Case Study: Positioning a Pre-Launch SaaS Startup Through Strategic Workshop
The Problem That Needed Solving
A pre-launch B2B SaaS startup had built a lightweight resource planning tool for small-to-midsize professional services firms, but they lacked clear market positioning to differentiate from enterprise-level competitors and communicate value to their target audience. The 15-person team had the product ready but no consensus on how to talk about what they'd built or who it was actually for.
The deeper challenge was that they were thinking like product builders, not market strategists. They kept gravitating toward feature descriptions and technical capabilities without articulating why any of it mattered to the people they wanted to reach.
The Strategic Work
I designed and facilitated a 90-minute collaborative positioning workshop with the client's cross-functional team, including founders, product lead, and operations team. Working as brand and messaging strategist on a contract engagement, I led them through a systematic positioning framework that transformed how they understood their own product.
The strategic challenge: How do you help a team see past what they built to understand what they're actually selling?
Three key strategic decisions emerged through the workshop:
1. Reframed the Competitive Landscape
Rather than positioning against enterprise resource planning tools, we identified the real alternatives: spreadsheets, generic collaboration tools, and manual methods. This positioned the product as a purpose-built solution for teams outgrowing basic tools but not ready for enterprise complexity.
The competitive set shifted from "we're better than Workday" (a fight they couldn't win) to "we're purpose-built for what you're doing right now" (territory they owned).
2. Identified Differentiated Value Propositions
Through facilitated exercises, we translated product features into customer-centric benefits, ultimately landing on three core value clusters:
- Financial efficiency (improving margins and resource utilization)
- Team well-being (reducing burnout through better workload visibility)
- Peace of mind (emotional value: "sleep at night knowing your company has the capacity to deliver")
The third one—peace of mind—became the emotional hook that unlocked their go-to-market narrative.
3. Segmented by Emotional Resonance, Not Demographics
Instead of broad targeting, we mapped which customer personas cared most about each value cluster. CFOs prioritize cost efficiency. Operations managers prioritize peace of mind. Team managers prioritize employee happiness.
This gave them a framework for message matching rather than trying to say everything to everyone.
The Deliverables
Live Strategic Workshop (90 minutes) Structured facilitation using a five-component positioning framework with collaborative exercises, voting protocols, and real-time synthesis of team insights.
Positioning Framework Documentation Positioning canvas capturing all strategic decisions, synthesized into a Google doc for use across branding, marketing, and sales—providing foundation for future messaging development.
The Methodology
I emphasized that positioning isn't messaging or taglines—it's about triggering the right assumptions about who the product is for, what features it should have, what alternatives exist, and what value it delivers. Success means instantly answering the big questions about the product to capture attention and enable conversion.
The workshop methodology avoided common positioning traps (focusing on what was intended vs. what the product actually is), used voting mechanisms to prioritize among many options, and translated features → benefits → values in a structured way.
What Changed
The workshop created immediate clarity and consensus across the team about market positioning. The team identified a key emotional messaging angle ("you can sleep at night knowing your company has the capacity to work on your projects and you've got the right team") that became central to their messaging strategy.
The positioning framework provided the strategic foundation to inform brand messaging and copywriting, marketing campaign development, and sales strategy and materials. The team described the findings as "outside of the box" thinking that would directly inform their positioning canvas.
The collaborative process helped them avoid feature-focused messaging and instead led with customer value and emotional resonance.
The Takeaway for Clients
The most valuable contribution wasn't just the positioning framework itself—it was shifting the team's perspective from "we built a resource planning tool" to "we give operations leaders peace of mind about their team's capacity." That emotional reframe unlocked a much clearer go-to-market narrative than focusing on features alone.
When you're building a product, it's natural to think about what it does. The strategic work is understanding what it means to the people who need it.
Client name, industry specifics, and proprietary details have been modified to protect confidentiality while accurately representing the strategic approach and deliverables.
