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What is product positioning?

How to research, develop, and adjust product messaging to differentiate products and increase sales.

Sales leaders and emerging business owners need to present and position their products or services effectively to change customer perceptions and stand out from competitors.

This guide defines product positioning and why it is essential for influencing target buyer behaviors. We’ll also discuss key steps to develop product positioning, like researching the market, analyzing competitors, identifying points of differentiation, and ensuring value propositions or unique selling points align with a brand’s voice and values.

Learn more about product positioning:

What is product

positioning?

Why is product positioning

important for sales teams?

Understand the

product market

Define the target audience

or buyer personas

Develop a product

positioning strategy

Describe unique selling

propositions (USPs)

Craft a compelling product

positioning statement

Adapt and evolve product

positioning over time

What is product positioning?

Product positioning is the process of researching and developing a unique product or service identity. This positioning should then quickly become clear in a target buyer’s mind. Product positioning helps sales teams communicate unique product or service benefits to target audiences or buyers— tailored by customer segment, industry, or business challenges.

Why is product positioning important for sales teams?

Effective product positioning enables sales teams to clearly articulate how their solution addresses customer pain points, differentiating it from competitors. By refining and aligning the positioning strategy with insights from B2B marketing and product development teams, sales professionals are better equipped to excel during critical interactions like cold calls, discovery calls, sales demos, and presentations.

Here’s how LinkedIn Sales Navigator enhances this process:

Targeted prospect insights: Sales Navigator provides personalized data about prospects, such as job roles, recent activity, and mutual connections, helping sales reps craft messages that resonate. For example, you can position a product as the perfect solution to a challenge mentioned in a prospect's LinkedIn post or company update.
Real-time alerts: Stay ahead of changes with alerts about job transitions, promotions, and company news, giving sales reps an edge in timing their outreach and tailoring their positioning to current buyer needs.
Advanced search features: Use industry, geography, and company size filters to identify key decision-makers who are most likely to benefit from your product, allowing for sharper, more relevant positioning.

By leveraging these tools, sales reps ensure that prospects walk away with a clear understanding of:

What the product is and how it works.
How it solves their specific pain points.
Why it’s better than competing solutions.

For example, a sales rep using Sales Navigator could identify a CFO struggling with inefficiencies in their expense management system. Armed with real-time data, they can position their product as a cost-effective, time-saving solution tailored to the CFO’s challenges—making their pitch not only timely but also compelling.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator ensures that every sales conversation is informed, precise, and impactful, turning effective product positioning into measurable sales success.

Sales product positioning vs. marketing product positioning

Sales product positioning uses buyer targeting parameters, like a prospective customer’s role or job title, geographic region, or industry, to communicate how a solution fits their needs. These value propositions can differ slightly to tailor a product sales pitch to specific market opportunities and use cases. Marketing product positioning strategies are more focused on informing product development, promotional initiatives, and advertising campaigns.

Next, let’s review the steps required to develop a product positioning strategy.

How AI revolutionizes the sales process

Sales and business leaders must work closely with marketing and product development teams to research the market and understand how a product compares to its leading competitors.

Conduct market research

Begin by conducting market analysis, using data and research to inform a product’s positioning strategy.

Relevant market research strategies include the following:

Hosting in-person focus group studies to gain feedback and insights from target customer segments about their business challenges and the product or service value propositions that would entice them to stay loyal or switch solution providers.

Creating and sending online surveys to gather additional target customer insights and data about their significant business challenges and product feature needs.

Gaining intel from third-party industry reports published by consultancy groups like Gartner, McKinsey, and PwC to uncover evolving market challenges or needs and determine competitive advantages and disadvantages.

Gathering deep sales insights from relationship intelligence tools helps sales and marketing teams research prospects using their buyer personas. It also lets sales teams gather real-time insights before crafting a tailored product positioning strategy and statement.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator users can research prospects by role or job title within their organization, personal and professional achievements, interests related to the product or service, social media activity, degree of mutual connections, and engagement with company pages.

It’s also useful for account teams and sales pros to join industry groups on LinkedIn to follow conversations customers engage in around topics or keywords related to their industry challenges or pain points.

Illustration representing data driven decision

Step 2: Define the target audience or buyer personas

Next, use the previously mentioned research insights and analysis to develop buyer personas or ideal customer profiles (ICPs) for each target customer segment.

Sales pros can also ask their existing customers questions to assist in defining their:

Industry and/or geography profiles: What geographic locations, industries, and size of businesses will buy their specific product or service?
Target buyer roles or job titles: Are the buyers of that target business CEOs, CFOs, directors, or middle managers?
Key stakeholder roles: Who else at that organization can influence buying decisions, and what is their level of influence in the final purchase?
Biggest challenges, pain points, or needs: What are the common customer challenges and pain points that lead them to research or buy a new product or service?
Obstacles or barriers to buying: Why might customers be reluctant to buy (e.g., budget size, missing features, buy-in from the C-suite, etc.)?

Illustration representing repetitive tasks

Step 3: Develop a product positioning strategy

When developing product positioning strategies, sales teams should conduct a competitive analysis using buyer personas and market research to determine their unique selling propositions (USPs) and/or value propositions.

Identifying and analyzing competitors

Analyzing competitive advantages and disadvantages will help sales organizations describe how to stand out in the marketplace. Conducting a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is a good place to start.

SWOT analyses help sales teams understand how well target buyers perceive other products or services, revealing areas where there is room to outperform or differentiate from the competition.

