Positioning for Sales-Led SaaS companies | My clients win 6+ out of 10 deals, in 3x less time, at 40%+ higher value using my 4-week "Pressure Cooker" program.

Tired of losing to better-funded US competitors?
Stuck at 20–30% win rates?
I help Sales-led SaaS scaleups reach 60%+ — without new features or price cuts. Unlike consultants who deliver frameworks and disappear, I stay until your revenue proves it works.

The symptoms I fix:

- Sales teams explain features, not why you’re the only logical choice
- Losing to “do nothing” more than competitors
- Discounting because you can’t create urgency

If you’re closing less than 60% of qualified deals, we should talk.

Like Arrow Labs CEO Rami Darwish:

“My mind was stuck on the solution. Ton kept reframing me out of it by constantly asking ‘who cares? Why is that important?’
It was annoying. It pissed me off several times. But that’s exactly what I needed.
Win rates jumped from 30% to 60%, cycles were 3-4× faster. Now there are fewer competitors because we’re their people, not just another option.”

The root cause?
Almost always the same: positioning confusion.

The solution isn’t more features or lower prices.

It’s learning to own the remarkable effect—when your positioning, value proposition, and sales execution align to double win rates, halve sales cycles, and increase deal sizes by 40%. Not incremental improvement—pure leverage.

After 30 years in enterprise software, I’ve codified this in my book The Remarkable Effect—the playbook for how three strategic levers (Value, Viability, Volume) create 11x impact instead of 3x.

From “just another option” → must-have choice for the right customers.

Not with decks. Not with theory.
With positioning your sales team wants to use — because they can confidently explain how you’re different, why that matters, and close more deals.

I stay until your revenue proves it works.
That’s why my fees are tied to your actual growth, not just deliverables.
Because outcomes > input.

What your peer CEOs say:

- “No BS. Outcome-obsessed.”
- “Laser-sharp pipeline. Doubled our win rate.”
- “Not just advice — Ton stays until it works.”

I’m Ton — son of a Dutch tulip farmer. I live with my beautiful wife. 2 sons and 3 dogs in sunny Jávea, Spain.
Host of the weekly Remarkable SaaS podcast and creator of the Growth Catalyst Program.

Start here → https://valueinspiration.com/growthcatalyst
Or DM me for a no-pitch sanity check.

Ton Dobbe 🔆

He quadrupled revenue in 2 years by shrinking his focus.

Jim Whatmore (CEO of Joblogic Service Management Software) spent over a decade building patiently. 

From a management buyout in 2013 with 11 people and £500k in revenue, the priority was never speed. It was depth. Product. People. Customers. 

Rather than overstretching the business in pursuit of rapid expansion, Jim opted to focus on home territory and build market dominance before embarking on global presence. 
 
The platform was rebuilt properly from the ground up. Trade-agnostic workflows unlocked a much larger market. Strong customer relationships turned into long-term growth.Joblogic grew to £9M over ten years. 
 
Then quadrupled in the next two. 
Largely through organic growth and disciplined acquisitions.Not by chasing every opportunity. 
 
By executing well on the right ones.  

Most SaaS companies optimise for reach before they have real dominance. Jim’s story is a reminder that focus, patience, and consistency often outperform speed.

Losing to better-funded US competitors? I help Sales-led SaaS scaleups turn 5% win rates into 50+%—same team, zero discounting.

Wednesday I was in Germany for a full day Pitch Battle.
Six sales teams pitched, got scored and ranked.

Daniel did everything right. 
Researched the customer. 
Opened with their reality. 
Quantified the pain perfectly.

He scored a 7.

Lisa won with an 8.9.

The difference? 
She stood for her case. Full conviction. 
The kind you feel in your chest before you process it in your head.

Everyone can teach structure. 
Everyone can train frameworks.

Good coaching creates solid 7s.

But Lisa didn't win because her mechanics were better. 
She won because there was no gap between what she said and what she believed.

Customers feel that gap - instantly.
Even when the deck is perfect.

This nuance is exactly why I stay on after I've repositioned a sales-led software company.

Cause a new value proposition means nothing until sales get dangerous with it.
That's where the magic happens. Not in the slides. In the conviction.

Average software companies train salespeople what to present.

Remarkable software companies build salespeople who believe every word they say.

€6M ARR. Growing 40%. Clear ICP. Strong positioning. Everything working.

Except you can see the ceiling. And the board sees it too.

