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Skills from A Smart Bear

Positioning: Reword your marketing until it's worth more

Convert save-money pitches and vague claims into value-first, vivid positioning — specific, cliché-free, Opposite-Test-passing statements you can reuse in every ad, page, and pitch. Adapted from Chapter 4 of Hidden Multipliers: A Rose by Any Other Name.

Input
Your marketing copy — headlines, ads, pitches, positioning statements — your pricing strategy (More for More / More for Less / Less for Less), and ideally your ideal-customer definition, needs stack, and voters analysis.
Output
A POSITIONING.md: a reusable list of vivid, value-first positioning statements organized by role, with a facts-to-verify list guarding every claimed number.

What this is about

The same product can sell for eight times more, depending on how you describe it. "Cut your ad spend in half" limits your price to a share of the savings. "Double your leads at the same cost per lead" prices against growth instead — and the buyer will happily pay several times more, because growth is what their CEO celebrates. That is the book's first positioning rule: never sell saved time or money. Sell more value, in the terms your customer already uses to measure value. Most copy breaks this rule in the first line. Two subtler breaks never use the word "save" at all: copy where every sentence describes how the product works, and copy that promises what arrives — a report, a score, a reading — instead of what changes. Technical founders write both kinds of copy.

The second rule: a vague true statement says nothing. Take "Easy to use, robust features, customer-first." The Opposite Test destroys this claim — no one says their product is difficult — and generic words let the reader skim past without forming a picture. Vivid copy is specific copy: say "$300 an hour" instead of "expensive," give the benchmark instead of "fast," give the changelog instead of "innovative," say the quiet part out loud.

This skill applies the full method to your actual copy, one message at a time. It finds what rule each message breaks, then rewrites it with you, asking for real numbers and proof. It never invents a specific fact — missing facts go on a list to verify later. The statements that pass build up into a reusable list covering every role: what you do, what you promise, what you make unnecessary, how you answer vendors trying to make you unnecessary, and the inciting-event language that makes a reader say "that's me." The skill works much better if you also bring your ideal-customer definition and needs stack — it will tell you so — but it also works without them.

What it's looking for

The skill checks every message against all of these, in order. A statement that fails any check is never recorded:

  • Savings framing. "Cut your ad spend in half" limits your price to a share of the savings. Unless your reader is paid on that number, the skill reframes the claim around what the reader is actually measured on.
  • Mechanism pitches. Every sentence describes how the product works. This is the most common mistake technical founders make.
  • Deliverable pitches. The pitch describes what arrives — a report, a score, a dashboard — instead of what changes. No one is graded on receiving a document.
  • Wrong level. A feature description used as an aspiration, or a promise many levels above what the product actually does. You can credibly claim only one level above what the product does.
  • Clauses that widen instead of narrowing. "New revenue or more customers," "for startups and enterprises alike," "…and more." Each added clause looks to you like more capability. To your reader, it looks like less. Keep only the clauses that narrow the claim.
  • A mechanism sitting beside an outcome. "Turns client problems into AI products and new revenue" puts what you build next to what changes, as if they were equal. One is a means to the other, and belongs below it, not beside it.
  • Generic words. Fast, powerful, easy, robust, secure, "with AI" — the skill replaces each word with the specific fact behind it.
  • Clichés. Leading provider, cutting-edge, game-changing, world-class, proven track record. 78% of "About Us" pages claim to be the leading provider of something.
  • Telling where you could show. "It's fast" becomes the benchmark number; "we innovate" becomes the public changelog; "legendary support" becomes "we're a small team, you get us personally."
  • Claims no competitor would contradict. The Opposite Test: if no one would reasonably choose the opposite, you have said nothing.
  • Mixed price signals. The skill asks which of the book's three pricing strategies you use — More for More, More for Less, or Less for Less — and holds every claim to that one story, because "highest quality" next to "cheapest" confuses the buyer, and a confused buyer walks away.
  • Invented specifics. Numbers, benchmarks, and testimonials must come from you, or they do not go in — a placeholder and a note to verify hold the spot until the real figure lands.
  • Gaps in coverage. No claim about what you make unnecessary, no answer to vendors trying to make you unnecessary, no inciting-event language that makes a reader say "that's me."

Example invocation

You can invoke the skill like this:

/asb-positioning Here's our homepage hero and three ad variants. We
sell automated backup for dental practices — current headline is
"Enterprise-grade backup, made easy." Our CAROL.md and NEEDS-STACK.md
are in this directory too.

The skill works through your messages one at a time. It checks each one against the value-framing, level-fit, and vividness rules, then rewrites it using your real facts. You end with a POSITIONING.md file of statements sharp enough to reuse in every channel.

One practical note: tell the skill where you are working. Name a directory, or point to your existing files, when you invoke it. The skill then keeps the method's files together there. If you do not name a location, it asks before it creates anything.

From the source

Two sources form the base of this skill:

  • As in Chapter 4 of Hidden Multipliers: A Rose by Any Other Name — hiddenmultipliers.com — the full method this skill follows: the story of the eight-times price increase from repositioning, positioning by needs-stack level, and the Make It Vivid discipline (no generic words, no clichés, show instead of tell, the Opposite Test and its exception for a company that dominates its field, and the specificity checklist).
  • How repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price — the value-framing rule in full: why the same buyer values growth at ten times the price of savings, and why the pitch, not the product, sets the price.

Supporting articles each supply one part of the method:

  • Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness — the source of vivid copy: it turns generic words into specifics, turns true statements into accurate ones, uses concrete examples, and shows how specific copy is even funnier.
  • The "Opposite Test" — the claim filter: if no competitor would claim the opposite, you are saying nothing. A claim that passes this test has consequences — name them and accept them.
  • "Authentic" is dead. And so is "is dead." — the list of dead clichés this skill enforces, plus two ways to redeem a word: name it and accept its cost, or own an overused word by backing it with strong proof.
  • As in Chapter 6 of Hidden Multipliers: Price Is Not Just a Number (section "Mixed Signals") — hiddenmultipliers.com — the three consistent pricing strategies (More for More, More for Less, Less for Less) this skill holds every claim to. When price and positioning tell different stories, customers get confused, and confused customers do not buy.
  • Using the Needs Stack for competitive strategy — the level-fit framework: describe features at your level, promise one level up, and position against the vendors trying to make you unnecessary.
  • Selling to Carol: Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected — who the copy is for: the keystones and inciting events this skill uses for headlines come from the ideal-customer work.