Commercial Positioning Strategy

We rebuild the commercial argument your company sells from.

In complex B2B, deals stall because the argument breaks the moment it leaves the room. We diagnose where your value leaks across four quadrants, rebuild the positioning your commercial team sells from, then make it stick in the demos, decks and stories your sellers carry into the room.

Built inside teams at ServiceNow · Salesforce · AWS · MuleSoft · Slack

Who runs this

Jon Billett, founder. Twenty years building commercial arguments in enterprise SaaS. One pair of hands on every engagement. About one in three diagnostics ends with us telling you not to hire us.

More on Jon →

Four places your story can live.

Every B2B story sits in one of four places: Friction, Core, Leak or Trap. Only one wins deals. We find where yours is, and rebuild it to the Core.

[ 01 / The market signal ]External signal

As AI commoditises the words, the premium moves to the argument underneath them, and to whoever can make that argument travel. Perspective, positioning and the craft to land them are now the scarce things.

Companies are paying a premium for perspective.
Scott Galloway/Prof G · April 2026Read the deep-dive ↗
[ 02 / Pain ]What's actually broken

Deals stall because value gets lost, not because the product is wrong.

In complex B2B, the bottleneck is rarely the product. It's that the argument for it doesn't survive the retell. The composite diagnosis below is what we keep finding in the room.

68%

Industry pattern: across complex B2B, 68% of deals stall mid-cycle when value becomes unclear or inconsistent. The product isn't usually the problem. The story around it is.

[ 03 / Hook ]Our proposition

We rebuild the commercial argument your team sells from, then we make it stick.

Positioning is the strategy. Storytelling is how it travels, into demos, decks and the success stories your sellers reuse. You get the argument and the means to land it, so your value holds up when it is repeated, scrutinised and defended by a committee you never meet.

[ 03b / From argument to advantage ]How the positioning lands, and how we prove it

A sharp position is worthless if it dies in the retell. Two things make it real in the field, and we do both.

[ Delivery layer ]

Storytelling, engineered.

We turn the positioning into demos, decks and pitches your team can deliver under pressure. This is the craft that makes a sharp argument land in the room and survive being repeated by someone who is not you. Taught in workshops and keynotes, built around your real content.

Workshops & Keynotes →
[ Proof layer ]

Success stories, as sales assets.

We turn your customer wins into reusable proof your sellers actually pull into deals. Every story is mapped to the positioning, so it reinforces why you win, not just that a customer was happy. The result is a library of evidence that does the arguing for you.

Discuss a Success Story brief →
[ 04 / Contrast ]

Four places your story can live. Only one wins deals.

The StoryQuadrant™ / REF V4

Interactive. Hover or tap a quadrant to explore ↓

[ 04 · Diagnose ]Self-audit · 60 seconds

Find your quadrant. Six questions, no email required.

Question 1 of 60/6
Q01

Our reps can explain why we win in a single sentence.

Answer 6 more to score
Result

Complete the six statements and we'll plot your story on the quadrant in real time. Indicative only. The real diagnostic goes deeper.

[ 05 / Method ]How we work, what you get

Discover → Synthesise → Deploy. One hand on every stage, so the story survives intact.

01DISCOVER

Audit the friction

Multi-day on-site workshops, customer interviews and win/loss analysis to identify structural villains in the sales cycle.

You leave with

Diagnostic of where value is leaking

02SYNTHESISE

Define the core

Raw workshop data synthesised into a definitive positioning blueprint, the master story your business sells from.

You leave with

100-page positioning blueprint

03DEPLOY

Arm the team

CRM infrastructure, sales playbooks and content systems that operationalise the new story where deals actually move.

You leave with

Reusable assets, embedded in CRM

Three ways to work with us. A full Consultancy (Foundations, Playbook and Rollout) that rebuilds the positioning and embeds it in the sales motion. Storytelling Workshops and Keynotes that build the skill across your team, from a 20-person working session to a 50-plus SKO keynote. And Success Story production that turns your customer wins into sales assets mapped to the positioning.

See engagements →
Book a Positioning Diagnostic →45 min · no slides · zero obligation
[ 06 / Evidence I / Representative Engagement ]

The diagnosis
we typically find.

Composite of recurring patterns across recent engagements with complex B2B businesses. Specifics anonymised; the structural pattern is consistent.

Sector
Industrial / B2B
Territories
Multi-region
Sales Org
60+ members
Stage
Pre-engagement audit
What we hear in the room
Every region is telling a different version of why we win. By the time it reaches the buyer, the value is unrecognisable.
What we find underneath
  • 01The strongest technical proof points sit in the Ignored quadrant, buyers never hear them.
  • 02Premium services have drifted into Commoditised language, so they're sold on price.
  • 03The one genuinely Decision-driving story exists, but only the founder can tell it.

