.
Buyer and problem definition
The person, the moment they start looking, the words they use before they know your category exists, and the internal budget the decision will actually ride on. This is what makes the message findable as well as convincing.
Message architecture
The claim, the three or four supporting arguments beneath it, the proof each one needs, and the objections each one raises. Everything written afterwards is assembled from this rather than invented fresh each time.
Surface by surface translation
How the architecture reads on the homepage, in the product onboarding, in a sales conversation, in paid copy and in outbound. Same claim, different length and register, so the promise made at the top is the promise kept at the bottom.
An ICP that excludes nobody is a description of your market, not a definition of a buyer. If the definition we deliver does not rule out companies you currently sell to, it has not done its job and we have not finished.
Timeline
Three weeks from start to delivered.
Week one is investigation. Week two produces the ICP and the position, and you see both in draft rather than at the end. Week three builds the message architecture on whatever survived your response to week two, and translates it across the surfaces.
How we work together
You see the position in draft at the end of week two, deliberately before anything has been built on top of it. That is the point where changing it is cheap.
Feedback comes back in writing, in the document, so the reasoning stays attached to the decision. Two rounds are included, and in practice one substantial round is what most engagements use. Where a conversation would settle something faster than another exchange, we can have one.
What is outside scope
Stated plainly, because a sprint that quietly expands is a sprint that misses its date.
- Visual identity, logo or brand design. This is what the company says, not what it looks like.
- Writing the whole site. You get the architecture and the surface by surface guidance, worked examples included. Production writing across every page is Growth Operations or your own team.
- Renaming the company or the product.
- Paid media management. The Sprint tells you what the ads should say, not who runs the account.
- Product decisions. If the position that fits requires the product to change, the Sprint will say so plainly, and then it is your call.
What happens after
Most companies take the architecture and roll it out themselves over four to eight weeks. It is written to make that possible, and doing it in house is usually better, because the people writing know the product.
Some want it built and operated instead, which is Growth Operations. And some need a period of nothing, because the hardest part of a new position is holding it for two quarters while the old traffic falls away.
Why it costs $6,000
Three weeks of work, and a decision the company will be living inside for years. Positioning is the thing on this page with the widest reach, because everything downstream is assembled from it. Acquisition, onboarding and sales are all just the position, repeated at different lengths.
If you came through the Diagnostic within the last thirty days, the $2,000 comes off this.
How to start
Fill in the intake. It takes about ten minutes, and the answers are the first input into the work rather than a form somebody files. You get a reply within two business days, and if this is the wrong engagement for you, that is what the reply will say.
Is the message the thing in your way?
That is what the intake is for. It takes about ten minutes, and the answers go straight into the first read of your business.