u/grady-teske

I think there’s a positioning problem that’s easy to miss if most of your customer research happens before the sale.

During the sales process, you hear what someone hopes to get. Once you’re doing the work, you find out what actually makes the relationship valuable to them. Those can be pretty different things.

Take an agency, for example. A client might buy because they want more leads. Six months later, they might value the fact that someone finally owns the process and they don’t have to spend every Monday chasing updates. The leads still matter, but the relief of having that handled could be a bigger part of the renewal decision than the agency realizes.

Meanwhile, the website still says exactly what it said six months ago, because the people writing it weren’t part of those conversations.

What interests me is deciding how much that should change the pitch.

The thing that makes an existing customer stay might be your strongest selling point. It could also be something a prospect won’t appreciate until they’ve worked with you. Leading with it too early might actually make the offer harder to sell.

I’d want to compare what customers said they wanted on the first call with how they describe the value when they renew. Especially the language they use without being prompted.

For anyone who’s had customers long enough to see that difference: what did they end up valuing that surprised you? And did putting it into your sales pitch help win new business, or was it mostly a reason existing customers stayed?

I think most companies leave some of their best marketing buried inside delivery.

A customer buys for one reason, but once the work actually starts, you usually learn a lot more about what they value.

Sometimes the thing they cared about in the sales process ends up being secondary. Sometimes they get the most value from something you barely mentioned. Sometimes the same onboarding issue keeps coming up, or a result you didn’t expect becomes the thing they talk about most.

That information should probably change how you market the business.

But in a lot of companies, it never really makes it back upstream.

Marketing is focused on getting the next customer. Sales is focused on closing the next deal. Delivery is focused on doing the work. Everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but the information that comes out of delivery often just stays there.

That means the company keeps marketing based on what it thinks customers value instead of what actual customers are showing them they value.

I think that’s where a lot of good proof gets wasted.

A customer result can become a case study. A problem your team solved can become a useful story. Something a client says during onboarding can change the way you explain the offer. If the same outcome keeps coming up across different customers, that probably deserves to show up in the positioning somewhere.

Even the bad parts are useful.

If customers keep getting confused at the same point, that tells you something. If expectations keep getting set wrong, that tells you something. If people consistently love a part of the service you barely talk about, that definitely tells you something.

The weird part is that companies will spend money on new campaigns, research, content, and positioning while sitting on a pile of real customer experience they’ve already paid to create.

I’m not saying every client interaction needs to become a marketing asset.

I just think good delivery should make future marketing easier.

The more customers you serve, the better your proof should get, the sharper your language should get, and the easier it should become to explain why someone should work with you.

Curious how other founders handle this.
Does what you learn after the sale actually make its way back into marketing and sales, or does most of it stay inside delivery?

I think a lot of companies seriously underuse their sales team as a source of market research.

Sales is talking to the market every day. They hear the same objections over and over, they know where prospects get confused, they hear the exact words buyers use to describe the problem, and they usually know which stories or examples actually make the offer click.

But in a lot of companies, that information never really leaves the sales process.

Marketing is off brainstorming content separately. Product is doing its own research. Leadership is looking at dashboards. Meanwhile the people actually talking to prospects are sitting on a ton of useful information that never gets shared outside of a CRM note or a quick Slack message.

I started thinking about this differently because a sales call should probably leave behind more than just won, lost, or follow up next week. There is way more value in what was learned during the conversation.

If five prospects all explain the same problem in the same way, that should probably affect your messaging. If people keep getting confused at the same point in the pitch, that should probably affect how you explain the offer. If one story consistently makes the product click, marketing should know about that. If the same objection keeps coming up, product and leadership probably need to hear it too.

The weird part is that a lot of companies will spend money on surveys, market research, consultants, and new tools while sitting on hours of real conversations with the exact people they are trying to sell to.

I’m not saying sales calls replace proper research, but I do think companies leave a ridiculous amount of useful customer intelligence trapped inside the sales team.

The bigger the company gets, the worse this can become too. Sales learns one thing, marketing learns another, customer success learns something else, and none of it really gets connected. Everyone ends up working from a slightly different version of the customer.

I’m curious how other founders handle this. Do you have an actual system for getting what sales is hearing back into marketing, product, and leadership, or does most of that knowledge still just live in calls, CRM notes, and people’s heads?