Brief an agency
Steady output, on schedule, made outside the building. They write well. They don't get near your executives or your sales floor, so they work from what you already published. An agency can't reach it. It was never in the room.
THE TRUST ENGINE BLUEPRINT
Find out what your buyers can't see about you.
Two weeks. Fixed scope. You'll know why buyers can't tell you apart, and what to fix first.
€7,500 · two weeks · credited in full against the build
01 / THE INSIGHT
You buy more content. Buyers still can't tell you apart.
More isn't the problem. Any team can publish more.
The problem is where your best thinking sits. In your CEO's head. In last quarter's sales calls. In a renewal call nobody wrote down.
An unwritten advantage is not an advantage. It's a private opinion.AND BUYERS DECIDE BEFORE YOU GET THE CHANCE
They visit the website. They search your company. They read what your leaders say. They ask AI tools to compare you. They send links around the buying group.
If those places can't explain why you matter, your salesperson starts the call doing work the rest of the company should have already done.
Every first call spent re-explaining the company is margin your competitors don't pay. When the difference never lands, the buyer reaches for the one thing they can compare: price.
02 / WHAT YOU'D DO INSTEAD
Four honest options.
Hire a head of content
The right answer eventually. Six figures. Months to find, months to ramp. Then they inherit a blank calendar and no position behind it.
Run another positioning engagement
A real decision, made by smart people, ending in a document. Nobody owns what happens to it next.
Do nothing
Works until a company that's easier to explain gets the meeting.
All four are reasonable. None of them goes into the building and gets the thing out.
03 / WHAT A SMART BUYER SHOULD ASK
Four questions. Answer all four and you don't need me.
01
Ask three reps, separately, what makes you different. Do you get one answer?
02
Is your best evidence published anywhere a buyer can reach?
03
Ask a machine who to look at in your category. Does your name come up?
04
Does your sales team have words they use, or do they improvise?
04 / WHAT THE AUDIT IS
Two weeks. I go and find it, I name the gap, and I hand you the plan.
What your buyers believe
From your calls, your customers, your market. Not a persona document.
What your competitors claim
Their actual words. So you can see which of your lines they could sign. If a line could sit on their homepage, it isn't your story.
What your leadership knows
Interviews. The part nobody has written down.
What your content is doing
What's published, what it's for, and whether buyers can reach it. Including in AI answers.
Where the gap is
Between what's true about you and what the market can see. That gap is the plan's starting point.
YOU GET
You get the written plan, a walkthrough session, and the moves in order — what to do first, what it changes, and why that one comes first. Hand it to someone else and they could act on it.
04B / WHAT IT'S CREDITED AGAINST
What it's credited against
The Blueprint is two weeks. The Trust Engine is ninety days, and it runs in three moves.
Find it
The truth, with evidence behind it.
- Leadership, seller and customer interviews
- Sales call and win/loss review
- Customer proof and case evidence
- Existing messaging and content audit
- Market and competitor review
Name it
One story the company can repeat.
- Positioning and market narrative
- Executive point of view
- Customer proof and case stories
- Core messaging and talking points
- Story pillars and themes
Make it travel
One clear idea, carried through the market.
- Executive articles and essays
- Flagship video and podcast content
- Search and AI-ready explainers
- Sales decks and case narratives
- Objection and answer language
- Buyer and champion tools
- A governed content system your team can keep running
Your team owns all of it. The story, the assets, the system, the voice.
If we start the Trust Engine within 45 days, this fee comes off it in full.
05 / WHY ME
I've run this job from the inside.
Twenty years, in this order: sales, then communications, then content. Global account sales and digital change across 126 countries at Hapag-Lloyd. Digital communications at Engel & Völkers. Head of Content Marketing at Staffbase, a B2B software company above €100 million in revenue.
I won't tell you I've done this a hundred times as a consultant. I've done it inside companies. That's the part most people selling you this have never done.
06 / FAIR QUESTIONS
Straight answers.
Isn't this just a strategy deck?
A deck says what's true. A plan says what to do on Monday. The difference is whether someone who wasn't in the room can act on it. If you want it built, that's the Trust Engine, and this fee comes off it.
We already did positioning.
Good. Then we start somewhere else. Half the value here is finding out where you actually are. A company fresh off positioning usually has a distribution problem, not a position problem.
Two weeks isn't long enough.
It's long enough to find the gap and write the plan. It isn't long enough to close it. I won't pretend otherwise.
What if we don't like what we hear?
Then it did its job, and you owe me nothing further.
THE ASK
Book a call.
It's me doing the work, not a team.
If it doesn't change how you see your own company, don't hire me for the Trust Engine.
Not ready to spend anything? Take the Story Gap Scorecard. Fifteen statements, two minutes, no email. You'll know which of the three systems is costing you most.