The 25th Strategic Navigation Assessment using the Open Water Framework is now complete. Across those 25 assessments, sales execution and rigor have never emerged as the primary strategic problem behind disappointing revenue.
Such was the case with our 25th assessment, referred to here as Project Compass to protect the company’s identity.
This company was interviewing CROs, VPs of Sales, Heads of Business Development, CMOs, talking to almost everyone who could help them “fix sales”.
A different question changed the conversation: “What have you investigated, and what do you think needs to change to ‘fix sales’?”
The Project Compass CEO was convinced the company had the fundamentals covered: ICP, unique selling proposition, buyer personas, market segmentation, positioning, messaging, and product market fit. Instead, the focus was on recruiting people who could create more action: closers, go-getters, scrappy salespeople, and the telling ethical Freudian slip, people “willing to do what it takes.”
Another possibility: What if the problem could be identified and attacked today, perhaps with many of the people already in the building?
Before the meeting, a research pass looked for potential disconnects between how Project Compass presented itself and what the market appeared to value. The purpose was simple: determine whether enough evidence of misalignment existed for a deeper Strategic Navigation Assessment.
That exercise exposes how the market sees you, not vice versa. It is like holding up a mirror to see how the world sees your company.
Recognition. Project Compass described itself through an integrated mix of IT, data, AI, security, and agentic capabilities. The market was talking about ROI, integration, speed, governance, risk, and AI-ready data. Could a buyer quickly recognize the value Project Compass believed it was communicating?
Trust. Project Compass made a powerful promise around accountability: “We’ve got this.” The market valued accountability, while buyers looked for measurable commitments, remedies, governance, and proof. Could buyers see enough proof to believe the promise?
Market Gravity. Project Compass had several routes into the market: direct, fractional, and multiple facets of the ecosystem. Each created access. Which route showed the strongest evidence that customers were actively pulling Project Compass through it?
Together, these formed the Three Misalignment Hypotheses: places to investigate, rather than conclusions.
Project Compass had spent significant effort looking at the market through one end of the telescope. It could see customers, competitors, opportunities, channels, and all the places its capabilities might fit. It had become very good at looking outward.
The Three Misalignment Hypotheses put Project Compass at the other end of the telescope, looking at itself through the same lens its customers were already using.
What could potential customers see and verify? What value was obvious? What required explanation? What made Project Compass easier to choose?
The view was different enough that Project Compass wanted to keep looking.
The full Strategic Navigation Assessment attacked those three misalignments from multiple directions. Early evidence gave them weight: Project Compass trailed its peer group across five of seven structural forces, with its largest gaps in Execution Readiness and Market Gravity. As the evidence accumulated, the original hypotheses began to change shape, revealing opportunities the first research pass could not see.
What emerged changed how Project Compass should think about itself, the value it creates, the customers it should pursue, and where it should place its commercial energy.
Those became the four reframes.
Reframe #1: The Company
The first shift addressed a fundamental question: How should Project Compass think about itself?
Project Compass saw its strength in connecting technologies and processes that rarely worked together: IT, data, security, AI, and agentic capabilities. The assessment shifted Project Compass’ identity from what it could connect to what those connections made possible for the customer.
The Strategy Canvas supported that Project Compass had true differentiation. Integration breadth was one of its strongest relative advantages. But differentiation only becomes commercially useful when the buyer understands the value of being different.
Project Compass was making the customer work too hard to find that value.
The Strategic Reframe changed how Project Compass sees itself:
From selling a collection of capabilities to owning one integrated technology operation.
The differentiation created value. The customer needed an easier way to see it.
Reframe #2: The Value
Project Compass promoted a broad range of capabilities. The reframe simplified what those capabilities created for the customer:
One Integrated Technology Operation.
“We’ve got this” was catchy, current, and pointed, but it still asked the customer to imagine the outcome. The reframe made that outcome explicit:
Faster Operational Visibility.
Those shifts were supported across the Buyer Value Matrix, RSEI, and Strategy Canvas. The exercises consistently pointed to the same opportunity: focus the story on the outcomes Project Compass could demonstrate, make accountability easier to verify, and connect its integration advantage directly to value the buyer could recognize.
Two reframes. One much easier story for the customer to understand.
Reframe #3: The Customer
The Customer Reframe moved beyond simply asking where else Project Compass could sell.
The stronger opportunity was leverage: finding customers and channels that could multiply its integrated technology model across many operating companies.
The highest-priority hypothesis became MSPs, MSSPs, and other technology service providers that could use Project Compass in their own customer delivery.
A second opportunity emerged below the current ICP: smaller companies that may be difficult to serve directly but become viable when reached through those providers.
Autonomous business units inside larger enterprises remain a future opportunity as commercial readiness develops.
The shift: stop thinking only about who Project Compass can sell to. Start looking for who can multiply where Project Compass goes.
Reframe #4: The Pursuit
New customers require new identification and qualification.
An MSP or MSSP, smaller channel-served company, and autonomous enterprise unit may all value Project Compass, but each requires different evidence to qualify and a different path to activation.
The framework defined the qualification questions, proof, next commitment, and disqualifiers for each.
The reframe: qualify each new customer with the conditions that make that opportunity viable.
Strategic Recommendations
The four reframes changed the picture. The Strategic Recommendations turned that picture into action.
The priorities centered on making Project Compass easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to buy: sharpen the commercial identity around the integrated operation, build stronger proof behind the value and accountability promise, validate the new multiplier opportunity, and put clear qualification around where that value should travel next.
In short:
Sharpen the message. Prove the value. Then scale access.
Now look back at where this started.
Project Compass was searching for people who could “fix sales.”
After reframing the company, its value, its customer, and its pursuit, the exercise identified actions around commercial identity, proof, leverage, and qualification.
And sales had yet to become the primary problem.
A great CRO can bring rigor. A great sales leader can improve execution. Better sellers can improve discovery, qualification, pipeline management, and closing. Those capabilities become far more powerful when the company has already answered the questions upstream.
What should the market recognize us for?
What value can we prove?
Where does that value have the greatest leverage?
Which opportunities deserve pursuit?
Then sales can do what sales is built to do.
That brings us back to the pattern across 25 Strategic Navigation Assessments.
When revenue disappoints, leadership understandably wants action. More pipeline. More activity. Better sellers. Greater accountability. Faster movement.
But movement compounds whatever direction the company is already pointed.
Before asking sales to move faster, make sure the company is pointed somewhere the market wants to go.
Want to see the evidence?
Read the Project Compass Strategic Navigation Assessment →
The Strategic Navigation Assessment behind Project Compass has been redacted for public consumption. The full assessment shows the research, evidence, pressure testing, assets, reframes, and recommendations behind the journey described above.