Use the empty grid below as a template to fill out bullet points for each category in a SWOT analysis.

Many sales organizations might even create a separate SWOT analysis for each major competitor.

Visualizing product positioning

Sales teams can also use product positioning maps as a visual aid. These maps help them understand how target buyer personas (defined earlier) perceive a product or service—versus leading competitors—on two or more dimensions or attributes. Product dimensions or attributes can include quality, price, features, benefits, target customer challenges, or brand values.

Product positioning maps can be used with or instead of SWOT analyses to identify patterns, clusters, outliers, gaps, opportunities, and threats. They also help sales organizations test and validate their product positioning strategy to monitor customer preferences and perception changes.

Businesses can plot a product and its competitors on a two-axis grid or four-quadrant matrix grouped by attribute categories. From here, they can, evaluate how well the product positioning fits with target buyer personas or segments and how differentiated it is from competitors.

The product positioning example map to the left can be used as a template to illustrate how a solution compares to leading competitors in the market (represented as circles). This example is based on how much other businesses charge (e.g., price) and the quality or number of important features.

These illustrated product positioning examples can also inform a solution’s unique selling propositions, which we’ll discuss next.

Step 4: Describe unique selling propositions (USPs)

Sales teams should now be ready to list their product’s USPs and/or value propositions. Prospective customers will always have objections or doubts about buying or switching to a new product or service provider. Sales teams should list all possible customer doubts and objections. Then, use USPs to give target buyers a reason to believe (RTB) that the solution will meet their greatest needs or resolve their greatest challenges.

Product positioning USPs can incorporate the following:

Key product selling features or benefits:

Differentiators appealing to a specific target audience by solving their most significant pain points. For example, “A deep relationship intelligence tool that helps salespeople discover high-quality leads and close more deals faster via the world’s largest professional social media network.”

Unique industry or regionally-specific solutions:

Resolving particular market or business category challenges and needs. For example, “An influencer outreach tool serving U.S. public relations professionals.”

Price point and other competitive advantages:

Compared to competitive products and services in the same market or industry. In addition to price point, sales teams might focus on the product’s higher quality or convenience than other solutions. For example, “A more affordable solution, with faster and easier setup.”

Brand-specific values and missions:

Appealing to target audience values or needs (e.g., eco-friendliness, social consciousness, or commitment to quickly solving customer needs). For example, “Offering unparalleled 24/7 online and offline customer support.”

Step 5: Craft a compelling product positioning statement

How to write product positioning statements for different use cases

A product positioning statement is an internal tool that concisely describes and addresses how a company wants its target customers to perceive a product, service, or brand.

Product positioning statements must do the following:

Address the target market with a simple and memorable explanation.

For instance, one of LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s positioning statements for individual sales reps is: “For individual users who want to tap into LinkedIn's network to prospect for new leads more effectively, increase pipeline, and close more deals.”
Describe the features or benefits as clearly and succinctly as possible.

The positioning statement should help target buyers immediately grasp what they get when they choose the product or service. For instance, LinkedIn Sales Navigator lists features such as:

● No wait: start a 30-day free trial today
● Extended LinkedIn network access
● Advanced lead and company search
● Lead and account recommendations
● Job change and target company news alerts
Be credible and always deliver on brand values, missions, and promises.

Whatever a brand promises customers, such as “live 24/7 support,” should always be delivered promptly and effectively. Otherwise, customers will quickly lose their trust in a product and brand.
Be scalable and used consistently across various sales and marketing platforms.

Product positioning statements can be incorporated in sales battle cards, sales and marketing collateral, sales presentation slides, email campaigns, advertising campaigns, and sales and marketing websites.

Ensure the positioning statement resonates with target buyers

Sales reps should get feedback from their existing customers to determine which product positioning statements resonate most and which ones might need refining.

Additionally, reach out to new prospects using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s unlimited InMail feature to test which product positioning statements gain the most traction for generating new sales leads.

Global vs. national product positioning considerations

Sales organizations should also consider testing and varying positioning statements for different target buyer countries or regions. For example, sales organizations should specify only the features offered for specific countries on local websites or in local sales calls.

Additionally, price points may vary in different countries, as well as customer support solutions or other offerings that are either not feasible or are not desired in certain markets.

Step 6: Adapt and evolve product positioning over time

Sales teams must continually adapt product positioning strategies as the competitive landscape, market conditions, and consumer preferences evolve.

Businesses can use market research and deep relationship intelligence tools, like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, to monitor real-time target customer needs, perceptions, or sentiment via social media conversations. It helps sales teams identify when to pivot a product positioning strategy.

It should be quickly apparent when the current strategy is no longer unique or desirable among customer target segments. Or when the product or service has new and emerging gaps, opportunities, or threats.

Sales organizations can then adjust product positioning statements to create new USPs, product features, and benefits to maintain their market relevance.

Solidifying a product’s position in the market

A good product positioning strategy and statement helps businesses differentiate their solution from the competition and explain key features and benefits that promise to solve significant customer challenges and pain points.

Apply the principles outlined in this guide to research and identify buyer personas and USPs. Follow the tips here to write effective product positioning statements. Remember that product positioning strategy development is an ongoing, iterative process.

Sales organizations can gain insights and feedback from target buyers via market research data and live customer feedback on cold calls and discovery calls. Additionally, use deep relationship intelligence tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to access real-time insights about target customer pain points or business challenges.