Sales Pitch & Positioning
April Dunford’s Sales Pitch (2023) addresses the most common failure mode in B2B sales: pitches that describe what a product does rather than why it is the best option among all real alternatives. The book is a companion to her earlier Obviously Awesome (on positioning), and its central claim is that a great sales pitch is not a product demo, not a problem/solution narrative, not a vision story — it is a structured teaching process that guides a buyer toward a confident decision, and that decision is made easy when the pitch is rooted in genuine differentiated value.
The Considered Purchase Problem
Not all purchases are equal. Dunford distinguishes considered purchases from impulse or unconsidered ones:
Considered purchases take more time and effort because there are potentially negative consequences if you make a poor choice.
B2B technology purchases are almost always considered purchases. The buyer faces career risk if they make the wrong call — their recommendation could cost them their job or damage their reputation. This risk creates a gravitational pull toward one particular “competitor” that salespeople almost never think about:
The easiest, safest purchase decision is often no decision.
Research from Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna (The JOLT Effect) finds that 40-60% of purchase processes end in no decision. The vendor’s biggest competitor is not another vendor — it is the status quo, and the safest response to an uncertain decision is “let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”
As a vendor, you always need to position against the buyer’s status quo, even if there are other vendors to worry about on the customer’s shortlist.
The implication: every pitch must answer not just “Why us?” but “Why change at all? And why now?”
The Four Flawed Pitch Structures
Dunford catalogs four common pitch approaches and diagnoses each:
1. The Product Walkthrough The most common — and least effective — pitch structure. A guided tour of features, screens, and capabilities. The problem: it answers “What does this do?” but not “Why pick you over the alternatives?” It leaves buyers without a framework for decision-making and no understanding of why the competitors are less suitable.
2. The Problem/Solution Pitch Popular with startups, this structure identifies a painful problem and presents the product as the solution. It works when the only real competitor is the status quo, but fails when there are multiple “new ways” competing in the market. It also defines the problem the same way competitors do — removing any differentiation.
3. The Vision Narrative A story about the future the company is building. Compelling, but not oriented toward a purchase decision. Prospects hear a vision pitch and respond: “Come back next year when it exists.” There is no urgency, and newness is not inherently valuable — in B2B, “untested” and “risky” are often synonyms.
4. The Hero’s Journey Customer-story centered. Works well for case studies and content marketing, where the goal is to entertain and engage. But in a first sales call, the buyer needs a framework for making a decision, not a story about someone else’s journey.
The goal of a great sales pitch is to help customers understand all their choices, the trade-offs between each, and when to pick your solution.
The Dunford Pitch Structure: Setup + Follow-Through
The recommended structure unfolds in two phases:
Phase 1: The Setup
- Insight — Your unique point of view on the market; the “problem inside the problem” that leads buyers to understand why your differentiated value matters
- Alternatives — An honest map of the market: what other approaches exist, who they are suited for, and what their trade-offs are
- The Perfect World — Synthesize: if the ideal solution existed, what would it look like? (This should map to your differentiated value)
Phase 2: The Follow-Through
- Discovery — A conversation where you confirm the buyer’s situation, learn their specific context, and validate that your product is the right fit
- Differentiated Value — The specific value only your product can deliver, demonstrated through features, case studies, and proof
- Ask — A next step that is easy to say yes to and appropriate for where they are in the buying process
I’ve broken the sales pitch structure into two distinct phases: the setup and the follow-through. The setup focuses on offering your insights about the market, competitive alternatives, and discovery. The follow-through focuses on your solution.
Insight: The Cornerstone
The pitch should open not with the company, the product, or even the customer’s problem — but with the vendor’s unique insight into the market:
A great sales pitch starts with your company’s unique insight into the market. Sales pitches that start with generic problems or trends will not lead prospects to your unique differentiated value.
Insight is the “problem inside the problem” — something that best-fit buyers need to know in order to understand why your unique value matters. It is not an industry trend that everyone in the space is aware of. It is the specific perspective your company has developed from working with its best customers.
One way of thinking about your unique market insight is to ask this question: “What do your best-fit prospects need to know to understand why your unique value is important to them?”
LevelJump’s example: “A company realizes the value of sales onboarding only if it can measure the impact of it with sales metrics.” This insight leads directly to LevelJump’s product — which connects onboarding to revenue outcomes. No competitor had made this connection. The insight is unique and leads directly to differentiated value.
