THE ENGAGEMENT
Commercial Clarity Review
Make sure customers understand why they should choose you, before you spend money getting their attention.
A fixed-fee commercial advisory engagement for B2B firms that have already chosen the market, the offer or the direction, and need the commercial case to catch up.
It works out what could stop that move landing, or what is already weakening it, then fixes the part that is getting in the way. Sometimes that is the commercial story. Sometimes buyers understand the value perfectly well and the problem sits somewhere else entirely.
Start a conversationWhen this is the right engagement
- You are entering a new market and need the commercial case to land without you in every room.
- You have launched something new and the early conversations are not converting the way you expected.
- There is plenty of interest but not enough business: good conversations that do not become decisions.
- Only one person in the organisation can explain the value properly.
- The website reflects where the business was, not where it is now.
- Good opportunities keep stopping between interest and decision, and the reason is unclear.
None of that means the business is badly run. It usually means a commercial decision has been made and the commercial case has not caught up with it.
It is also worth doing before you commit
- You are about to commit to a new website, a marketing programme or a sales hire, and want to know what actually needs fixing first.
- Growth, investment, succession or a sale means the commercial case now has to work for people who were never part of building it.
What I look at
I examine the audience, the proposition, the proof, the differentiation, the commercial narrative and the buying journey. The first question is not what to fix. It is which of three things is actually happening, because two of them need opposite fixes and guessing between them is expensive.
Is there a real buying problem?
The buyer may be interested in the category without having a funded, prioritised problem to solve. No amount of clarity in the story creates urgency that is not there. If this is the pattern, the priority is identifying which buyers actually have the problem.
Have they understood and believed it?
The value is real, but the case is unclear, generic or qualified in ways that undermine it. Buyers cannot repeat what you do or why it matters. The proof does not match the specific risk they are trying to resolve. This is fixed with specificity.
Do they understand it, and is saying yes still hard?
They believe the case. Agreeing means revising an earlier decision, exposing a previous choice to scrutiny, carrying the risk if it goes wrong, or getting approval through an organisation that was not in the room. Sending more proof makes their case stronger and their decision no easier.
Most of the money spent on this problem goes on the second answer when the third one is true, because the second feels fixable. The engagement diagnoses which one you actually have before anything is built or rewritten.
FROM A PREVIOUS ROLE, NOT A CLIENT ENGAGEMENT
When the case is strong and the answer is still no
Before Commercial Clarity Advisory, I worked with an advanced materials business whose coating stopped hydrogen permeation. Independently tested. Certified. Engineers at some of the largest industrial manufacturers in the world took the meetings, asked serious questions and signed NDAs.
Then nothing.
The engineer had understood it perfectly, and that was the problem. He could not recommend a full deployment against conditions that nobody had yet tested. The case was not weak. The decision being asked of him was larger than the evidence available could support, and the questions he needed answered had not been answered yet.
Sending him more proof would have made his case stronger and his decision no easier. What needed to change was the size of what he was being asked to agree to.
That is the third cause, and it is the one most often mistaken for the second.
THE PROCESS
How it works
A recorded interview, around 45 minutes. I ask about the commercial move: what has been decided, what you are trying to make happen, who the buyers are and what you have learned about how they make decisions. I want the actual materials you use, not versions tidied up for the occasion.
I examine the audience, the proposition, the proof, the differentiation, the commercial narrative and the buying journey across the materials. The first question is whether there is a real buying problem. The second is which of the three causes applies, because two of them need opposite fixes.
A 90-minute working session where I put the diagnosis up and we push back on it together. This is not a presentation. It is a decision session, and the point is to arrive at a diagnosis we both trust before anything gets built.
I build the commercial case. The core elements are the proposition, the narrative, the proof structure, the differentiation and the core language the business should be using. Where the constraint is the decision rather than the story, the guide addresses the proof, the ask or the buyer's approval path instead.
You receive the Commercial Clarity Guide, an application map showing where and how to use it, and a market-test plan setting out what to test first and how to read the result.
Two weeks from receipt of the agreed materials.
THE DELIVERABLE
The Commercial Clarity Guide
Who the business is for. The audience defined in terms that help buyers recognise themselves and help the business stop selling to people who were never going to buy.
Why they should choose you. The proposition stated in terms that travel without you in the room.
