Field notes on
competitive proof,
not hot takes.
Every essay on this page was written either during or right after a sprint. If a piece makes a claim, it points at the evidence. If it hands you a framework, it's because we used it last month.
Thirty-four pieces. Zero throwaway posts.
We publish when we have something the field hasn't seen. Filed by theme below.
How to verify a competitor's marketing claims — a B2B SaaS playbook.
A forensic, evidence-based method: trace each claim to one primary source, assign a verdict (proven, vague, or gap), and turn the gaps into sales ammunition.
The death of voodoo marketing — rebuilding B2B trust through GTM engineering.
Five engineered shifts that make trust a measurable output: menu of options, differential value math, continuous EMR (Reebok, Gatorade, BehaviorScan), permissionless value, first-call effectiveness.
Beyond the Marketing Mary myth — 5 takeaways to align GTM teams around the truth.
Buyer personas are counter-productive fictions. Five takeaways: concrete customer profiling, waterfall enrichment, the 95:5 rule + menus, the underused price lever, signal-based selling.
Stop burning your budget — 6 evidence-backed shifts to fix generic marketing.
Marketing is capital deployment. Six engineered shifts: concrete customer profiling, NBA price math, the menu of options, permissionless value, the 46/54 split, trigger physics.
Beyond the noise — 6 GTM engineering truths to reclaim your market narrative.
Replace random acts of marketing with an aligned revenue architecture: concrete customer lists, the menu of options, price physics, the 95:5 rule, permissionless value, signal-based timing.
Blindsided by “industry-leading” vaporware? 5 evidence-based moves to weaponize proof.
Replace rebuttal with auditable math: NBA price math, Gap Selling, the 60/40 split, PVPs, trigger physics in the Window of Dissatisfaction.
The evidence-based edge — why “gut feelings” are a reputational risk.
The 5-step playbook that replaces “voodoo marketing” with evidence: menu of options, price math, cyclical EMR, WTP discipline, BehaviorScan.
Stop the research grind — 5 GTM engineering moves to slay inefficiency.
Replace manual scans with engineered signals: Concrete Identity, Trigger Physics, cyclical EMR, Share of Search, the modern 5-layer stack.
Stop sending nudges — 4 engineered moves to make your sales team unstoppable.
Why “just checking in” emails are dead. Trigger physics, permissionless value, menu of options, gap selling vs. NBA.
From manual grinding to revenue architecture — the GTM engineering blueprint for the modern CMO.
Why the CMO's job is quietly turning into platform engineering for the revenue engine — and six counter-intuitive truths about how to make that transition.
5 structural gaps in your competitors' claims — and how to exploit them.
A field taxonomy of the five proof gaps we surface most often inside a Competitive Proof Sprint.
How to conduct a competitive analysis that actually works.
The step-by-step process we follow inside a Proof Sprint, adapted for in-house analysts.
Stop building feature tables — feature parity is killing your win rate.
Why the feature-parity slide loses more deals than it wins, and what evidence-first positioning looks like.
The defensibility audit — 5 GTM engineering truths for the modern CMO.
Five checks we run on every revenue architecture that tell us whether the pipeline is defensible.
Stop the hype — winning market trust when your messaging has overpromised.
The three-step intervention we use when a client's customer base starts rolling their eyes.
The expectation trap — why your sales success is killing your retention.
The silent failure mode where every closed-won lays the groundwork for churn eighteen months later.
5 surprising shifts to win high-stakes deals.
What changes when the contract is six figures and seven stakeholders read the same battlecard.
Engineering market dominance through absolute differentiation.
The difference between relative and absolute differentiation, and why the latter survives procurement.
The alignment algorithm — 5 counter-intuitive truths to synchronize your growth engine.
Five moves that sound wrong but consistently unlock alignment between sales, marketing, and CS.
The CMO's playbook for immediate pipeline — 6 counter-intuitive truths.
The six truths a CMO has to swallow if immediate pipeline actually matters this quarter.
Jira is a fortress. Linear is a racecar. Five truths about the war for your workflow.
The cleanest modern case study on proof-based positioning and developer sentiment.
Stop guessing your roadmap.
Roadmaps built from proof gaps close faster, defend better, and ship with less internal debate.
The CMO's evidence-based playbook — deflate competitor hype with market science.
EMR, the Primacy of Price, the 95:5 rule, Permissionless Value Props, BehaviorScan-grade causal proof. Five evidence-based moves.
Beyond the feature list — engineer proof of differentiation for your next board update.
Differential Value, pricing power, the 95:5 rule, Identity Engineering, causal proof. The board-grade evidence stack.
The GTM Engineering Manifesto — trading pointless personas for algorithmic orchestration.
The architectural shift from manual marketing grind to engineered orchestration across six dimensions: Identity, Timing, Value, Mechanism, Channel, Conversion.
Beyond the hype — why unsupported claims are your brand's greatest hidden risk.
The CMO's verification machine — Reebok's strategic obsolescence, Net Incremental Benefit, Identity Engineering, BehaviorScan-grade causal proof.
The differentiation alpha — 5 counter-intuitive ways to escape the commodity trap.
Differentiation as financial alpha — Proprietary Alpha lists, 46/54 brand split, NBA differential value math, the Magic of the Middle, signal-based timing.
Why your competitive research is rotting — and how to turn insights into assets.
The Research Trap turns CMO budgets into shared-folder rot. Six engineered moves that build a deployable Competitive Messaging Kit instead of another PDF.