Hi, I'm Val.

Most positioning is built from the inside out, handed off as a framework, and never activated. I build it from what your buyers actually say. Then I activate it across sales, lifecycle, and partner channels.

Val Geisler
The Activation Gap

When a business grows past a certain point, something breaks. The voice of the customer gets lost, the why behind the what is buried. Sales is pitching features. Emails announce updates. Partners explain your product the way they understood it two years ago. Everyone is winging it from their own version of the message.

That's not a messaging problem. That's an activation problem. And it shows up in three places:

Sales
"Your reps are pitching features."

Prospects sit through demos and don't see their problem in what's being pitched. Not because the product is wrong, but because the story never got to them.

Lifecycle
"Your emails are announcing, not activating."

Customers get onboarded to part of the product. Churn climbs. The full story exists somewhere, just not in the touchpoints that were supposed to tell it.

Partners
"Your partners are selling the old you."

Referrals fall flat. Affiliates want to advocate but don't have the language. Co-sell conversations go nowhere because nobody gave them the right frame.

This is the gap I close.

The Wins
60% close rate co-selling with sales teams
25% of company revenue from lifecycle email
97% NRR achieved through buyer-led strategy
13% churn reduced with a single lifecycle flow

The results aren't coincidental. A 60% co-sell close rate when the baseline was 30%. Lifecycle email growing to 25% of revenue. NRR at 97%. Those numbers came from the same place every time: knowing who the buyer actually is and building everything from that.

Who This Is For
B2B Software
Your buyer knows their problem. They don't know you're the solution.

Your sales team is pitching features. Lifecycle emails are product updates. Partners are still using messaging from your last rebrand. The framework you need is already in your customers' words. Nobody has gone and gotten it.

Subscription Ecommerce

This also works for subscription ecommerce brands.

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Your subscriber signed up. Keeping them is a different pitch.

Acquisition is working but retention is leaking. Lifecycle emails are promotional, not relational. Affiliates and ambassadors want to advocate but don't know what to say. The story that gets someone to subscribe is not the story that keeps them.

Subscription is subscription. Software or physical product, the buyer is making the same calculation: is this worth continuing? The positioning work is the same. So is the result.

Why Not Just...

Most teams considering this work look at three other paths first. Each one delivers something. None of them get the framework into the channels where it has to perform.

$100K+ → 1 PDF
Hire a strategy firm

Six months later, nothing has changed in your sales talk track, your onboarding, or how partners describe you. The framework was the deliverable. Activation was never in scope.

✓ Strategy doc
— Sales talk track
— Lifecycle copy
— Partner 1-pager
Just a dashboard
Run an AI interview tool

You get a constant feed of voice-of-customer themes, sentiment tags, and quotes flowing into your dashboards. What you don't get is a rewritten cancel flow, a sales talk track in your buyer's language, or a partner one-pager.

Active themes 14 ↑
support
78%
pricing
64%
loyalty
52%
competitor
41%
Stale by quarter's end
Build it in-house

Your Head of Marketing blocks off two weeks. A few customer calls, a Notion doc, a Slack share. By the next planning cycle, sales is back to pitching features and the doc is in someone's archive.

W1W2W3W4W5W6

This is the work that picks up where each of those stops short.

Why This Works

My experience comes from being embedded in this ecosystem for over a decade, not just as a consultant to the vendors, but as an actual buyer. I know what your customers are thinking when they get on a sales call because I've been that person. I know what questions to ask to surface the language that moves deals, reduces churn, and makes partners effective advocates instead of confused ones.

Most positioning consultants build from the inside out. They interview your team, synthesize the themes, and hand you a framework that reflects what your org believes about itself. That's not where the signal is.

The signal is in what your buyers say when nobody's selling to them. Getting to it requires knowing what to listen for, and knowing what to do with it once you have it.

That perspective didn't come from a straight line.

Theatre Production Special Events Retail Intrapreneurship Marketing Customer Success Entrepreneurship Sales Ecommerce Software
The Activation Layer

A messaging framework only works if the team can reach for it. Most don't. It lives in a Notion doc nobody opens, a deck from six months ago, or in the head of one person who's about to leave.

The fix is an AI layer that holds the framework: buyer language, competitive talk tracks, objection handling, partner co-marketing templates. Your sales, lifecycle, and partner teams can query it the moment they need it.

Ask it how to handle a specific objection. Run a role-play before a discovery call. Generate a Better Together draft for a new partner conversation. The framework stops being a deliverable and starts being infrastructure.

