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Competitive Strategy · July 4, 2026 · 7 min read

The deal didn't go to a competitor. It went to nothing.

Most deals marked 'lost to a competitor' were never in a competitive fight. In a study of more than 2.5 million recorded sales conversations, [Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found](https://hbr.org/2022/06/stop-losing-sales-to-customer-indecision) that 40 to 60 percent of B2B deals end lost to buyers who expressed intent and then never acted. Their 2022 study still describes the room accurately, because it maps how people behave under a decision they're afraid to get wrong. Call those phantom losses. The real competitor is the buyer's own inertia, and a sharper feature comparison does nothing to it. What moves a frozen buyer is clarity about what changes, confidence it works for a company like theirs, and cover to defend the choice in a room we're not in. Here's how to sort phantom losses from real ones, and how to fix the message before the next deal fades.

positioningcompetitive-strategyb2b-saasbuying-committeewin-loss-analysissales-enablement

Positioning · July 1, 2026 · 7 min read

Your positioning is getting summarized by AI before buyers reach you

A model reads your positioning before any buyer does, then hands the buyer one sentence about you. Vague, category-level messaging averages into noise that sounds like every competitor. Keywords and schema don't fix it, because the problem is clarity. Run the compression test. Paste everything you've said about yourself into a model, ask for one sentence, and read what survived.

positioningai-searchllmb2b-saasmessagingaeo

Positioning · June 28, 2026 · 7 min read

Your GTM agency can't make this decision. Only you can.

Flat pipeline next to good agency work usually means the decision underneath was never made. Agencies execute decisions that already exist. They can't decide who we sell to, who we refuse, and what problem we actually solve. That's the Positioning Ownership Line. Everything on the execution side is available for rent. Nothing on the ownership side is. Make the call on one page, validated against deals we actually won, before renewing another retainer.

positioninggtm-strategyicpfounder-led-salesb2b-saasagencies

Positioning · June 18, 2026 · 7 min read

Your AI content gets you found. Then it loses the deal.

AI content wins discovery and loses evaluation, for the same reason. The fluency that helps buyers find us is the fluency that helps them catch us. Klaviyo and Datalily found people are four times more likely to trust a brand less once they spot AI in its marketing. The fix is a voice line. AI runs free on research, assists on drafts, and never touches positioning, the thesis, or any message a champion has to repeat without us in the room. Three questions find the gap in your own pages.

positioningai-contenttrustb2b-saasmessagingcontent-strategy

Positioning · June 17, 2026 · 7 min read

Why deals stall after your champion wins: the category creation budget-line trap

Your champion won every internal argument and the deal still went quiet. Category creation deals stall at the filing cabinet, because a purchase order needs a budget code and a category nobody has named yet doesn't have one. Call it the missing code. The fix is translation. Turn your category into a line the buyer's finance system already recognizes, then arm your champion with the one page they'll carry into a room you're not in. Here's how to find the line you can displace, and what to do when there honestly isn't one.

positioningcategory-creationsaas-gtmprocurementsalescompetitive-differentiation

Positioning · May 22, 2026 · 10 min read

How to know if your messaging will actually work (before you ship it)

Internal sign-off measures internal alignment, not market resonance. The False Confidence Filter is a two-day protocol of four tests, each run with five ICP-matched buyers who have never met you. The Stranger Test catches clarity gaps, the Priority Test catches relevance gaps, the Clone Test catches differentiation gaps, and the Champion Test catches whether a champion can resell your value unaided. Stranger and Priority failures force a rewrite. Clone and Champion failures are usually fixable.

positioningmessagingb2b-saasgtmpre-launch-validationvoice-of-customer

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