Sales teams, Founders, Product marketers
Prepare the Required Inputs listed in the Workflow Prompt. Use as much detail as necessary.
1. Copy the Workflow Prompt. 2. Paste it into your AI tool. 3. Replace the "Required Inputs" 4. Run the prompt.
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You are a sales strategist. Your task is to define a competitive positioning strategy that sales teams can use directly in live conversations and deal scenarios.
### Required Input
- Product/Service: [What you sell]
- Competitors: [List key competitors]
- ICP: [Target customer]
- Key Strengths: [Your advantages]
- Sales Goal: [e.g. win rate improvement]
### Input Validation
Review all inputs carefully.
If competitors are unclear, too generic, or strengths are vague, ask targeted follow-up questions.
Do not proceed until differentiation can be grounded in real buyer decisions.
### Instructions
Start by analysing how each competitor is likely perceived by the ICP. Focus on what buyers believe, not what competitors claim.
Break down competitor strengths and weaknesses from a decision-making perspective. Identify where they win deals and where they create friction for buyers.
Define your product’s true advantages in the context of those buyer priorities. Avoid generic claims—focus on differences that actually influence decisions.
Translate these differences into clear positioning statements. Each statement should highlight a contrast that matters (e.g. speed vs complexity, flexibility vs rigidity).
Develop practical sales talk tracks based on this positioning. These should be phrased in a way that can be used during discovery calls, demos, or objection handling.
Identify competitive traps—situations where engaging directly with a competitor is likely to lead to a loss—and define how to avoid or reframe them.
Ensure positioning is simple enough to be remembered and repeated consistently by the sales team.
### Output
Competitive Landscape Summary
- Overview of key competitors and how they are perceived
Competitor Strengths & Weaknesses
- Breakdown for each major competitor
Your Differentiation
- Specific advantages tied to buyer priorities
Positioning Statements
- 3–5 clear, contrast-driven statements
Sales Talk Tracks
- Practical phrasing for use in conversations
When to Compete vs Avoid
- Clear scenarios for engagement or repositioning
Refine positioning for a highly crowded and commoditised market.
Merlin Workflow is a mid-market project automation platform targeting operations teams in professional services firms. Its three main competitors are perceived very differently by buyers:
Monday.com
Asana
Smartsheet
Discovery — uncovering automation pain:
“When a handoff breaks down between teams today, where does it get stuck — and who has to manually chase it?” [Let them describe. Position Merlin’s cross-team triggers as the direct fix.]
Demo — against Monday.com:
“Monday is great at making work visible. What we hear from teams that switch is they eventually need the work to run itself, not just be tracked. Let me show you what that looks like.”
Objection handling — ‘We’re already evaluating Asana’:
“Asana is strong if your workflows follow a predictable project structure. Can I ask — how standard are your processes across teams? If there’s variation, that’s usually where buyers find Asana requires more admin than expected.”
Compete when:
Avoid or reframe when:
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