The Positioning Interview
The questions your existing clients can answer that contain your real positioning language.
By James Schramko · Updated May 2026
Your sales page describes what you do. Your clients know why they stayed. These are different things, and the gap between them is usually where positioning gets fuzzy.
This playbook gives you two instruments. The first is a set of questions to send to existing clients. The second is the lens you apply when the answers come back. Used together, they surface the language your positioning should already be using.
How to use this
Pick two or three clients you have worked with for at least a year. Send them the questions below as a direct message, not a form. Keep the language as written.
Tell them upfront: you are less interested in compliments and more interested in what actually changed. The question is deliberately open-ended. You want honest reflection, not a polished testimonial.
The answers will vary. Some will be short. Some will surprise you. What you are looking for is language that repeats, specifics that land, and moments where the client describes the shift more precisely than you ever have.
The questions
Send this as written. The "we" refers to you and your client.
Looking back over the time we have worked together, where specifically do you think your business, decisions, income, positioning, confidence, or speed would be materially different if we had never worked together?
I am less interested in compliments and more interested in concrete shifts:
- decisions you would have delayed
- mistakes you may have made
- opportunities you would have missed
- introductions or leverage you would not have had
- business model changes
- pricing changes
- confidence changes
- operational simplifications
- strategic clarity
- speed of execution
- transitions you may not have made alone
- personal life or relationship changes that followed from the business shifts or clearer objectives
The more specific the better.
The extraction lens
When the answers come back, read them through this lens. You are not looking for what to quote. You are looking for what repeats and what is specific.
- What was happening before
- What was stuck
- What decisions were difficult
- What changed first
- What decisions became easier
- What relationships mattered
- What introductions mattered
- What would have happened without the work
- Where speed increased
- Where confusion reduced
- What they stopped doing
- What became simpler
- What became clearer
- Where confidence appeared
- Where money improved
- Where stress reduced
- What patterns repeated
What to do with it
Look for three things in the answers.
Language you did not put there. If a client uses a phrase you never used in your marketing, that phrase is probably truer than your sales copy.
Specifics that name the actual pain. Vague praise is not positioning. Precise language about a precise problem is.
Patterns across multiple clients. One client's observation is a data point. Three clients using similar language is a positioning signal.
Rewrite one line of your sales page using client language. Then check whether it describes the right person more clearly than what you had before.