I either set this up inside your existing AI infrastructure (Claude Projects, ChatGPT Team, Glean, Notion AI) or build it from scratch and hand it over. Either way, the messaging stays current because the same engagement that builds the framework also populates the system that holds it.

Buyer-Led Positioning

Work with me.

Most positioning work delivers a messaging framework and stops there. This doesn't. The framework gets activated in the channels where it has to perform: sales conversations, lifecycle email, and partner co-marketing. Your team gets trained on how to use it.

Buyer-Led Positioning

The core engagement. For companies that need positioning built from the buyer up and activated in the channels where it has to perform.

See details

What's included

  • Buyer interviews: 5-6 interviews across current customers, churned customers, and prospects. Five is typically enough to start seeing clear patterns.
  • Sales call analysis to surface what your team is actually hearing in the field
  • Stakeholder interviews: up to 4 internal interviews
  • Messaging framework: core narrative, value proposition, audience segmentation, competitive differentiation
  • Sales enablement: rewritten talk track to build a deck from, plus competitive talk tracks on your top 2-3 competitors
  • Lifecycle: rewritten onboarding sequence or nurture flow, actual copy, not a content plan
  • Findings review session before recommendations are finalized
  • Team enablement: one 90-minute session at delivery

AI activation layer available as add-on. Set up in your existing AI stack or built from scratch and populated with the framework. See the standalone package below for scope.

Not included: partner co-marketing activation, ongoing management, platform implementation

Buyer-Led AI Activation New

Standalone. For teams who already have positioning and want it operationalized: an AI layer your sales, partner, and marketing teams can query on demand.

See details

What's included

  • Discovery: audit your existing AI stack (Claude Projects, ChatGPT Team, Glean, Notion AI) or scope a fresh build, depending on what your team will actually use
  • Source document creation: translate your existing positioning into AI-ready inputs like talk tracks, objection handling, competitive briefs, partner one-pagers, and role-play scenarios
  • AI infrastructure setup: build the folder and file structure inside your existing tool, or stand up a new system and hand it over
  • Prompt library: pre-built prompts for sales, partner, and marketing use cases. Handle this objection, draft this Better Together, run this role-play, generate this discovery question.
  • Team training: one 90-minute session per team (sales, partner, marketing) on how to actually use the AI layer in their workflow
  • 30-day refinement window: tune prompts and source documents based on real usage after rollout

Requires existing positioning. If you don't have a current messaging framework that holds up, start with Buyer-Led Positioning above. The AI layer amplifies what's there. It doesn't replace the work of getting it right.

Positioning Maintenance Post-engagement

For clients post-engagement. Keeps the framework current as the product evolves and the team changes.

See details

Available to clients who have completed a project engagement. If the foundation isn't there, the retainer won't hold.

What's included each month

  • Messaging updates as the product evolves or new use cases emerge
  • Sales call review to catch positioning drift before it affects close rates
  • New enablement materials as needed: talk track updates, objection handling additions, competitive refreshes
  • New team member onboarding to the framework
  • One async touchpoint per month

Month-to-month. 30 days notice to cancel.

Buyer-Led Positioning for Ecommerce
See details

What's included

  • Subscriber interviews: 5-6 interviews across current subscribers, churned subscribers, and browsers who didn't convert. The language that keeps people subscribed is different from the language that acquires them.
  • Support ticket and email analysis to surface what subscribers are actually struggling with and asking about
  • Stakeholder interviews: up to 4 internal interviews across marketing, CX, and brand
  • Messaging framework: core subscription narrative, retention value proposition, audience segmentation, competitive differentiation
  • Lifecycle: rewritten onboarding sequence, cancel flow, or winback sequence, actual copy, not a content plan
  • Affiliate and ambassador activation: messaging guide so your advocates can articulate the subscription value in their own words
  • Findings review session before recommendations are finalized
  • Team enablement: one 90-minute session at delivery

Not included: paid media creative, platform implementation, ongoing community management

Tell me what's broken. I'll let you know if I can fix it.

Let's talk

Fill out the form and I'll follow up with next steps.

How It Works

Engagements are three months, project-based, and start at $8,500/month. Every engagement ends with your team trained on how to use what we built, not just a document in a shared drive.

A decade in this industry and my multi-faceted experience has put me in every function, watching what moved the needle and what didn't. Each role since has added a lens.

What a sales team actually needs from positioning. What a customer success org sees that marketing misses. What a founder is really asking when they say the messaging isn't working.

The non-linear path is a feature, not a bug. It's the thing that lets me sit across from a head of sales, a CMO, and a VP of CS in the same week and know what each of them needs from the same framework.

Speaking & Press