Transcription
94% of B2B buyers built their vendor short list without ever speaking to your sales team. There were over 70,000 new AI startups in 2025 and that number is growing every single day. 88% of venture capital money is flowing into AI startups and 85% of B2B buyers actually say that commoditization is the largest risk for the software industry right now.
It's true that software is getting commoditized faster than ever and the traditional silos between marketing and sales are quickly evaporating. Selling is no longer enough. If you are a VP of sales, the number one fix you have to make right now is your positioning. Here's why positioning is the root of all revenue problems in 2026.
Most VPs of sales think positioning is something for marketing or that's something for LinkedIn influencers. This is very wrong because positioning is the most upstream issue of all revenue problems because 99% of sales teams have these three problems. Number one, lack of familiarity. Nobody knows them. Nobody has ever heard of their company or their product. Number two, differentiation. They look and sound exactly the same as all of their competitors. And number three, lack of interest. When they reach out to potential buyers, they simply do not care.
If you are a chief revenue officer or VP of sales at a software company, you need to be on high alert right now. Because if your positioning is not on point, you are quickly getting commoditized in the eyes of your buyers. If you can fix your positioning in 2026, everything else will get easier for your sales team. building a pipeline, closing deals, growing your revenue and your profit margin. If you ignore your positioning and if your positioning is bad, nothing else will fix your revenue problems. Not cold calls, not LinkedIn video DMs. And it doesn't matter if you choose Metpig or Spiced as your sales methodology.
Now, let me explain to you why positioning is so important. Here's how buyers actually buy in 2026. Every buyer has to go through five stages. Unaware, aware, consideration, evaluation, and finally decision. Modern buyers in 2026, they go through 90% of their decision process without ever speaking to a sales rep. And for you, this is a huge risk.
Let's walk through an example of a typical modern buyer journey. Let's say that your company is evaluating implementing an AI tool to enhance your employees productivity. So here's what the journey could look like. Phase one unaware. They've heard of AI but they've never thought about it in the context of employee productivity. The company is doing well. They are making decent revenue. They have decent profit margins. Everybody's happy. So there's no reason for change. Then they enter the second stage aware. They start seeing some of their industry peers, other sea-level executives post on LinkedIn about implementing AI and the results that they have seen. They also start following some thought leaders on LinkedIn, typically the leading vendors such as OpenAI or Entropic and they start realizing that potentially maybe they have to implement some AI solution to stay competitive in the market.
Phase number three, consideration. They've come to the realization that the old ways of doing things are no longer enough to stay competitive. So what do they do? They start doing some research and they start building a vendor short list. How does that happen? They will ask their favorite LLM, Chacht, Claude, perhaps Perplexity AI or others, and they will ask the AI to do research on the internet. What are the best AI tools out there? What's interesting is that your buyers are no longer using Google because that would take way too long. So, they ask the LLMs and what do the LLMs do? They scout the internet, but there are two domains in particular that they look at. Number one is reddit.com and then number two is linkedin.com. Let's be honest, reddit.com is one of the rabbit holes of the internet that, let's be honest, serious people do not spend a lot of time on. But LinkedIn.com is the number one platform where buyers actually research their vendors and the LLMs do the same.
So now that the buyer has a short list given by CHBT or Claude, they start actually researching those vendors, they visit their websites, they look at demos, perhaps they start a free trial and then finally they enter the decision stage. If possible, these buyers will buy without ever speaking to a sales team. That's what we see now. It's like a a lot more buyers actually go through the online checkout or they start a free trial and then they up upgrade the trial to a paid version via a credit card. If what they're buying is a complex enterprise software, then of course they will reach out to the sales team and they will actually enter a sales cycle with this vendor.
So, if you're a VP of sales or a chief revenue officer, here are three statistics that should keep you up at night. The first I already mentioned, 94% of buyers in 2026 will create a short list of vendors without ever speaking to your sales team. And so, there's a huge risk that if Claw does not mention you based on its research, you are not even entering a sales cycle. You already lost the deal. Number two, 80% of the time the vendor with the fastest response rate will actually win the deal. So speed to lead is still a very critical component. And now finally number three, 61% of modern buyers say that they actually prefer a sales repfree experience. They will buy without speaking to sales if they can.
