Part One: Strategy · How it is understood
People understand a new thing by what it resembles. Call it something familiar and you are compared feature by feature. Call it something new and nobody knows what you are.
The first question anyone has about a product is "what is it?" They are asking which shelf to put it on, because the shelf tells them what it should do, what it should cost and what to compare it with.
Say "it's a CRM" and a buyer instantly assumes contacts, pipelines and reports. If the product lacks one of them, it looks broken, even if it was never meant to have it. The category has set the exam, and the established leader wrote the questions.
So teams escape into invention. The product becomes a "revenue workspace" or a "collaboration layer." Now there is no exam, and also no shelf. The buyer cannot search for it, cannot explain it to a colleague, and cannot tell whether they need one.
The useful ground is in between. Choose a category people already understand, then say the one way this product departs from it. The familiar part gets you understood. The departure gets you chosen.
Which category to pick is a real decision, because the same product can sit on more than one shelf. Consider a small company whose tool lets a team answer a shared email address together. Called "email for teams," it is compared with the email everyone already has for free, and looks expensive and odd. Called "a help desk without ticket numbers," it is compared with heavy support systems, and looks light, friendly and cheap. Nothing in the product changed.
The choice is not permanent. When the alternatives your customers consider change, the best shelf may change with them.
Therefore:
Choose deliberately what kind of thing your product is. Pick a category your customer already understands and that makes your difference look like a strength, then say the one way you depart from it.
In practice. Listen to how a happy customer describes the product to someone else. They will reach for a category without thinking. If it is not the one on your front page, find out which of you is right.
Goes with. The category follows from being DIFFERENT WHERE IT COUNTS (8). It should be named in THEIR WORDS, NOT YOURS (10), and it opens SAY WHAT IT'S FOR (30).