So now it's Germany. Or France. Or the US. 
Expansion isn't a choice anymore - it's what comes next.

And here's what most CEOs assume: 
The hard part is behind us. Product is built. Now we just need to sell it there.

That assumption kills expansion.

I watched Exact try this in the early 2000s. Greenfield expansion into international markets. "We figured out the Netherlands, we'll figure out Germany." They underestimated what it actually takes. Years of struggle.

At Unit4 we learned from their pain. We bought what we couldn't rebuild fast enough - local credibility, customer base, trusted relationships. Expensive. Integration risk. But we started from somewhere, not nowhere.

Your product crosses borders. Everything else that made you win at home - the brand recognition, the trust, the network, the references - that doesn't travel with you.

So before you expand, ask yourself: 

If you walked into that new market tomorrow with just your product - no reputation, no network, no local references - why would anyone choose you over the local alternative?

Tal Peretz's (CEO of Onfire AI) customers are generating 4x more pipeline with the same headcount. 

On the podcast interview I had with him, he explained how: 

"AI makes sales harder, not easier. Everyone's adding AI features. The noise-to-signal ratio exploded. Everyone can now send 1,000 personalized emails. Everyone can generate content at scale."

But Tal didn't add AI features to an existing product. 
He built AI on top of proprietary data infrastructure—what he calls a "Onfire knowledge graph." 

While competitors chased obvious AI wins, he spent months building invisible infrastructure. Signal detection, not feature addition. 

This is Trait 3 from The Remarkable Effect: Be different, not just better. 

Tal didn't play the AI feature race. 
He built a data moat first, then added AI on top. 

Average software companies mindlessly add AI to existing products. 
Remarkable software companies rethink and rebuild their foundations first. 

That's what creates outcomes customers start talking about and keep talking about - like 4x more pipeline growth. 
(And yes, that also attracted funding. But that's the outcome, not the strategy.) 

To listen to the full conversation: link in comments

"We're totally focused. We target €5M-€25M manufacturing companies selling to enterprise."

I asked: "When's the last time you sent a prospect to a competitor?"

Silence.

"So... you're not focused at all."

Here's the thing most SaaS CEOs miss: ICP isn't a targeting tool. It's a shield.

You don't just use it to find the right customers. 
You use it to actively reject the wrong ones.

If you're not regularly sending prospects to your competitors, you're treating your entire market as your test market.

I worked with a CEO last quarter. His pipeline looked healthy - 40 deals, average €50K. But win rates were stuck at 22%.

We scored every deal against his ICP. Twelve of them had no business being there. Not that he couldn't offer the functionality they wanted. He could. 

No, because there was no obvious differentiation.

"Send them to your competitors," I told him.

"But that's €600K in pipeline!"

"It's €600K in false hope that's killing your team's velocity."

He did it. Pipeline shrank by 30%. Win rates jumped to 58%.

This is Trait 1 from The Remarkable Effect: Acknowledge you can't please everyone.

The real test of ICP commitment isn't in who you pursue. 
It's in who you turn away.

Average software companies chase every qualified lead. 
Remarkable software companies use their ICP as both compass and shield - knowing exactly who to pursue and who to reject.

How many deals in your pipeline right now have no business being there?

"We've implemented BANT, MEDDIC, CHAMP—you name it. Yet deals we rate as highly qualified still slip through our fingers."

90% qualification scores. 20% win rate.

Here's what all those frameworks miss:

They measure if prospects can buy. 
They measure if prospects will buy.

Not one forces you to honestly answer: Will they buy from you?

Because you solve something they can't solve without you.

Without that, you're guessing.

"We grew last year, but not as much as we hoped for."

A CEO of a software company from Norway told me this last week.

"We made enough calls. Booked enough demos. Pipeline looked healthy. My team did everything right. Yet we came up 23% short."

I asked him one question: "When you review pipeline, what do you look for?"

Silence.

Then: "Size. We need 3x, ideally 4x, our target."

There it is.

He'd built a culture where looking good mattered more than being accurate.
Reps stuff their pipeline with 'opportunities.' They keep deals alive too long because 'it's not lost yet, we still have a chance.' And they're genuinely too optimistic.

Deals check every box. Budget. Timeline. Champion. Yet they slip anyway.

Because nobody asks the only question that predicts close rates: 
Will they buy from us?

Not just buy. 
Buy from us.

He looked at me. "We never ask that."

Most don't.

Average software companies celebrate pipeline size.
Remarkable software companies celebrate pipeline accuracy.