Let me get to the bottom line of this. If your sales team is not present on LinkedIn, the LLMs will not list you on the short list of vendors. If you are not on the short list of vendors, you are not even entering the sales cycle. And if you're not entering the sales cycle with the buyer, you've already lost the deal. This is why positioning primarily on LinkedIn.com as the number one platform is the number one revenue issue that every sales leader should care about right now.
Now let me walk you through how good positioning actually works. The average positioning that we see out there is very product ccentric. Good positioning is problementric and great positioning is problem and customer centric. The best framework that I like to refer to when it comes to good positioning is the golden circle by Simon SK. The why, the how, and the what. And the classic example that Simon uses in his speeches is the example of the company Apple, which we all love.
Here's how Apple would theoretically hypothetically position themselves if they were bad at positioning. They would start at the what we make great computers. They would continue with the how. Our computers are beautifully designed and easy to use. And the why in the end will probably be missing. Want to buy one? The right way to use the golden circle framework is to start with the why, then continue with the how, and finally in the end you mention the what. Here's Apple's why. In everything we do, we challenge the status quo. We like to think innovatively. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and userfriendly. And finally, the what we just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one? See how the whole messaging lands differently.
Now, let's apply this framework to B2B sales. So, let's use the classic use case. You're buying a CRM. Let's start with a compelling why. Your sales team is working hard every single day to connect with your customers and drive new business. They need a system that's making their lives easier, not harder. Let's continue with the second step, the how. We believe that your sales reps shouldn't be spending their time doing manual admin work. We let AI do the heavy lifting in the background while they can focus on being present in their customer conversations. And then finally, the what our AI powered CRM connects to all of your tools in your tech stack and extracts deal intelligence data in real time. Want to book a demo?
What I'm trying to highlight here is that most companies pitch the wrong way. They start with the what they do. they continue how they do it and then finally in the end they tell their customers why they should buy. But the key is to really flip that script. Start with a compelling why. Tell your customers how you do it and how is that how that is different from your competitors and then finally tell them what you offer and how they can get in touch with you.
I want to add one more thing to this positioning framework before we wrap up. Your customer always need has to be and needs to be the hero of the story. The customer is the hero, not your product. B2B sales has gotten so competitive over the last few years because software has become commoditized. All the vendors sound and look the same and buyers have no orientation as to from who they should buy. On paper at least, everybody is AI powered, agentic, and a customer 360 platform these days. But in order to stand out, you have to make your customer the hero, not your product.
In order to do that, you have to do three things. Number one, you need to understand your ideal buyer personas incredibly well. And I mean really well. You really need to understand their world. and you need to be able to speak their language. Number two, you have to be able to clearly articulate what their pain points are, what the business impact is of those pain points, and what are actually the root causes, the underlying reasons why your buyers are experiencing exactly these pain points. And then the third and final step is you build a positioning all around your customers, their world, their KPIs, their pain points, their business impact and the underlying root causes. And that's how you make a positioning that is problem ccentric and customer ccentric, never product ccentric.
And here's the next thing that's going to happen if you do this successfully. In a commoditized market, buyers are looking for the signal amongst all of the noise. And they're looking for the one vendor that actually understands them the best. Not the vendor who has the best product, but the vendor who's actually the best at articulating their point pain points and speaking their language. And this is how you win the first step in every modern buyer's journey, which is awareness.
Now, here's what you can expect from my next videos over the next few weeks. I will walk you through how you can actually implement a strong positioning across your entire go-toarket team, which includes LinkedIn profile optimization and content strategy. If you like this video and you found it valuable, please support me. by dropping a like and a thumbs up. And if you have any questions about positioning, please drop it in the comments. I personally respond to every single comment on under my YouTube videos. And if you are interested in working with me as an individual contributor who's trying to hit their quota, or a sales leader, a chief revenue officer, a VP of sales, and you're looking for some help to build and scale a high-erforming sales team, check out the description under the video and get in touch. I'll see you next week. Take care.