M-PaX Knowledge Base
Your product works. Your customers stay. When you get in front of a buyer, you usually win.
But too few buyers find you on their own.
That is rarely a product problem. It is a Commercial Motion problem. Commercial Motion is the built machinery that turns a working product into a growing one. In most founder-led companies it was never built, because building it was never anyone's job.
This library collects the best outside work on building Commercial Motion. Each piece is summarized, credited to the person who wrote it, and linked to the original.
Start with the one that is blocking you now. Not sure which one? Start with positioning and messaging.
Curated by M-PaX Marketing, the Commercial Motion company behind the free M-PaX System.
Positioning and Messaging
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Should You Create a New Product Category? Decide It Last
A new category can confuse buyers as easily as it helps them. April Dunford explains what a category is for, and why the choice comes after you know your value and your best-fit customers.
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A B2B Value Proposition Framework Built From Customer Outcomes
A value proposition written in a meeting guesses at what buyers want. Dan Adams lays out a sequence that builds it from customer outcomes, measured, compared, and put into money.
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When to Reposition a B2B Product
B2B positioning is meant to shift as the product matures. Position for what a buyer can use now, and put the positioning review on a calendar.
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How to Open a Sales Pitch Without Talking About Your Product
Naming a buyer's problem puts them on the defensive. Naming a change in their world gets them talking. Where the product belongs in a pitch, and why it is not first.
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Why a Positioning Statement Template Cannot Find Your Positioning
The fill-in-the-blanks positioning statement records the answer you already had. Dunford's five components, worked in order, find the one you did not.
Market and Buyer Research
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How to Size a B2B Market When the Number Has to Hold Up
The market size in your head probably came from a report or a feeling, and it is probably too big. How to build the number three ways, how accurate it needs to be, and why the answers should be checked against each other.
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Economic Buyer vs End User: Why One Pitch Won't Sell Both
A B2B purchase has more than one buyer. The executive who signs and the user who adopts want different things, and a message aimed at one can put off the other. How to map the roles and speak to each without changing the offer.
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How to Build a B2B Ideal Customer Profile Narrow Enough to Use
Selling to anyone who will buy spreads a team thin. David Politis builds the ideal customer profile from your best and worst customers, then uses it to say no.
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Ideal Customer Profile vs Buyer Persona: Start With the Company
Knowing the buyer's job title is not the same as knowing which companies can buy. Why the ideal customer profile filters first and the buyer persona speaks second.
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Customer Interview Questions That Find Your Messaging
Interview recent buyers about how they came to buy and write down their exact words. Messaging built from their language converts because it matches what they are already looking for.
Pricing and Packaging
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How to Choose a Pricing Metric
Decide what you charge for before you argue about the number. The value metric and quantified segments come first, then quarterly experiments.
Demand Generation
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B2B Channel Partner Strategy: Partners Sell What Already Sells
Why a signed partner often produces nothing, and how to set up a channel so it pays off. Sell the product yourself first, keep the partner list short, pay real margin, and name someone to manage the relationship.
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Product-Led Sales: Turning User Adoption Into Enterprise Deals
Users adopt a product on their own, and the enterprise contract still does not follow. When to add a sales team to bottom-up growth, and the six ways the pairing fails.