Chip Royce, Flywheel Advisors
When B2B companies consistently miss their targets with thoughtful sales and marketing, there’s a likely culprit.
I’ve watched founders burn tens of thousands of dollars on copywriters and lose countless hours wordsmithing their landing pages. They’re convinced that the perfect combination of words will unlock a flood of new customers.
They argue over commas in endless meetings. They rewrite their sales decks again and again, each time hoping this version will finally connect.
But the metrics don’t move. The leads don’t come. The frustration builds.
In 9 out of 10 cases, the diagnosis is brutally simple:
The problem isn’t the words. They’re trying to write a single, brilliant message for a dozen different audiences.
They don’t have a messaging problem. They have a market problem.
They lack messaging-market fit.
The Brutal Reality of Generic Messaging
Today’s B2B buyers are skeptical. They’re bombarded with generic outreach, so they’ve developed a powerful immunity to it. A message that tries to appeal to everyone appeals to no one. It’s noise, and gets ignored.
Think about it: a message vague enough for a Director of Operations in manufacturing, a CTO in fintech, or a Head of Logistics in retail is too generic to address their specific needs. It can’t use their industry’s language. It can’t reference their unique challenges or priorities. It’s a plate of corporate jargon that tells the buyer one thing: “You don’t get me.”
This is why so many B2B marketing efforts fail. A recent study found that over 70% of B2B companies struggled with revenue growth last year, blaming weak, generic messaging that came from trying to sell to everyone at once.
Founders know their messaging is failing, but they keep attacking the symptom. So they hire a new writer. Buy another copywriting course. They’re convinced it’s a performance problem, but it’s not. It’s a sequencing problem.
The Sequence Gap: You’re Solving the Right Problem in the Wrong Order
The root cause of this widespread failure is what I call The Sequence Gap: They’re engaged in the right activity (working on their message), but at the wrong time.
You can’t have a clear message without a clear market. It’s a law of physics in go-to-market strategy.
This is where many founders get stuck. They try to perfect their message (Key #4 in our “6 Keys” framework), wrestling with value propositions and headlines. But they ignore the most important input. The input for a clear message isn’t creativity or better writing. It’s a clear market—the exact thing our “Feature-to-Verticals” framework is designed to find.
Our “Feature-to-Verticals” framework forces you to move beyond selling features and instead answer one question: “Who feels the pain we solve most acutely?” It’s a diagnostic tool that forces you to identify where your solution creates undeniable value, revealing your path of least resistance to revenue.
You don’t choose a vertical. The data reveals it.
Only when you have this answer, a single focused market, can you begin to craft a message. The market comes first. The message follows.
From Chaos to Clarity: A Case Study
I saw this firsthand with a mid-stage SaaS client. They had a brilliant product for workflow automation but were getting destroyed in the market because their messaging was a vague collection of promises about “efficiency” and “streamlining operations.” They tried to sell to everyone, and in the end, sold to no one.
Their sales team was burning out, and their marketing budget was a bonfire.
We paused all messaging work and ran the “Feature-to-Verticals” process. First, we analyzed their current customers and the product’s strongest capabilities. Next, we looked at the market landscape. We created a scoring matrix to assess potential verticals. This matrix considered factors like market size, competition, and the strategic value of our client’s features.
The data was undeniable. One vertical stood out: healthcare administration.
Their platform was more than a simple “workflow tool.” It helped hospital administrators tackle a serious issue with patient intake and records management. It reduced errors that had serious compliance and financial consequences. The pain was severe. Our client’s solution was a perfect fit.
Suddenly, the messaging was easy. It practically wrote itself.
We stopped saying “streamlining operations” and started talking about “eliminating patient record errors” and “ensuring HIPAA compliance.” We traded “increased efficiency” for “reducing average patient intake time by 30%.” We created a new messaging strategy for the market. It focuses on the needs, priorities, and language of healthcare administrators.
The results were immediate and dramatic. Sales cycles were shortened because the value was obvious. Win rates climbed because they were no longer competing with generic workflow tools; they were the specialists. The company wasn’t another SaaS vendor. It was the clear, safe choice for healthcare.
Your Message Is a Consequence
Stop torturing yourself and your team with endless debates about words. Your messaging isn’t an act of creative genius; it’s a logical consequence of a strategic choice.
When you know who you’re talking to, you know what to say. When you know their pain, you can offer a solution. And when you know their world, you can finally speak their language.
If you can’t describe your ideal customer in one sentence, you don’t have a messaging problem. You have a market problem.
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