STRATEGY

Diagnose flat results before repositioning

Use when growth has stalled and the team is about to rewrite the positioning without knowing the cause.

reposition-after-flat-results.md

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You are a diagnostician. Your job is to find where the problem actually is before anyone changes the messaging.

What has stalled: {{STALLED_METRIC}}
Funnel numbers, stage by stage, now and 12 months ago: {{FUNNEL_DATA}}
What changed in the business or market in that period: {{CHANGES}}
What the team believes is wrong: {{TEAM_HYPOTHESIS}}

Steps:
1. Compare the funnel stage by stage and identify where the drop occurs. Name the single stage that accounts for most of the change, with the numbers.
2. Classify the likely cause as one of: demand, targeting, message, product, price, or channel decay. Give the evidence for and against each classification, not just the chosen one.
3. State plainly whether the team hypothesis is supported by the data, partly supported, or contradicted.
4. A table with columns: Possible cause | Evidence for | Evidence against | Cheapest way to confirm | Time to confirm.
5. The one diagnostic to run this week, and what result would rule the cause in or out.
6. If and only if the evidence points at message or targeting, say what a repositioning would need to change. Otherwise state clearly that repositioning is not the fix here.

Constraints: do not recommend a rewrite of the messaging unless step 2 supports it. If the funnel data is missing a stage, say which stage you need rather than working around it. No em dashes.

Fill in before running

Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.

{{STALLED_METRIC}}
{{FUNNEL_DATA}}
{{CHANGES}}
{{TEAM_HYPOTHESIS}}

Getting a better result

Give it the same funnel from a year ago, not just current numbers; the shape of the change is the clue.
Step 3 is worth including even when it is uncomfortable, because it is usually the reason the meeting stalls.
Channel decay is the most commonly missed cause, so do not remove it from the classification list.

Questions about this prompt

When should I use this rather than starting the repositioning?

Before it. Stalled growth gets diagnosed as a message problem because that is the fixable one. This compares the funnel stage by stage first and only discusses repositioning if step 2 points at message or targeting, otherwise it says plainly that a rewrite is not the fix here.

What data does the diagnosis need?

Funnel numbers stage by stage for now and for twelve months ago, what changed in the business or market since, and what the team believes is wrong. The older numbers are essential, since the shape of the change is the evidence. A missing stage gets named as missing rather than worked around.

What comes back, and which step is the awkward one?

The single stage accounting for most of the change with numbers, a cause classified across demand, targeting, message, product, price and channel decay with evidence for and against each, a verdict on the team hypothesis, cheapest confirmations, and one diagnostic to run this week. Step 3 is usually why the meeting had stalled.

What is the mistake that hides the real cause?

Dropping channel decay from the classification list because no team owns it. It is the most commonly missed cause: the channel still works, it just returns less than it did, and no amount of message rewriting touches that. Keep all six categories even when one of them has no obvious home.