Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.
At a previous company, we rolled out a big repositioning with a new target customer, new narrative, a new proposition.
The story was stronger, sharper, more emotional. It passed all the internal checks, well aligned across the CEO, COO, Sales, and Marketing, and felt like a very real, positive step forward.
We felt good going into it. The rollout was smooth, building out new decks, updating the website, training the team. All the right moves. But what we didn’t expect was what came next.
I started listening back to sales calls and… the story wasn’t landing.
Some reps were skipping it. Others were falling back on old language. A few tried the new pitch, but it just came out wrong. The sharp, confident message we’d worked so hard on was already unraveling.
We’d underestimated how easily a strong message can unravel the moment it hits the real world.
That’s messaging distortion.
In this post:
Messaging distortion is real
Even the strongest positioning and clearest messaging can fall apart in execution. Not because the strategy is wrong or the copy is weak, but because of what happens in the handoffs.
Messaging distortion is when the carefully crafted messaging you designed doesn’t make it out the way you intended. It gets reshaped at every step between teams until what reaches the customer is a version you barely recognise.
- PMMs tweak the message for sales collateral
- Sales enablement adjusts it for training sessions
- Marketing reworks it for content and paid channels
- Sales reps reframe it based on what they hear in discovery
By the time it reaches the end user, the original message has been reshaped so many times it’s vague, generic, and missing the point.
You thought you were handing over a sharp, useful story… but the end result could be a completely different pitch.
It’s the sales rep’s fault for not parroting the language correctly. It’s yours for not building a system that made the message stick.
If your messaging only works when you personally deliver it, it’s not built to scale. If every person in the chain has to guess or fill in the gaps, you haven’t created alignment: you’ve set the stage for distortion.
This isn’t a knowledge problem, it’s a distortion problem
It’s tempting to think you can just explain it better.
Run a team training call. Drop some messaging in Slack. Update the deck. Ask Sales to pitch it this way.
But the gap will stay open. Because what you actually need isn’t more explanation… you need a downstream system that reinforces the message at every level through training, repetition, and shared understanding.
How to fix messaging distortion
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t fix itself.
1. Codify messaging like a system, not a sentence
Messaging should work like Lego, not glass. It needs to be built with a flexible structure from the start.
That means breaking your story down into reusable building blocks, each one small, sharp, and versatile enough to be picked up and used in context.
This is where the concept of value nuggets come in. They’re compact, structured chunks of messaging that link a product capability to a customer outcome. They’re sharp, portable, and designed to be navigated in real-time by helping sellers scale from value to benefits to features and vice versa by asking ‘why’ and ‘how’.
You also want to provide your cross-functional team with messaging that fits into different channels and moments like outbound hooks, discovery talk tracks, demo intros, objection busters, plus ad headlines, social proof, customer stories, and analogies that are all aligned.
Every single piece should give someone a way to move the conversation forward. Don’t assume people will “just get it.” Give them language they can reach for, without having to translate.
2. Cascade the ‘why’ with intensity
It’s not enough to hand teams a finished message. You have to show your work. People need to understand why it’s framed this way, why it works for this audience, and why it’s different from what came before.
The real job of good internal positioning and messaging enablement isn’t just to hand people the lines, but to give them the logic. You only unlock real leverage when your team has the confidence to think like the customer.
Sales and marketing can’t just recite talking points. They need to understand the role the buyer is in, the pressures they face, the objections they’re quietly holding back.
Wherever you can, make the story real. Bring real customers into all-hands. Walk through example discovery calls together. Build fluency, not just familiarity.
Developing a value story for every value point can help build empathy with the customer’s situation, their problems, the implications of those, and how they can unlock value.
You want a team that knows what to say, when to say it, and why it matters to the person across the table. Your precious positioning message doesn’t land because it’s memorised: it lands because it makes sense.
3. Build coaching and feedback loops
You can’t assume messaging will stick after one rollout. It needs reinforcement, feedback loops, and accountability.
Start by making feedback part of the process. Sales needs a way to signal when a message doesn’t land or, hopefully more often, when it really works.
Coaching should be ongoing, not one-off. Set expectations that frontline managers are responsible for messaging consistency on their teams, and be clear that that doesn’t just mean delivery. It means real understanding.
There’s also a ton of value in public coaching through positive reinforcement. Celebrate great calls. Replay them in all-hands. Highlight the moments where a rep used a story, a value nugget, or phrasing that clearly clicked with the buyer.
This isn’t just about reps learning the message, but about your whole company learning what actually resonates. And if positioning is strategy, then that feedback is more valuable than most teams realise.
The goal isn’t better messaging, but alignment
If every new team member needs a live walkthrough to understand what you do, you’re not set up to scale.
If every pitch needs your involvement to land, you don’t have a messaging system. You have a dependency.
High-functioning go-to-market teams don’t just write great messaging, they ensure the message is going to work in the real world. They create the conditions for the story to travel across the business… without falling apart.
It doesn’t matter what’s in your positioning deck. It’s what actually gets said on a call, in a deck, in a room with a buyer, that matters.
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