The engagement that follows isn't a rebrand. It's giving every seller, in every region, the same defensible way to explain what the founder already knows.

[ 07 / Evidence II / Field Reports ]

What operators say.

Direct, unedited reflections from sales, enablement and product leaders at the organisations we've worked alongside.

What StoryQuadrant delivers is exactly what sales and pre-sales teams need to win the first meeting.
Justin Anovick/Chief Product & Marketing Officer · Syndigo
Trusted by →ServiceNowSalesforceAWSUKGslackLocktonDenodoSyndigoMuleSoftPowerSpeaking
01 / 05Syndigo
"What StoryQuadrant delivers is exactly what sales and pre-sales teams need to win the first meeting."
Justin Anovick, Chief Product & Marketing Officer
02 / 05ServiceNow
"Our team is telling a stronger, more compelling customer story, with a clear framework that's already improving conversations."
Marcel Allie, Senior Manager, Solution Consulting
03 / 05Lockton
"The transformation was immediate and impactful, our team's messaging is now more engaging, memorable, and effective."
Hannah Pring, Chief Compliance Officer
04 / 05Denodo
"StoryQuadrant has helped us to bring our incredible customer stories to life to benefit our sellers and our business partners. Highly recommended."
Darren Cooper, Senior Director, Sales Enablement
05 / 05Salesforce
"It flipped our sales methodology on its head, revealing what was missing from our presentations and customer meetings."
Adrian Trickett, Senior RVP

See where your story is leaking.

Book a Positioning Diagnostic →
[ 07b / Who ]Where you sit in the room

Three operators we keep getting called by.

01CRO

Pipeline is stalling, not the team.

Your reps are working hard. Conversion is drifting. You've ruled out activity and headcount. The story they sell from is the bottleneck.

02CMO

Inheriting a fragmented narrative.

Every function tells a different version. You need one defensible spine before the next product launch, board update or category bet.

03Founder · CEO

Pre-raise, scaling beyond yourself.

Only you can tell the real story today. That doesn't scale into a Series B sales motion, and investors are starting to notice the gap.

[ 08 / Fit ]Who this is, and isn't, for

We work with a narrow slice of the market. On purpose.

This works when →
  • You sell complex B2B with deal sizes north of £50k ACV.
  • Your sales cycle is 3+ months and involves a buying committee.
  • You have 10+ sellers telling subtly different versions of the same story.
  • Deals are stalling after demo, not before. The meetings happen, the close doesn't.
  • Leadership already knows the value; the team can't articulate it consistently.
This doesn't work when →
  • You're pre-revenue or pre product-market fit. The story isn't your bottleneck yet.
  • You sell transactional SMB at low ACV. The economics don't carry the engagement.
  • You compete primarily on price. Positioning won't fix a commodity problem.
  • You want a brand refresh or new website copy. That's a different discipline.
  • You need a fractional CRO. We rebuild the story, we don't run the sales org.
[ 11 / Questions ]

The questions buyers actually ask.

Straight answers to the things people are too polite to put in the enquiry email.

Why not just hire a VP of Sales?+

Different job. A VP Sales runs the sales motion: quota, hiring, forecasting. We rebuild the asset they sell from. The best VPs we work with bring us in because they want their team operating from a sharper story, not because they're missing leadership.

How is this different from Force Management or Winning by Design?+

They sell a methodology you adopt. We diagnose your specific positioning and rebuild it. There's no licensed framework you're paying to implement. The output is your story, your blueprint, embedded in your CRM. Closer to a strategy engagement than a sales-training programme.

What if our problem isn't positioning?+

Then we'll tell you in the audit, and we won't take the engagement. Roughly one in three diagnostics ends with us saying the bottleneck is product, pricing or pipeline volume, not story. We'd rather lose a project than sell you the wrong fix.

Can you just write our pitch deck?+

No. A deck written without the underlying positioning work falls apart the moment a seller goes off-script. We rebuild the story; the deck is a downstream artefact that becomes obvious once the story is right.

How long until we see results?+

Sellers report different conversations within two weeks of rollout. Pipeline metrics (cycle length, win rate, average deal size) typically shift over one to two quarters as the new story works through the funnel. Anyone promising faster is selling theatre.

[ 08 / Future State ]What the business looks like after

Sellers tell the same story. Buyers remember it. Deals move faster, with less discounting, because value is finally legible.

  • Shorter sales cycles
  • Higher win rates on complex deals
  • Premium positioning that holds under scrutiny
Jon BillettFounder, StoryQuadrant, London
[ 09 / Contact ]

Get in touch.

Tell us a little about your team and what you're working on. Whether it's a positioning diagnostic, a workshop or keynote, success story production, or a general question, we read every enquiry and reply within two working days.

Email
hello@storyquadrant.com
Phone
020 8050 4281
Based
London, United Kingdom
Response
Within 2 working days
Get in touch
Or call UK · 020 8050 4281