# The Messaging Hierarchy: One Claim, Then Everything Else

GTM messaging fails by addition — six benefits, four audiences, every feature a headline. It works by subtraction: one claim carrying the launch, everything else arranged beneath it. This is the construction order.

## Build top-down, never bottom-up

1. **The one claim** — the single sentence you'd defend in a hostile room: for [who], [product] is the only/first/best [category frame] that [outcome], because [proof]. If two claims fight for this slot, you have two launches or zero positioning.
2. **Three pillars** — the reasons-to-believe, each with *evidence attached* (number, customer, demo). A pillar without proof is a wish. Three because buyers remember three; the fourth pillar cannibalises recall of the first.
3. **Per-audience translation** — the same claim refracted per audience: economic buyer hears risk/cost/outcome, daily user hears workflow relief, technical evaluator hears architecture and exit paths. Translation changes vocabulary and proof, never the claim.
4. **Feature → benefit mapping last.** Features are pillar-evidence, not messages. Any feature that doesn't ladder to a pillar stays out of launch comms (it still exists; it's just not the story).

## Tests before shipping the messaging

- **The competitor swap** — replace your name with your rival's; if the claim still reads fine, it's category boilerplate, not positioning
- **The "so what" chain** — say the claim, ask "so what?" twice; if it dead-ends before reaching money/time/risk/status, keep laddering
- **The sales-call test** — can an AE say the one claim from memory after reading it twice? Multi-clause claims die in the field
- **The disprove test** — what evidence would falsify the claim? If nothing could, it's too vague to persuade

## The words that mark weak messaging

"Seamless, powerful, all-in-one, next-generation, revolutionize, empower, unlock" — each is a slot where a specific claim was supposed to go. Ban-list them in review; every removal forces a real sentence.