10% of your home market captured. 90% still available.
But your board wants Germany.

I had this conversation with a CEO of sales-led software business from the Netherlands last week. 

€8M ARR. Growing 30%. Investors pushing hard for expansion. Board meeting in two weeks where he needs to present the plan.

I asked: "What percentage of your home market have you actually won?"


Long pause.


"Maybe 10%. There's still a lot of companies we haven't reached."

"So there's 90% of your market still available. Why Germany now?"


Another pause.


"The board wants to see we can scale internationally. And honestly - closing deals here has gotten harder. Takes longer. More competition. Germany feels like a fresh start."

There it is.

Germany isn't strategy. It's relief.

I've heard this conversation dozens of times - with clients, in my own career at Unit4, with CEOs planning expansion now.

The problem isn't that expansion is wrong. 
It's that most CEOs expand for the wrong reason at the wrong time.

Here's the question that changes everything:

Is this expansion strategy - or an escape route?

I reviewed a pipeline with a SaaS CEO last month. 
Numbers looked fine. Healthy, even.

Then I asked a simple question: 
"How many of these deals are nice-to-have for the customer?"

Long pause.

"9 out of 10."

That was fine in 2021. 
It's death in 2025.

Budgets are tight. Committees are cautious. 

If your solution isn't tied to something keeping someone awake at night, you're not managing a pipeline.

You're managing a wish list.

And wish lists don't close.

"Three competitors just stole our biggest enterprise deals."

The CEO across from me looks different. Six months ago: celebrating Rule of 40. Today: exhausted.

"Companies we'd been nurturing for years. And these competitors? They're at Rule of 30. Burning cash. Growing faster than us."

He pulls up their investor decks on his phone.

"Look at this. One just raised €50M at 3x our valuation. Another got acquired for €400M - ten times revenue. We're profitable, they're not. We hit Rule of 40, they didn't."

Pause.

"So what are we doing wrong?"

Rule of 40 measures whether you're financially healthy today. 
It doesn't measure whether you'll matter tomorrow.

You can hit Rule of 40 while losing your strategic edge. 
The metrics say you're winning this quarter while your position erodes for next year.

Those competitors burning cash? 

They're not being reckless. They're building strategic moats. Their win rates are climbing. Their deal sizes are expanding. 

They're accepting Rule of 30 today to build Rule of 60 tomorrow.

While he was cutting his way to 40, they were investing their way to dominance.

The question isn't whether you hit Rule of 40. 
The question is whether it's the outcome of strategic clarity or financial engineering.

Is your Rule of 40 driven by pricing power or cost reduction?

I just had a conversation with Panos Siozos from LearnWorlds about what actually makes expansion work.

He told me: "We failed to find any traction within Greece."

This was 2014. Middle of the Greek financial crisis. Big businesses had no budgets. Nobody was investing in software. Nobody cared about online learning platforms.

So Panos had two choices: Give up. Or go international.

Most founders would have waited. Built more local relationships. Tried harder at home.

Panos didn't have that luxury.

The crisis forced him out. Within months he was approaching European and American markets. No local reputation. No network. No references.

"We put the scientists in the backseat," he said. "These customers had real problems. We needed to solve their problems - not the things we had in our minds."

American customers were already selling online courses at scale. They knew what they wanted. Strong e-commerce. Checkout funnels. Coupons. Black Friday strategies.

All stuff that felt exotic to a European team.

But LearnWorlds didn't argue. They listened. They adapted. They shipped features almost daily.

100 customers in 2015. 1,000 by 2019. 12,500 today across 150 countries.

I've seen this pattern before. At Unit4. With clients expanding now.

When you choose to expand, you bring assumptions. 
You think you know what will work.

When you're forced to expand, you become curious. 
You listen because survival depends on it.

This is Trait 4 of The Remarkable Effect: They master the art of curiosity.

Average software companies expand with confidence. 
"We figured it out here, we'll figure it out there."

Remarkable software companies expand with curiosity. 
"What would it take to be the obvious choice here?"

That question changes everything.


Full conversation with Panos:

Open article: #388 – How Panos Siozos reached 12.5K customers across 150 countries - Value Inspiration by valueinspiration.com

#388 – How Panos Siozos reached 12.5K customers across 150 countries - Value Inspiration

"We went from number four to number two in under three years. For greenfield, we're number one."

Pete Hunt , CEO of Dagster Labs , told me this on my podcast last week.