Differentiated Value: The Star of the Show
Dunford distinguishes between value (what the product delivers for customers) and differentiated value (what only this product delivers that alternatives cannot):
In a B2B sales situation, beyond simply the value you can deliver, you win deals based on your differentiated value — the value you can deliver that no other alternative can. It may be true that your product saves time. But what if all your competitors also help companies save time? Suddenly, your value is interesting but not a reason to buy.
The diagnostic: for each value claim, ask “So what?” until you reach a genuine business outcome. Then ask “Can the competitor deliver this?” If yes — it is not differentiated value.
Guidelines for identifying differentiated value:
- Start from the differentiated features (what competitors lack)
- Ask “So what? Why does a customer care?” for each feature
- Cluster features under value themes (aim for 3 or fewer)
- Connect value themes to the specific business situation of best-fit customers
Differentiated value is the star of the show. Customers don’t care about features. They care about what those features can do for their business.
How to Address Alternatives
One of the most counterintuitive elements of Dunford’s framework: you must talk about competitors, but as approaches, not as companies:
Think of your competition as “approaches to the problem” rather than individual companies. In a good sales pitch, you are contrasting the different approaches to the problem, rather than trying to compare individual products.
The buyer needs to understand the landscape well enough to make a confident choice. If you refuse to address alternatives, the buyer will go elsewhere to research them — and you lose the opportunity to frame those alternatives through your lens.
Only position against alternatives the prospect has actually considered or will likely encounter. Do not name competitors they have never heard of — you give buyers new options to explore and new reasons to delay.
Although your product and strategy teams might be tracking dozens of potential “horizon” competitors, you don’t need to position against anything a customer does not currently consider. There is also a real danger associated with giving prospects new approaches to think about.
The Champion Frame
In B2B purchases, between five and eight people are involved in the final decision. But early in the process, one person drives it — the champion, who does the research, builds the shortlist, and sits across from you in the first sales call.
It is critical that your positioning and sales pitch are tuned to resonate for the champion if you want to be considered for a purchase.
The champion strategy:
- Pitch to the champion in the first call
- Arm the champion with materials to handle objections from other stakeholders
- Help the champion make a defensible recommendation to their organization
Once the champion has decided to consider your product as a potential solution, then a key part of your job is to understand the potential objections of all the other stakeholders and to arm the champion with the information to handle those objections.
Proof: Backing Up Differentiated Value Claims
Buyers have learned that vendor claims about their own products are unreliable. Every claim of differentiated value needs independent proof:
- Customer case studies (especially from similar industries or use cases)
- Third-party verification and certifications
- Statistics validated by customers
- Industry analyst quotes and reports
- Customer testimonials
- Awards
The proof should match the prospect’s profile. A case study from a $2B manufacturing company does not resonate with a 50-person SaaS startup, and vice versa.
Connection to Outbound Prospecting
Predictable Prospecting (Tyler & Donovan) reinforces the pitch positioning framework from a sequencing perspective. A discovery meeting (the “AWAF” — Are We A Fit call) is not meant to close; it is meant to determine fit. The 6-slide discovery presentation Donovan recommends mirrors Dunford’s structure:
- Cover slide with primary benefit (not features)
- Articulation of the prospect’s top challenges
- Solutions through use cases
- How value is realized through features
- Configuration/packaging options
- Proof through logos, testimonials, analyst quotes
Presentations should be guided conversations, not one-way pitches. To make that happen, each slide should trigger a question that is answered by the next slide.
The “No Decision” Antidote
The most dangerous competitor — inaction — is addressed by making the decision easy and defensible:
The person leading a B2B purchase process is tasked with making a well-informed, low-risk, defensible purchase decision. Vendors tend to assume the question the prospect wants them to answer is, “Why pick you?” Instead, the question the customer really wants the vendor to answer is, “Why pick you over all the alternatives?”
A pitch that gives buyers the language, framework, and confidence to explain their choice to others — including their boss — is the most powerful antidote to “no decision.”
“Do nothing” is the most fearsome competitor you have. If customers cannot figure out how to confidently make a purchase decision, they simply won’t make one.
Related Concepts
- Frame Control — Klaff’s framework addresses the social dynamics of pitching; Dunford’s addresses the content and structure; together they cover both the “how to hold the room” and “what to say in the room” dimensions
- They Ask, You Answer — TAYA creates inbound interest; this framework converts that interest into confident decisions in the sales conversation
- Predictable Revenue — The sales pitch is what Account Executives deploy once SDRs have generated qualified opportunities; pitch quality determines close rates