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Featured · GTM Strategy · October 25, 2026 · 10 min read

How to hand off founder-led sales without losing what the founder knows

To hand off founder-led sales without losing what the founder knows, get the knowledge out before the founder steps back. Years of sales calls were the company's best customer research, and most of what made them work is tacit, the kind of knowledge Michael Polanyi described as knowing more than we can tell. That's why "sound like the founder" is a brief nobody can follow. A playbook hands off the pitch. The learning is the buyer's own words, the objection that actually decides the deal, and the proof that moves people. Mine the last twenty calls, write one page per buying persona, and have the founder correct the draft. Then put those pages on the website and the shortlist, since most deals are decided before a rep gets the meeting.

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Positioning · October 10, 2026 · 9 min read

Why does every product launch take so long? The positioning argument you keep having

Product launches run weeks longer than the work requires because the positioning was written down and never decided. Each launch reopens the same questions about who the product is for, what it claims, and who signs off, so the delay is a decision being made late and under deadline. Checklists and launch tiers help with coordination, and they can't schedule a decision nobody knows is still open. Decided positioning has three things a document lacks. A named owner, a written statement of who the product isn't for, and a rule for what's allowed to reopen it. Put those on a one-page positioning decision record, and a new stakeholder, a lost deal, or a competitor move gets checked against the triggers in minutes.

Competitive Strategy · October 3, 2026 · 10 min read

Why did our win rate drop? What to check when every CRM slice comes back flat

A win rate that falls evenly across every segment, source, and rep usually has a cause the CRM can't hold. CRM fields describe the deal. The buyer's decision lives in what they compared you to, and that set forms before an opportunity record exists. There are two kinds of drop. Either the deal changed, which the slices will find, or the comparison set changed while the positioning stayed put. We call the second one comparison-set drift. To tell them apart, one person reads the ten most recent losses and the ten most recent wins and writes down what each buyer was comparing you to, in their words. Wins in one set and losses in others means positioning. The same set with split outcomes means pricing, execution, or fit.

Positioning · September 26, 2026 · 9 min read

Why your new positioning didn't change anything (and how to make it stick)

A new positioning usually changes nothing because it gets approved as a document, and a document costs nobody anything. Everyone agrees implementation matters, and April Dunford is right that the whole company has to line up behind it. What's missing is the first uncomfortable, dated, owned change. Porter made the underlying point in 1996. A position with no trade-offs is a straddle. So ship every positioning with a stop list, borrowed from Jim Collins's stop-doing idea and aimed at three places. What the homepage and deck quit saying, which deals sales quits chasing, and which promises come off the roadmap slide. Every line gets one owner and a date inside thirty days. If nothing on the list makes someone in the room uncomfortable, the positioning isn't finished.

Positioning · September 12, 2026 · 8 min read

What to say when a customer says "I'll just build this myself"

When a prospect says they'll just build your product themselves, arguing features loses, because features are the part AI coding tools made cheap. The weekend prototype really does work. What it lacks is Day 2, the infrastructure term for everything that starts once software ships. Broken integrations, security reviews, patches, and the handoff when the builder leaves. Retool's 2026 survey found 35% of teams have already replaced functionality of at least one SaaS tool, so the objection is no longer a bluff. It's also a positioning signal. Most SaaS messaging sells what the product does, which is Day 1, and buries ownership in pricing-page footnotes. Answer the objection with questions about month six, then rewrite the homepage around what it takes to own the thing.

Positioning · September 5, 2026 · 10 min read

How to Know If Your Messaging Is Actually Working

Silence after a messaging rewrite is not confirmation that it landed. Confused buyers rarely complain, and Gartner's March 2026 survey found that 67% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free experience, so most of them never enter a channel where their confusion could reach you. A message is working when it comes back. Your own language returns from places you didn't put it, first in words, then in behavior, then in revenue. Those three echoes arrive at very different speeds. Words show up in days, behavior shifts over weeks, and revenue takes a full sales cycle or two to read. Checking the revenue tier first is how good messaging gets killed at week four.

Positioning · August 29, 2026 · 10 min read

How to handle the "you're too expensive" objection in B2B SaaS

Expensive is a comparative word. When a prospect says your price is too high, they're reporting on a comparison they built weeks before you were in the room, usually against a category floor, a headcount, or the cost of doing nothing. Standard objection handling assumes that comparison is fair, so quantifying ROI only makes you a well-documented version of the wrong thing. Discounting is worse, because it ratifies the comparison and puts your signature on it. The real work happens earlier, in the messaging and on the pricing page, where you decide what your price gets measured against before a buyer picks something for you.

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