Same market. Same competitors. Less funding than most of them.

So I asked him: What changed?

"We decided our product is for the technical buyer. The less technical ones - we're just not going to serve them."

They picked a side.

Their users started picking sides too. Defending the product like it was personal.

That's what happens when you choose a side. Your customers notice. And they choose sides too.

Average software companies try to serve everyone.

Remarkable software companies pick a side - and attract people who'll fight for it.

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Yesterday I left Spain. +17 degrees. Four hours later I landed in Helsinki. -18 degrees. 35 degrees difference. One flight.

You know what was NOT my problem? 
The temperature. I had my winter coat.

I see this too often with sales teams. 

They come back from a meeting and say: 
"Maybe they're interested—but it felt a bit cold."

The prospect wasn't cold. 
You walked in with the wrong message.

"We're the market leader in..." → ice-cold reception. 
"I spoke to three CFOs last week who had exactly this problem..." → warm welcome.

Same prospect. Same day. Different temperature.

Average software companies blame cold prospects. 
Remarkable software companies bring the right coat.

FSN Publishing Limited

My principal focus is the growth of the FSN brand, and the highly popular "Modern Finance Forum" for CFOs Linkedin group. FSN is a trusted provider of thought leadership and innovative content to the global finance community. FSN's Modern Finance Group, with 56,000 members, is now in the top 5 groups for CFOs globally on Linkedin and provides a platform for strong debate and dialogue for CFOs and other senior finance professionals in different industries across the globe. Just search "CFO" or "Modern Finance" in the 'Group Search' to find us.

Our web site www.FSN.co.uk specialises in business systems news and features for the global finance community and it is where our Linkedin community can download our free premium content and CFO Advisories. I am engaged in everything from writing content and producing videos through to commissioning work from journalists and the promotion of our broad range of publishing and new media activities. 

Personal areas of expertise include:

XBRL, XBRL inside the enterprise and digital reporting
Fast Close, Financial Close, 'Last Mile' of Finance and Group (Corporate) Financial Reporting/Consolidation Systems.
Business Intelligence and Performance Management
Governance, Risk and Compliance, Fraud, Corruption and Bribery
ERP systems
Accounting standards, Regulation and IFRS

Author of best selling books;  "Fast Close to the MAX",  
"Using Microsoft Office Accounting to the MAX" and co-author of  "Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting to the MAX"

Chief Executive Officer FSN and Leader of the Modern Finance Forum for CFOs on Linkedin

FSNTalent

At FSNTalent, I take pride in finding high calibre finance professionals for for ambitious organisations and placing senior finance professionals into jobs they will love. That means spending time to deeply understand our hiring clients, their organisations and culture as well as our candidates aspirations, skills and abilities.  For us, it's not about a transaction but a long term relationship. The new way of recruitment is the old way! Putting people, trust and integrity at the forefront of everything we do.

Chief Executive

Deloitte

Held various positions including, Member of London Executive, National Director of Management Solutions, Head of Computer Audit, Leader of XBRL Task Force, Global leader of Performance Management Applications.

Main experience includes:

Leading multinational consulting teams implementing group financial reporting and consolidation systems in global 2,000 companies 

Developing and implementing budgeting, planning and forecasting systems globally in large enterprises.

Information strategy advice to large public sector organisations and global 2,000 companies.

Responsible for team of 200 overseeing UK consulting operations in mid-sized enterprises

Responsible for automated auditing techniques, risk management, governance and compliance.

Partner

Gary Simon is in the "Top 10" most viewed Leaders profiles on Linkedin in the UK. 

He is a highly sought after lecturer and trusted provider of 'thought leadership'​ and analysis about finance and business systems for CFO's around the world. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society; a Chartered IT Professional; a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales; a Graduate of Queen Elizabeth College (now Kings) London University and the author of four books on financial software and information systems.

He addresses thousands of finance professionals annually about the issues and challenges affecting the CFO’s role. The bulk of Gary Simon’s professional experience has been as a senior consulting partner with Deloitte, one of the largest professional services organisations in the world. His field of expertise is information strategy, performance management and financial reporting systems working at Board level with global 2,000 companies, large public sector organisations and central government as well as spells in the mid-market. After almost 17 year as a consulting partner he set up his own highly successful publishing house FSN Publishing Limited in 2005 and works extensively as a popular market analyst, running FSN's popular Modern Finance Forum on LinkedIn for more than 56,000 CFOs around the globe.

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