Who It's For, and Who It Isn't

The quickest way to become hard to recommend is to be for everyone.

It feels generous to keep the door open. Why turn a paying customer away? But a product for everyone hands the reader nothing to recognize, and hands an assistant nothing specific to match a question against. "For ambitious teams who want to grow" could be a CRM, a yoga app, or a pension fund. Nobody reads it and thinks that's me. No model reads it and decides this is the one to name here.

So the first real positioning decision is also the most uncomfortable. You have to say who, exactly, this is for, and live with everyone it leaves out.

Name the situation, not the type of person

The useful answer is almost never a job title or a company size. It is a situation: the moment someone realizes they have the problem you solve.

"Marketing managers at B2B software companies" is a filter on a contact list. It tells you nothing about what the person is feeling. "A small marketing team that just noticed a competitor keeps turning up in ChatGPT and they don't" is a scene. You can picture the person. Something specific has gone wrong, it happened recently, and they are already reaching for help.

Scenes are also closer to what people actually type into AI. Nobody searches their own job title. They describe what is happening to them, in plain words, often as a complaint. "Why does a competitor show up in AI answers when we don't." "How do I stop support tickets getting lost between Slack and Zendesk." "What payroll software works when half the team is hourly and schedules change every week." The brands that win those questions are the ones whose positioning matches the situation inside the question.

So write down the moment your best customers were in just before they found you. What had broken, or gotten urgent, or finally gotten embarrassing? What had they already tried and given up on? Get as close to that scene as you can, in their words rather than yours, and you become much easier to recognize and to name.

   "for teams that want to grow"     →  named with a shrug, if at all
   "for the team that just spotted   →  named the second it's their
    a rival in ChatGPT"                  exact question

Say who it is not for

This is the move nearly everyone skips, and it does more work than any other line on the page.

When you name who your product is wrong for, the people who do fit start to trust you, because you have shown you are not chasing every wallet in the room. The people who do not fit leave before they turn into a refund or a one-star review. And an assistant weighing whether to recommend you gets a cleaner read on the questions where you belong, which means fewer mismatched mentions training it to treat you as a vague, all-purpose option.

"Signalbat is overkill if no competitor is showing up in AI answers yet, and probably redundant if you are a big brand with an agency already watching this for you." That sentence costs nothing real. The people it waves off were never going to stay. What it buys you is a harder edge on everyone who keeps reading.

The honest tradeoff

Narrowing feels like leaving money on the table. You look at all the buyers your "who" rules out, and you count the deals you think you are losing.

It rarely plays out the way the fear predicts. Being for a specific someone does not stop a slightly different someone from buying. What it stops is you being the obvious choice for nobody. A narrow position that gets recommended with conviction on the few questions you genuinely fit will out-earn a wide one that gets mentioned with a shrug everywhere and chosen nowhere. You can always widen later, once you are known for something. The hard direction is the other one, going from known-for-nothing to known-for-something.

How to find your real "who"

You probably already have the evidence. You just have to read it without flinching.

Start with the customers who stayed. Not the logos you wish you had, the ones who actually stuck around, used the thing, and renewed without a fight. What did they have in common at the moment they signed up? Then look at the ones who churned or never got going, and be honest about whether they were ever a fit or just a deal you talked yourself into. Sit with your own sales calls and copy down, word for word, how real buyers describe their situation. The phrase a happy customer used to explain why they needed you is almost always a better "who" than anything you would invent at a desk.

This is for [kind of team] when [specific situation has become urgent].
It is not for [the team that would be happier somewhere else].

That second line is the useful discomfort. If you cannot say who should walk away, the first line is probably still too polite.

If you want an outside check, ask how AI already describes the buyers and use cases tied to your brand. Where that list surprises you is where your positioning and your reputation have drifted apart. Closing that gap is the work.