Ordering a burrito at Chipotle can teach you a powerful lesson about positioning in B2B SaaS.

I was standing in line, and the guy behind the counter asked the person in front of me, "What kind of protein do you want?"

The person ordering stumbled for a second and said, "What?"

Then the Chipotle employee said, "What kind of meat do you want?"

"Oh! I'll have chicken."

Asking someone, "What kind of protein do you want?" is inherently less clear than asking, "What kind of meat do you want?"

And to go even further... asking, "What kind of BEEF do you want?" is even clearer and more specific.

But the moment you add chicken or pork to the menu, you can't just say "beef" anymore — you need to find a word that describes beef, chicken, and pork.

Easy!

"Meat" is right there and is still very clear.

But things get slightly more complicated when you add vegetarian options like sofritas/tofu.

You can't use "meat" anymore, so you have to abstract one level higher to something that covers beef, chicken, pork, and tofu.

And at this point, you end up with "protein" — something most people don't normally shop for at a restaurant.

Nobody really says, "Do you guys sell protein?"

Obviously, you want to sell all these different things… because it increases the size of your market.

But the more you broaden out, the less clear your messaging becomes.

The same applies to B2B SaaS.

People buy products to help them with specific activities.

A sales team will buy a tool for mutual action plans, another tool for conversation intelligence, another for forecasting, and another for sales engagement.

There are markets for each of these use cases/categories on their own.

But what if your platform does ALL of these things?

What do you call that big collection of tools/workflows?

There's likely no great word for it, so you settle for a "protein" equivalent... probably needing to invent a new word in the process.

That's exactly what sales tech companies like Clari have had to do.

They sell a platform that includes:

1. Mutual Action Plans
2. Conversation Intelligence
3. Forecasting & Pipeline Management
4. Sales Engagement
5. Data Platform
   and lots more...

There isn't a great word to describe this collection of tools and workflows, so they needed to "create a category" to lump them all into, which they called a "revenue platform."

But like "protein," this isn't a common phrase for sales teams.

And while people shop for each of these sub-products individually, Clari needs to do the hard work of convincing prospects that they all belong together in a new category.

This obviously takes a ton of effort, time, and money to do.

And in their case, it actually might be the right goal to pursue
(they are very large and have the resources to potentially pull this off.)

But for YOU, oh early-stage startup...
you need to ask yourself if YOU can do the same.

Can you convince the world not to call it "meat"...
but "protein?"