Why most B2B positioning decks describe the wrong enemy
The enemy in your positioning should be a status quo, not a competitor. Here's the test I run on every draft.
Every B2B positioning deck I've ever reviewed has an enemy. A competitor. A named threat. Salesforce vs Oracle. HubSpot vs the spreadsheet. Yours vs theirs.
The problem: competitors are the wrong enemy.
Why naming a competitor weakens your positioning
When you name a competitor as your enemy, you do three things — all bad.
First, you make the buying decision a comparison. "We're better than X at Y." Now the buyer has to evaluate X to evaluate you. You've added work to their decision.
Second, you anchor your value to someone else's frame. Your positioning lives in the context of another company's positioning. They move, you have to respond.
Third, and most importantly: you miss the real reason deals stall. Deals don't stall because the buyer chose a competitor. They stall because the buyer chose to do nothing.
The real enemy is always the status quo.
The status quo test
Here's the test I run on every positioning draft:
Read your positioning statement. Then ask: does this make the cost of inaction visible?
If your positioning is about being better than a named competitor, it fails this test. A buyer who chooses neither you nor your competitor has opted for the status quo — and your positioning gave them no reason not to.
If your positioning is about the cost of a specific, painful status quo — the spreadsheet that breaks, the process that doesn't scale, the assumption that turns out to be wrong — then you've made inaction expensive. That's when positioning works.
What this looks like in practice
Bad: "Unlike [Competitor], we give you real-time data."
Good: "Most teams are making budget decisions on last month's numbers. By the time the data arrives, the window is closed."
The second version doesn't mention a competitor. It describes a pain that exists right now, in the buyer's company, whether they buy from you or not. It makes the status quo feel like a choice — and a bad one.
The one-sentence test
Write your enemy in one sentence. If that sentence contains a company name, rewrite it. Your enemy should be a situation, a belief, or a broken process — not a logo.
Get that right and the rest of the positioning tends to follow.