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In a new market, nothing about you is assumed
At home your category is understood, your name means something and your proof is familiar. Somewhere else all three are zero, and material written on those assumptions says almost nothing.
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- Typical duration
- 5 to 7 weeks
- Output
- Platform, pillars, evidence, variants
- Signed off by
- Leadership and technical, not marketing alone
- Feeds
- Website, sales material, campaigns, channel
What has to be rebuilt for a new market
Positioning is not portable, and assuming it is causes most of the downstream cost.
- The category framing. At home buyers know what your product is. Elsewhere the first job is explaining the category before you can differentiate within it.
- The competitive set. You are compared against different alternatives, frequently cheaper and less capable ones, which changes the entire argument.
- The proof. Local references, recognised certifications and market-relevant test data rather than the ones that carry weight at home.
- The risk the buyer feels. Buying from an unfamiliar overseas supplier carries anxieties your home customers do not have, and nothing in your material addresses them.
- Who you are not for. A proposition that fits every enquiry disqualifies nothing, and in an unfamiliar market that wastes an enormous amount of sales time.
What gets built
One document that everything downstream is written from.
The positioning statement
What you are, for whom, against which alternative, with the reason to believe. Tight enough to rule things out.
Three proof pillars
Each with evidence underneath. If a pillar has no evidence it is not a pillar and it comes out.
The messaging house
The single reference. Core idea, pillars, proof, and language for each audience.
Audience variants
The same argument for a design engineer, a purchase manager, a distributor and an end user, who are persuaded by different halves of it.
Risk-reversal content
What answers the unfamiliar-supplier anxiety: references, guarantees, service commitments, escalation paths.
Claims discipline
What may be said, with what evidence and whose approval, particularly where it may reach a tender or audit.
A rewritten opening
The first screen of the site and the first ninety seconds of a meeting, so you can test whether it holds.
The artefact you end up with
One sheet that the sales head keeps open, the agency is briefed from and a new marketing hire reads on day one.
Built top down and tested bottom up. If your technical team cannot defend the evidence at the base, the pillars come down and we write different ones.
The test: hand it to someone who was in none of the sessions and ask them to describe the business. If they land within a sentence, it is finished.
Questions overseas teams ask
Is this the same as a rebrand?
Narrower. Positioning is the argument. A rebrand adds identity, architecture and rollout. If nobody can explain what you do, start here. If you also look like a different decade, you want the fuller piece.
Who needs to be involved?
The leader, the sales head, and at least one senior technical person. Marketing alone produces a platform nobody defends. Technical alone produces one no customer understands.
Can this be done remotely?
Yes, and it works. Four to six structured sessions plus written work between them. Where a plant visit adds materially, I travel.
What if our engineers disagree with the claim?
Then the claim changes. A position your own technical people will not defend is abandoned within a quarter and damages internal credibility on the way out.
Send me the objection you keep hearing
One sentence. The recurring objection locates the problem faster than any brief, and it is rarely where people expect.
Book a positioning review See case studies
Kunal Waghmare · Padmavati Hills, Mokai Vasti, Bavdhan, Pune, Maharashtra 411021, India
office@quiamo.com · +91 90216 02686 · English