How to position a SaaS product so buyers get it on the first pass
Key takeaways
- To position a SaaS product, answer three questions in your buyer's words. What do you sell, who is it for right now, and why does it win against what they use today?
- Buyers misunderstand products described from the inside. Features, architecture, and category assumptions mean nothing to someone who only knows their own problem.
- Describing a product as an all-in-one platform turns it into a commodity, and commodity shoppers compare on price.
- A first pass takes one two-hour sitting and five written questions, and it ends in one sentence a stranger can repeat.
You explain what you built, the prospect nods, and then they ask a question that makes it obvious they pictured something else entirely. Buyers don't misunderstand your product by accident. They misunderstand it because you describe it the way you built it, and they hear it with none of that context.
This lesson covers how to position a SaaS product so the right buyers recognize it immediately. It is lesson 3 of a free marketing course for founders, and it starts the work that lesson 2 called the first system to fix. Positioning is what you sell, who it is for, and why it wins, written down in words your buyer would use. You can get a solid first version written this week without hiring anyone.
Why buyers don't get your product
You know the product from the inside. You know the architecture, the feature list, the roadmap, and the category you had in mind when you started building. So that is what you describe. The buyer knows none of it. They know their own problem, whatever they use today to deal with it, and what it costs them when it goes badly. When your description doesn't connect to any of those three things, they file you under the closest thing they already understand, and that is usually wrong.
The most expensive version of this showed up with a company I worked with. Its founders described the product as an all-in-one platform, and it sounded impressive to them. To buyers, it made the product a commodity, and when people shop for a commodity, they compare on price and drift toward the cheapest option. We repositioned the platform around the specific problems it solved for their buyers, and what it would cost those buyers to keep living with those problems. Once buyers could see what passing on the product would mean for their business, they understood the value.
There are two other common versions. Some founders describe the product as its feature list, which leaves the buyer to work out on their own what any of it is worth to them. Others borrow the category of a big competitor and say they are like Salesforce but cheaper, which puts them in a comparison against a product that has had years longer to fill out its feature set.
What positioning actually is
Positioning is the answer to three questions, written down and agreed on. What do you sell? Who is it for, right now, not eventually? And why does it win against whatever your buyer would use instead?
A category name, a feature list, and a vision deck are all things you know from the inside, and none of them answers those three questions. Positioning is the outside view, and the test of every line in it is whether your buyer would recognize their own situation in it.
How to position a SaaS product in one sitting
Block two hours. Get whoever knows your customers best in the room, even if that is just you. Answer these five questions in writing, in order, and be more specific than feels comfortable.
- 1.Who is it for right now? Name the narrowest segment you genuinely win with today. Not the market you'll serve someday. Name the company size, the industry, and the person who has the problem.
- 2.What do they use today instead? The honest answer is often spreadsheets, a manual process, or nothing. Your real competitor is whatever they'd keep doing if you didn't exist.
- 3.What can you do that their current way can't? List only the abilities that are true today and that the alternative genuinely lacks.
- 4.What do those abilities let the buyer do? Translate each one into an outcome in the buyer's world. This is the step founders skip, and it is the step that keeps buyers from treating you as interchangeable, because a buyer looking at outcomes has something other than price to judge you on.
- 5.Why should they believe you? Point to whatever proof you honestly have, whether that is customers, results, or a founder who lived the problem.
Then compress the answers into one sentence a stranger could repeat, which is the same test lesson 1 used. Say that sentence to five prospects or customers. If most can say back what you sell and who it's for, you have a working first pass. If they can't, the answers above are still inside-out, and the usual fix is going back to question two and being more honest about the alternative.
If you want to go deeper than a first pass, April Dunford's book Obviously Awesome is the best full treatment of SaaS positioning I know.
What changes once it's written down
The value is in the agreement. Once everyone who talks to a buyer has signed off on the same sentence, you stop improvising a new answer on every page and sales call. When I've led this at SaaS companies, the website is the first thing that gets rewritten.
That rewrite is module 3 of the course, where you turn the positioning you just wrote into a website that converts.
Keep going
I publish a new lesson of the playbook every week, working through the modules in order. Sign up for the newsletter and I'll email you each one the day it's published.
Positioning is work SaaS teams bring me in for, and there's more on how I approach it on the positioning page. If you'd rather not make these calls alone, the growth diagnostic is a two-week audit built from your own numbers that ends in a prioritized 90-day roadmap.
The first pass takes two hours and five questions, and it ends in one sentence.
Frequently asked questions
The written, agreed-on answer to three questions. What do you sell, who is it for right now, and why does it win against whatever your buyer would use instead? It is the outside view of your product, in words your buyer would use, and every page, ad, and sales call repeats it.
Because founders describe products from the inside, through features, architecture, and category assumptions. Buyers only know their own problem, what they use today, and what it costs them when it goes badly. When your description doesn't connect to those, they file you under the closest thing they already know.
Compress it into one sentence and say it to five prospects or customers. If most of them can say back what you sell and who it is for, you have a working first pass. If they can't, your answers are still inside-out, usually because you weren't honest about what buyers use today instead.
A working first pass takes about two hours. Block one sitting, answer five questions in writing with whoever knows your customers best, and compress the answers into one sentence. Refining it against real prospect conversations continues from there.
Joseph Ortega
AI-native marketing leader for early-stage B2B SaaS. I get marketing up, running, and automated with AI, then build the systems that keep it compounding. More about me.
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