The 10-Step Process, Condensed

Dunford's process operationalizes the components. First, prepare: assemble a cross-functional team (positioning decided by marketing alone gets ignored by sales), agree on a shared vocabulary, and deliberately set aside your positioning baggage, the historical frame you've been carrying.

Second, study your best customers. List their real competitive alternatives, isolate your unique attributes, map attributes to value, and cluster that value into two or three themes. Then find the pattern in who loves you most: that's your target segment.

Third, commit. Pick the market frame that makes your value obvious, decide whether a trend layer helps, and capture it all in a positioning document that feeds sales decks, pricing, and the website. Positioning that lives in a slide nobody operationalizes changed nothing.