I once worked with a fractional CFO firm that was doing quite well without a fancy funnel.
Their CEO would give talks at local events, and afterward, people would line up to learn more.
No lead magnets or drawn out nurture campaigns…
Just old fashioned in-person networking and presentations.
But, then they wanted to scale beyond their local market and decided to hire a marketing agency.
The agency’s big idea was to add in ‘more numbers and specificity’ into their content.
Marketing 101. Show your expertise.
So they rewrote everything.
Packed the messaging with numbers, stats, and charts.
Made it sound “serious” and “credible.”
Then they began this new messaging in the sales presentations, and…
And almost overnight, conversions collapsed.
When I came in to untangle it, the reason became obvious…
The only reason prospects were entering the funnel at all was because the CEO wasn’t a numbers guy.
Sure, he was technically a CFO… but that wasn’t his focus.
He told business stories.
He explained complicated concepts in plain, human language.
He made people feel smart instead of overwhelmed.
That “weakness”… the very thing the marketing team tried to scrub out was actually the hook.
And when we dug deeper, we noticed a striking pattern:
Many of their best prospects had dyslexia or dyscalculia.
Numbers didn’t just bore them… they triggered shame.
Of course they tuned out the number and instead leaned into the stories.
And of course they found each other at the same local events, where someone finally spoke in a way they could follow without feeling small.
Here’s the kicker: once we saw this clearly, it completely reframed how the firm identified ideal prospects.
It wasn’t about chasing people who “wanted to save time” or “needed clarity.”
The signal was simpler: the people who struggled with numbers were their people.
The moral?
Marketing “rules” can kill resonance if they flatten what actually makes you magnetic.
Positioning isn’t about sounding universally credible.
It’s about noticing why the right people are already leaning in and then amplifying that.
For this firm, the answer wasn’t more numbers or proving how great they were at them…
It was doubling down on storytelling and showing the end result of financial competence…
And that’s exactly what their future best clients could resonate with.