A large part of what I do professionally is translation. I translate complicated technologies and ideas into words and visual metaphors that people can easily understand.

Some of that understanding is conceptual: often the problems come from not only how teams talk about themselves publicly, but how they think about themselves internally.

I frequently talk to technical teams that acknowledge that their sales materials aren’t strong enough, that their website presence isn’t putting them in the best light, and that none of their marketing adds up to the value they truly create.

Not only do they struggle to diagnose this problem, they have no idea how to fix it if or when they do.

So what can you do, if this sounds like you?

It’s easier than you think. I’m guessing you’ve successfully sold your product, otherwise you wouldn’t be in business. That tells us that something vital is happening in your real customer conversations that isn’t happening in any of your materials.

When I work with new clients, the first thing I do is listen. A lot. I say “Explain what you do to me like I’m an absolute idiot.” Which is easy for them to do, because I am.

Typically after 20–30 minutes of getting it all out, they will say 1–2 sentences that are the actual core of the value they provide.

In this case, I usually stop them and say: “Did you hear what you just said? Those two sentences were more powerful than anything I’ve seen on your website or anywhere else.”

But it happened organically. Not because you sat and thought about it, or because you prompted AI to tell you what makes you valuable.

As you reached for the right words for 30 minutes, you found them once, and didn’t even realize you did.

So if you are successful in sales but bad at marketing, pay closer attention to what you say in real conversations that actually works. My guess is that language is nowhere to be found in any of your public positioning statements.