STRATEGIC POSITIONING AND GO-TO-MARKET NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Only 4% of companies say they have a clear, consistently understood value proposition. The other 96% are running on something their own people can’t repeat (Bain & Company, 2026).
Marketing says one thing, sales says the next, success says a third, and AI multiplies every version at machine speed. We call it Value Dissonance™.
Seventeen questions. About five minutes. No email required.
PROBLEM
Value Dissonance.
The clash a buyer feels when everyone representing you tells a different story about your value.
Unclear value forces everyone to make it up as they go. Not because your people are bad at their jobs, but because nobody handed them anything to work from. Bain put a number on it: ask ten executives why customers buy from you rather than a competitor, and you will get five different answers.
Our experience is worse than that. Ten leaders, ten answers.
What does it cost?
Deals stall, because the buying committee can’t assemble one case they can defend. Ramp stretches, because every new hire has to invent their own version. And AI repeats all of it, at machine speed, across every surface.
When do you need this most?
At a moment, not size. Value Dissonance is born when something is new. Every one of these is a launch, and a launch happens once.
- A new offering. The market has no category for it yet.
- A new company. Early is the cheapest time to fix this.
- A new market. The story that got you here was written for a different buyer.
- A new partnership. Half the people telling your story don’t work for you.
You can’t afford to go to market twice.
OUTCOME
Unmistakable impact.
One signal across every surface, digital and human, so buyers can’t confuse you with anyone else, in the market, in the room, and in the AI summary they read before you show up.
Then you get carried into rooms you’ll never enter, by a champion retelling your story on a day you’re not there. The only version of you in that room is the one they can repeat.
Companies with a clear, consistently understood value proposition grew 19% in 2025, against 12% for those with limited or inconsistent ones. About 1.6 times faster (Bain & Company, 2026). If there is no impact, we didn’t do our job.
Does this actually work?
A STARTUP
Same product, same buyer, only the story changed. At CoreConnex, a focus group heard the new narrative on a Tuesday. One participant walked into the CEO’s office the next morning and signed, on a story Bruce wasn’t in the room to tell.
AN ENTERPRISE
Thirty-three people, one narrative. At Tableau, five senior leaders put their fingerprints on the story in a single workshop. It became the company’s onboarding, then its ever-boarding, and it outlasted the people who wrote it.
A NONPROFIT
No product, no sales team, an island. Vashon HouseHold is an affordable-housing nonprofit asking people to fund permanently affordable homes. Same four beats. This isn’t sales technique. It’s how humans move humans.
“I worked closely with Bruce and his team in putting together a revenue accelerating executive briefing program between HP and Microsoft focused on eight focused solution areas. Our efforts together resulted in over a 50% deal connect rate and us winning the HP Circle Award for Marketing Excellence.”
Inspire Your Buyers®, the Amazon bestseller, 125 ratings and a five-star average.
Work delivered for HP, Microsoft, SAP, Adobe, Oracle, Dell, Citibank, McKesson, Infosys, Unisys, Alcatel-Lucent, Tableau, and Fastly.
PATH
Narrative spine.
One story your whole revenue team can repeat. Four beats. We call it POPS.
- Problem.
The one worth solving, named in the buyer’s words.
- Outcome.
What their world looks like when it’s solved.
- Path.
Everything it takes to succeed: who does what, when, what it costs, and what their own team has to bring. The honest version, so they can defend it.
- Steps.
Two sales, not one. The yes, and then the approval cycle your champion has to survive without you.
Not a script. A skeleton. It’s what lets a seller improvise in front of a real buyer and still be on message, and it’s what every AI agent inherits.
That is POPS run on us. Our problem is Value Dissonance, our outcome is unmistakable impact, our path is the narrative spine. Yours will name different things.
A spine aligns everything. But a spine doesn’t find itself. First you have to find the differentiated value it’s built on. Bain found that 49% of companies say their biggest value proposition problem is core product or service differentiation, and called it an existential issue, not a communications one. That is upstream of any story.
STEPS
What happens next
You just read a narrative spine, problem, outcome, path, and now steps. It works even when you know it’s happening.
- Take the free assessment. Seventeen questions, five minutes, where your story is drifting and what it’s costing.
- Schedule time with Bruce. A thirty-minute walk through your results, no obligation.
- Bring your team to a workshop. One room, one spine.
- Get everyone aligned for impact. Product, marketing, sales, and success on the same four beats, human and AI.
Questions we get.
What is Inspire Your Buyers?
A go-to-market narrative consultancy. We help revenue teams find their differentiated value, build one narrative spine everyone can carry, and quantify it in a business case a buyer will defend.
What is Value Dissonance?
The clash a buyer feels when everyone representing a company tells a different story about its value. Marketing says one thing, sales says the next, success says a third, and AI repeats all of it at once.
What does POPS stand for?
Problem, Outcome, Path, Steps. It is the four-beat structure of a narrative spine. The order matters: the buyer’s outcome comes before the solution, so the destination is sold before the route to reach it.
Who is Bruce Scheer?
Founder of Inspire Your Buyers and author of the Amazon bestseller Inspire Your Buyers. Thirty years in enterprise go-to-market, trained in Amazon’s narrative process.
Who is this for?
Revenue leaders at companies facing something new: a new offering, a new market, a new partnership, or a newly funded company. Product, marketing, sales, and success all carry the story, so all four belong in the room.
How is this different from a messaging framework or a brand agency?
Both work at the communicate layer. We start upstream, at positioning, deciding what you are actually worth to a specific buyer and why you beat the alternative. A well-told story about nothing in particular does not win deals.
Does Bruce speak at events?
Yes. Keynotes and breakout sessions on positioning, executive conversations, and building a CFO-ready business case.