The proof behind it. Which proof they actually need, and where the existing proof is doing less work than it should.
Core language. The phrases and framing the business should be using consistently, across conversations, materials and anything written next.
Application map. Where the guide applies, in what order, and what changes first.
Market-test plan. What to test, how to test it and how to read the result.
Where the diagnosis finds that the story is not the constraint, the guide instead sets out where the decision is becoming difficult for buyers to progress, and what the business can do to make agreement easier.
What this is not
- Full copywriting, design or production. This is a guide, not finished materials.
- Campaign execution. The guide establishes what the commercial case should be. Running campaigns is separate work.
- Sales training or team performance review. I look at what the business gives buyers to work with, not at individual performance.
- A review of product or service quality. What the product does is taken as given.
- Ongoing market testing. The market-test plan tells you what to test. Running the tests is yours to do.
- Open-ended consultancy. The scope is fixed before work starts.
If the website, deck or other materials need to be rewritten after the review, that is separate work. Some clients do it themselves with the guide. Others bring in an agency with a better brief than they could have written before.
Questions that sit outside the commercial case, or that need ongoing strategic involvement beyond the engagement, are out of scope.
A defined, fixed-fee engagement
The scope is agreed before work starts and the fee is fixed. There are no hourly rates, no scope creep and no bill for time beyond what was agreed.
The engagement needs one senior owner on your side: someone who can speak to what you are trying to make happen and who has the authority to make decisions about what changes.
The first conversation establishes whether this is the right engagement for the situation you are facing. If it is not, I will say so.
- B2B firms turning over roughly £2m to £50m
- Owner-managed or private equity backed
- Technical, engineering, industrial, deep-tech, specialist software or complex professional services
- Firms that have made or are about to make a commercial move: a new market, a new offer or a change in direction
- Firms where the founder or technical lead is still the only person who can explain the value properly
- Firms preparing for growth, investment, sale or succession, where the story now has to work for people who were not there when the direction was set
- Early-stage firms with no paying customers, where the real question is whether anyone wants the product
- Firms that have not yet chosen a market, an offer or a direction. The engagement needs a committed commercial decision to work from
- Firms wanting CRM implementation, forecast process or sales training. Those are real problems and I do not solve them
- Firms that want implementation rather than diagnosis. The engagement delivers a guide, not execution
- Consumer businesses
Who does the work
I do. There is no team, and no analyst drafting the findings.
Twenty-four years in agency marketing, leading work for technology, public sector and regulated organisations, where the value was real and the explanation was the hard part. Then the commercial side of deep-tech: hydrogen coatings that had to convince engineers, investors and policymakers at the same time, without simplifying the evidence into nonsense. Then commercial and investment development in B2B media, building investor propositions that connected SMEs with capital.
On paper that is not a tidy career. In practice it was the same job every time: work out why the commercial case was not landing, and fix the part that was getting in the way.
Common questions
Is this marketing?
Not in the way most people use the word. The engagement is about the commercial case: what the business is, who it is for, why they should choose it and how you make agreement easy. The output is not a campaign or a brand. It is the foundation a campaign or a brand would need.
How is this different from hiring a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO runs your marketing. This establishes what your marketing has to achieve before you hire one, and it is a fixed piece of work rather than a seat on the team.
What if you tell me something I already know?
Then you have it confirmed and can stop arguing about it internally. The more useful finding is usually not the problem itself but which of two or three known problems is the binding one.
What if I disagree with the diagnosis?
Good. The decision session is specifically for that. Every finding is marked with how strongly the evidence supports it, so we can separate what is visible in the material from what still needs testing.
Our materials are out of date. Should I fix them first?
No. Out of date materials are evidence in themselves, and fixing them before the diagnosis is exactly the spend the engagement exists to prevent.
Who needs to be involved?
One senior owner, for the interview at the start and the decision session later. Around two and a quarter hours of their time in total. Other people can be involved but are not required.
Will you write our website and materials?
Not as part of this engagement. The guide gives you everything you need to brief that work well. Some clients use it themselves. Others bring in an agency with a clearer brief than they could have written before.
Do you work alongside our existing agency?
Yes. The engagement often produces a clearer brief than the agency was originally given, which usually improves the relationship rather than complicating it.
Where are you based?
Leeds. Delivered remotely, with in-person sessions where they are useful.