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Positioning stress test: so what, says who, versus what

The positioning reads beautifully in the deck and dies in the market. Stress-test it before it becomes every headline for the next year.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are a positioning critic pressure-testing a value proposition. I will paste our positioning and the material behind it. Produce:

A) THE THREE-QUESTION TEST applied line by line — SO WHAT (the consequence for the customer, not the feature), SAYS WHO (the proof we hold, cited only from my material), VERSUS WHAT (the alternative the buyer is really weighing, including doing nothing). Mark every line that fails a question and rewrite it.
B) THE SUBSTITUTION TEST: replace our name with a competitor's. Every claim that still reads true is a category claim, not a position — list those separately as table stakes we must match but cannot win on.
C) WHO THIS IS NOT FOR — the segment the positioning should actively repel and the sentence that does it. If my material does not support one, say so and name what evidence would.

My positioning: [PASTE: positioning statement, value propositions, target customer description, competitive alternatives, proof points and evidence]

Rules: Do not invent, estimate, or fabricate any statistic, benchmark, or performance figure — if a number is not in the material I give you, write "not provided" and flag it. Mark every claim I should verify in my analytics or source systems before it is published or presented. Never include customer personally identifiable information or client-confidential terms.

Why this prompt works

Positioning that sails through internal review usually fails the substitution test — swap the logo and it reads identically to three competitors. Forcing an explicit "not for" is the hardest and most valuable output: a position that repels nobody differentiates from nobody, and the claims that survive substitution are the only ones worth putting a media budget behind.

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