Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill every board, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Fieldnote, 140 paying companies, preparing the move upmarket to 40-technician firms.
What the team took away
The category block took the whole session. Calling it a dispatch tool would have put Fieldnote against Jobber on features; calling it technician-first put it against paper, which is the fight it wins.
How to run it
Preparation
Bring the positioning map or the value proposition canvas if you have one. Writing a pitch from nothing produces adjectives.
Collect three real sentences customers used to describe the product. They beat anything the team will invent.
Have the actual competitor names ready. 'Unlike other solutions' is the line that kills a pitch.
Set a hard limit: one sentence, read in one breath. Print it as a rule on the wall.
Agenda
15 min
Fill the blanks alone Each person fills the six blocks on their own sheet, in silence. Working as a group first averages everyone into the same vague sentence.
20 min
Read them all Each person reads their sentence out loud without defending it. Note where the versions disagree: the category and the alternative are where teams split.
20 min
Fight over the category Decide what the product is a kind of. This choice sets who you are compared against and what people expect. It is the hardest block and the one worth the time.
20 min
Assemble and cut Build one sentence from the best blocks. Then remove every word that would still be true of a competitor.
10 min
Read it in one breath Someone who was not in the writing reads it aloud. If they run out of air or stumble, it is still too long.
Pitfalls
Benefits that any competitor could claim. 'Saves time' is not a benefit, it is a category requirement. Keep cutting until only you could say the sentence.
Naming the alternative as 'doing nothing' when it is actually a spreadsheet, or a person. Name the real thing people use today.
Writing it for investors when the audience is customers. Decide which pitch you are writing before you start, they are not the same sentence.
Afterwards
Put the sentence in the product space and use it as a test: any roadmap item that does not serve the key benefit needs an explicit reason. If the category block was contested, run the Positioning map.