Skip to main content
This is the foundation of the entire manuscript. Section 1.1 produces the answers that every later piece of work inherits, and it produces them through conversation rather than research. Most of the value is in the room.
The framework is adapted from Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm, and it is five questions asked strictly in order.
1

Who is your ideal client?

Not your addressable market. The narrow slice of it you most want more of, described by what they believe rather than by their job title.
2

What market category are you in?

The category your buyer uses when they go looking, which is not always the category you use to describe yourself.
3

Why would they buy?

What someone in this category is trying to accomplish when they buy anything at all. Not yet about you.
4

Where do you compete?

The real obstacle to a closed deal, which is usually not a named competitor. Usually it is inertia, budget timing, or a bad experience with your category three years ago.
5

How are you different?

One sentence. The reason this buyer chooses you. It comes last because it can only be answered honestly after the other four.
The order is the method. Nearly every company can produce a confident answer to question five on demand, and nearly every one of those answers is a sentence a competitor could say with a straight face. Answered after the first four, it becomes something specific and defensible. A great resource on this topic is the positioning expert April Dunford. We will spend the majority of the workshop on question one, and it will feel disproportionate while it is happening. It is not. Once the ideal client is genuinely specific, the remaining four questions largely answer themselves. Our longer argument for this lives in Field notes.

​
What this section produces

Messaging document

The master document. Voice, value proposition, audience language, differentiators, and core narratives.

Ideal client profile

Question one, formalized into a standalone document when the work downstream needs a sharp target.

Messaging refresh

The quarterly or annual update, once a messaging document already exists.
A hard rule we hold: no copy gets written before this section is settled. If the website copy is not landing, the problem is almost never the copy.

​
A word about the uncomfortable answer

The most useful thing that comes out of a messaging workshop is usually the sentence you would never say in a sales meeting but that happens to be true. The strongest differentiators tend to be slightly costly to claim—they rule out business, they take a position, they admit a limit. If nothing in the conversation makes you a little uneasy, we have probably not gotten to the bottom of it yet, and we will keep asking.