Positioning and segmentation · Positioning

Critique this positioning statement

Find the defects in a clinic scheduler's positioning statement, rank them by the clinics they cost a quarter, and rewrite it in one paragraph.

critiquehardExercise · 4 min · 11 of 60

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A positioning statement in the familiar template from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm went onto the homepage in January, and the quarter's demos changed shape after it. Every clause reads well. The exercise is to find which clauses cost clinics, and how many.

The situation

The clinic scheduler sells to clinics with one to five practitioners at $99 a month. In January it replaced its homepage line, and its first sales slide, with this:

For small and medium-sized healthcare practices that want to modernise, the scheduler is the AI-powered all-in-one practice platform that saves your staff time. Unlike other scheduling tools, it is easy to use and affordable.

The product books appointments and runs a reminder sequence that cuts no-shows from 12% to 5%, worth about $4,900 a month to a two-practitioner clinic. It has no billing and no clinical notes. Last year's demo prospects were 45% on paper and phone, 30% on a $29 booking tool and 25% on a $400 practice-management suite, with demo win rates of 55%, 35% and 10%. This quarter's 120 demos split 36, 36 and 48 across the same three, at unchanged win rates. A clinic won returns $3,960 of lifetime margin ($79.20 a month at 2% churn), and a demo costs $300 whether or not it closes.

The question

Find the defects in the statement, rank them by what they cost in clinics won, and rewrite it.

A strong answer · Rubric · Where answers go wrong

Write your answer first, then open

A strong answer

The costliest defect is the category. "All-in-one practice platform" puts the product beside the $400 suite and claims billing and notes it lacks. Suite users rose from 25% of demos to 40%, and the team wins one in ten of them. At last year's mix, 120 demos win 120 × (45% × 55% + 30% × 35% + 25% × 10%) = 45.3 clinics; this quarter, 36 × 55% + 36 × 35% + 48 × 10% = 37.2. That is 8.1 clinics a quarter from the same $36,000 of demos, × $3,960 ≈ $32,000 of lifetime margin. Before blaming the statement, check that no channel changed in January, since a new source of suite users would shift the mix on its own.

Second, "unlike other scheduling tools … affordable" names the wrong alternative. It invites the $29 comparison, against which $99 is 3.4 times the price, so "affordable" is false to the buyer it addresses. Paper and phone, which supplies two wins in three, goes unmentioned.

Third, the value is an adjective. "Saves your staff time" has no unit; the buyer's unit is about $4,900 a month recovered, and the attribute that delivers it, the reminder sequence, is missing.

Last, "healthcare practices" is not a segment, and "AI-powered" is nothing a buyer can check in a trial. They cost little directly, but they leave the statement nothing to be held to.

Rewrite: "For clinics with one to five practitioners that lose one appointment in eight to no-shows, the scheduler is no-show reduction software: reminders patients answer by text cut no-shows from 12% to 5%, about $4,900 a month, for $99. Unlike phoning patients the day before, it needs nobody at the front desk."

Rubric

Ranks the category claim first and puts a number on it from the mix shift: about 8 clinics and $32,000 of lifetime margin a quarter.
Shows that "unlike other scheduling tools" summons the $29 tool and makes "affordable" false at 3.4 times its price.
Replaces the adjective value with a figure in the buyer's units, tied to the reminder sequence.
Flags the claims the product cannot back: "all-in-one", which a trial disproves (no billing, no notes), and "AI-powered", which a trial cannot check.
Names the check that would clear the statement: a channel change in the same quarter.
Rewrites the statement with one segment, one category, one alternative and one number.

Where answers go wrong

"Take out 'AI-powered' and it is fine." It fixes the cheapest defect and leaves the one that cost eight clinics a quarter. A reviewer marks the ranking, and this answer has none.

"The win rates did not change, so sales is performing and the statement is not the problem." Wins depend on the mix as well as the rates. Steady win rates with a worse mix are exactly what a positioning that attracts the wrong prospects looks like, as the arithmetic in Dunford's method shows.

"Rewrite it as 'Unlike the $400 suite, we cost a quarter of the price.'" It keeps the fight where the team wins one demo in ten and makes price the claim, which puts the product back on the scheduling ladder in Ries and Trout's terms.