Issue #102

Positioning: Why Your Pitch Falls Flat

If your buyer can’t place you, they can’t pick you.

And if they don’t get it, then that is down to you, not them.

Sales success depends on clarity before persuasion.

Before you get clever with pitch decks, demo flows, and ROI calculators, you need to fix the basics:

• What are you?
• Who is this for?
• Why should anyone care?

I’ve coached dozens of founders and salespeople who struggled to convert solid leads.

Not because the product was bad or the pricing was wrong. Not ever because the brochure was the wrong colour.

It was because the buyer left the meeting thinking, “Not sure what they are, really.”

Positioning isn’t about what you want to say. It’s about what the buyer needs to understand, fast, and under pressure.

I use the Positioning Canvas to fix it.

Let’s walk through it, using a sales consultancy as the example, (like the one I run).

1. What is the product?

You’d be amazed how many people can’t answer this in one sentence.

If you’re a sales consultant, are you:

• A training provider?
• A fractional CSO?
• A lead gen firm?
• A sales operating system?

Pick one to lead with. Otherwise, the buyer will and it will probably be the wrong one.

Example:

“We run a consultancy that helps B2B founders build a repeatable enterprise sales engine.”

Simple. Understandable. Honest.

2. Who is it for?

The trap here is being vague or aspirational.

“This is for anyone who wants to grow revenue” is code for “we haven’t worked this out yet.”

The right answer is always grounded in real clients who get real value.

Example:

“We work with B2B SaaS founders doing £1–10M ARR who’ve grown fast but don’t have a proper sales process in place yet.”

That answer filters fast. It attracts urgency. That’s the point.

Don’t worry about it limiting your client base, this is all about getting started, you can widen your targets once you get going.

3. What problem does it solve?

Again, don’t pitch the product - name the pain. The one the buyer already knows, even if they can’t articulate it. If you can explain it better than them, then they will listen.

Example:

“Our clients are stuck in founder-led sales. No pipeline. No consistency. No team that can sell without them in the room.”

If the buyer recognises themselves in that line, you’re halfway to a deal.

4. What category is it in?

This is where positioning often falls apart.

You want to sound unique, but the buyer needs to understand how to compare you.

The category gives them the frame. Don’t invent a new one unless you’ve got huge (and patient) VC funding and two years to educate the market.

Example:

“We’re a specialist sales consultancy. We’re not a training company or a recruitment firm, we design and build your sales system.”

Let them place you in their head, then you can start to shape how they make their comparisons.

5. What alternatives do buyers see?

It’s rarely, if ever, your direct competitor (most of the time they will not know who they are). It’s what the buyer would do if you didn’t exist.

Example:

We’re usually compared to:

• Hiring a VP sales
• Getting a sales trainer in
• Doing nothing and hoping next year is better

If you know the real options, you can position against them properly. That’s how you make your pitch land. We sense our world in a comparative way, not in absolutes.

6. What’s the one thing that makes you different?

The answer isn’t “our people” or “our commitment to clients.”

We see this meaningless crap everywhere, particularly with big companies. It gives me the ick.

You need a specific, useful reason why a client would choose you. One that they’ll remember when the call ends.

Example:

“We’re the only sales consultancy that trains founders by building their system with them, not just coaching or advising, but doing the work side by side until it runs on its own.”

That difference becomes the anchor for everything else, your pitch, your content, your referrals.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

TAM is the full set of companies that could ever buy what you sell. It's what gets us all excited about being gazillionaires.

For example, if you offer B2B sales consulting to UK SaaS founders, your TAM is every UK SaaS founder. But that’s not who you should target today.

Good positioning narrows TAM to ICP, Ideal Customer Profile.

That’s the group who needs you now, gets value quickly, and is ready to buy.

Find out more about ICP's here.

Sell to them, not everyone. That’s how you close faster and win more. Otherwise you are trying to dead lift the world.

Summary

If your sales aren’t landing, check your positioning first.

The Positioning Canvas helps you:

• Say what you are in language that sticks
• Attract the right people with a real problem
• Frame clearly so you’re easy to understand
• Highlight what makes you worth choosing

It’s not just branding. It’s real marketing, real sales strategy.

And it works.

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