Dunford's argument is that most companies inherit their positioning by accident — from the first customers they happened to win — and then wonder why the sales conversation is hard. Her method is to work it out deliberately.
The core move is choosing the market you want to be compared in. If a customer thinks you are a cheaper version of a well-known thing, you will be judged on that thing's criteria. Change the reference point and you change the criteria you are judged against.
Positioning decides the questions a prospect asks. Get it right and the price objection often disappears, because they are no longer comparing you with the wrong alternative.
Look at the customers who bought quickly, stayed, and got real value. What did they have in common? That is your actual position, and it is usually narrower and more specific than the one on your website.
For most buyers the alternative is not a competitor — it is a spreadsheet, a temp, or doing nothing. Position against what they would really do instead, because that is what your price is being weighed against.
It is not discovered by a workshop of adjectives. You choose the market frame, then make everything — the site, the pitch, the pricing — consistent with it. If the frame is wrong, change it, rather than working harder inside it.
These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.
Anyone whose sales conversations keep stalling on price, or who cannot explain what they do without a preamble.
Written largely from business-to-business software experience. The method transfers, but you will be doing the translation if you sell to consumers.
