I’ve been thinking about B2B services lately.

Some offer positioning services. Others focus on GTM strategy. Some provide sales funnel optimization. Others, like me, work on messaging.

The list goes on.

And the problem is, in most cases, we trace the same issue back to our areas of expertise. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say there’s a B2B SaaS company with a 0.1% website conversion rate. Now think about how each consultant would reframe the problem …

• Positioning people: Your current positioning isn’t clear. Visitors don’t know who you’re for, what problem you solve, or why it matters.
• GTM people: You’re not reaching the right target with the right offer at the right time. Even great product pages won’t convert.
• Copywriting people: Your headlines don’t hook visitors. You focus on features not benefits. Your copy is generic.
• Brand people: Your brand positioning and voice don’t resonate or build trust.
• Pricing people: Your pricing model is confusing. It doesn’t align with how users want to adopt your product.
• Nerds like me (I’m no better): You don’t have a strong taxonomy to make it clear what your product does & how it fits into people’s real-life workflows.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

But reality is entirely different …

The uncomfortable truth is that most conversion or B2B SaaS growth problems aren’t actually conversion problems. GTM, positioning, messaging, design, or branding fixes can only do so much.

Because once we trace things to the root, we often find bigger organizational problems masquerading as marketing problems.

This “0.1% website conversion rate” actually happens because … Internal politics suffocates expertise.

The person who talks to prospects & customers daily gets overruled by the exec who “has a feeling” about messaging. User research gets ignored because it conflicts with the founder’s vision. Sales insights on what prospects care about get buried in committee discussions about brand guidelines.

Decisions get made by seniority, not customer knowledge. Real, valuable insights die in the chain of command. The people closest to the problem have the least say in the solution.

Hiring a consultant to “fix” the low conversion rate is like putting a band-aid on a broken bone. They’ll create beautiful frameworks that won’t stick under the company’s dysfunctional dynamics.

We must look deeper.