The Customers You'd Rather Not Have

"If you've got compliance software and you like it, we don't want to work with you."

That's what one of my clients is now saying to his entire market. He runs a great business, his clients are happy and he knows his market inside out, yet at the time, he couldn't write his homepage.

He'd spent the best part of a week locked in a room, because he needed to get things done and had run out of ways to avoid it. When he came out he had written three company guides, and upon reading them he realised he was looking at the pages of his new website.

He told me he knew he could knock up a new website and it would be fine, but he wasn't clear on the central message, and a website that's just 'fine' is worth nothing. That wasn't a copywriting problem. He simply hadn't yet decided who he was really serving, and you can't write the words until you've made that decision.

He'd very nearly settled on something around due diligence, which was sensible and accurate and would have resonated with almost nobody. Then, through the conversations we'd been having during our coaching calls, and what he called some "soul searching", he landed somewhere much braver, which is that he's "anti-compliance software".

What I love about it is what it does to the people landing on his digital assets and reading it.

1. If you've already bought compliance software and you hate it, it speaks to you straight away.

2. If you've got compliance software and you're happy with it, it immediately turns you off, which is exactly what he wants.

The result? Last month he had more leads than he has ever had. He converts one in every two deals he works, which means that by the end of October he will have hit his annual target for 2026, and we're predicting he'll overshoot it by at least 20% by the time December comes round.

That's down to the work we've been doing together, first getting his positioning laser focused, then building a go-to-market motion around it, and in turn creating a pipeline that's predictable rather than hopeful. Someone recently booked a call with him saying…

"Your LinkedIn profile spoke to the exact problem we are trying to fix - lets talk"

This is the part I most want you to take away, because positioning is the thing almost every founder underestimates. It wasn't an overnight fix, and it never is. It took iterations, many conversations, and a "due diligence" version of the message that nearly launched.

With each round we got a little closer to the truth.

The reason founders struggle to get there on their own isn't a lack of intelligence or market knowledge. It's that they are too close to it. They're in the detail and the day to day, they know every feature and every edge case, and that makes it almost impossible to see what actually matters to the person on the other side of the table.

A big part of what I do with founders is to sit outside all of that, detached from the detail and the day to day, and keep asking questions until the real message emerges.

Most founders are terrified of putting anyone off. They write positioning that tries to include everyone, because when the pipeline is thin every prospect feels precious. The founders I've seen grow fastest are the ones willing to say clearly who they are not for.

The message that tries to speak to everyone ends up speaking to no one.

So here's what I want to leave you with.

• If you wrote your message only for your most frustrated potential customer, what would it say?

• When did someone from outside your business last challenge how you describe what you do, and did you actually change anything as a result?

If you're a founder who knows your positioning is trying to please everyone and you'd like someone outside the business to help you work out who it should really be for, just reply to this email. No pitch, no agenda, just an honest chat to see if there's a way we can work together, and if I'm not the right fit, I'll say so.

www.revenueandbeyond.com