Stress test your proposition to go faster.
Next available: Thu 28 May 2026 · Private session
How to land the room when the buyer sits at the top. The five frames every C-suite buyer is running and the seven questions you need to answer before you walk in. ~30 pages.
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In their words · IBM
“Dan and the team used simple techniques focused on the client first to hold the mirror up to us about how bad our interactions were. Has it worked? You bet. Win rates are up.”Christine Wyatt · General Manager, GBS, IBM
I have worked every side of the commercial table. Years interviewing CEOs as a journalist for the Financial Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times and The Economist Group. Founder of Greenbang (50,000 readers, quoted by the UN and European Commission). Founding editor and investor in CoinDesk.
Inside FTSE companies I have served as Commercial Director at Virgin Money and at Thomas Cook, where I ran transformation programmes that changed how big organisations sell, grow and prove their numbers. That work has unlocked over $1bn in revenue for clients, and I have advised teams at IBM, Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Cognizant along the way.
Dan Ilett · Founder, The Proposition · Editor, The Executive Summary
Articles, guides, the audiobook and the playbooks I give clients.
Trusted by teams across the Fortune and FTSE
A one day workshop that holds the mirror up to your team and exposes the weaknesses in your story, your growth motion and your change performance before the market does. An appraisal from someone who has worked every side of the commercial table: the journalist asking the hard questions, the FTSE commercial director who ran the transformation programmes and the FTSE buyer hearing the pitches.
I personally review your sales motion, your growth plan and the way your team talks about what you sell. You hear what the market hears when you pitch, you see what an operator who has run the same transformation would do next and you find out where the bid breaks under buyer scrutiny.
Most stories sound fine to people who already agree with them. They fall apart the moment a smart sceptic asks the obvious follow-up. Better me than your buyer, your board or the press.
Regardless of the size of your business, and you can see above we have worked with a lot of them, the problems are common. A product, revenue and a pile of friction trying to sell more of it.
You will be grilled and put through your paces in a safe space to hone your thinking and perfect your pitch. You walk out with the footage, the rebuilt story and the gap your team now knows how to close.
We find what is actually losing you deals and we name it for what it is, in the room, in front of your team.
The words, the pitch and the rebuilt narrative that work. Tested live before you put any of it in front of a buyer.
Practice and a plan for the boardroom, the stage and the buyer call. Owners. Dates. What changes by the end of the quarter.
Workshop sprints that get B2B teams focused on growth and selling.
"They nail the brief each time. They take the time to understand our business. They understand the challenges of landing messaging and positioning in large, matrixed organisations."Irene Sandler VP, Global Messaging, Cognizant
"Dan and the team used simple techniques focused on the client first to hold the mirror up to us about how bad our interactions were. Has it worked? You bet. Win rates are up."Christine Wyatt General Manager, GBS, IBM
"I am so impressed at the difference they made to us. Differentiation in banking is hard and they really helped us crack that. Once we had our story and strategy, we drove some amazing results."Ewan MacLeod Chief Digital Officer, Nordea Bank
"They were able to take a complex product, turn it into a simple story with a great commercial plan, and implement it."Iain Gibbons Customer Director, Virgin Money
"Members of the team have been instrumental in helping us figure out how we position ourselves in the innovation space. Their strategies have maintained a fine balance between being creative, business focused and with measurable, data-driven impacts."Chris Semple Global Lead, Innovation, Digital & Data, BBVA
"In a thorough and engaging process Dan and the team helped us develop a clear architecture for brand and messaging that we were able to implement with in-house resources across all relevant content and media channels."Yuri Narciss Managing Director, Moonfare
"The Mirror showed us what we were doing well and where we had opportunities to improve our commercial performance, highlighting exactly where we were in the market, where we needed to be and how we could get there."Ian Borner CEO, The Data Privacy Group
"They smashed it. We were looking for journalistic flair rather than traditional marketing. We have struggled for years to describe what we do in a clear way. They got to know us really well and created a whole new concept."Matt Sims Managing Director, Hatch
A focused session in London with a small team. You bring the business problem. You leave with a story, a plan and the materials your team can run with.
Every business has a proposition. From founders to exec teams, the problems are common. A product, revenue and a pile of friction trying to sell more of it. Whether you are £5m or £500m, you will have growth challenges and we have probably seen them before.
Pick a date from the calendar and submit your details. We have a twenty-minute call before anyone pays anything. If The Proposition is not the right room for what you need I will say so.
London. Central zone 1 venue, confirmed a week before the date.
I have worked every side of the commercial table. I spent years interviewing CEOs as a journalist for the Financial Times, newspapers and online media. I founded Greenbang (50,000 readers, quoted by the UN and European Commission) and was the founding editor and investor in CoinDesk.
Inside FTSE companies I served as Commercial Director at Virgin Money and at Thomas Cook, where I ran transformation programmes that changed how big organisations sell, grow and prove their numbers. That mix means I can sit with a leadership team and read what is breaking the growth motion from the story all the way down to the operating model.
The same investigative skills the FT taught me, with the operator scars to back them up, help leadership teams find the truth about their commercial performance. That work has unlocked over $1bn in revenue for clients, and I have advised teams at IBM, Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Cognizant along the way.
Dan Ilett · Founder, The Proposition · Editor, The Executive Summary
Private sessions for the work that comes after The Stress Test.
One day with your leadership team. We surface every blocker on growth, sequence what to fix first and leave you with owners, dates and a plan that survives Monday morning.
Read more → Flip ItHalf a day with sales, marketing and partners. We flip the pitch from product to people, features to value. Three frameworks your team keeps.
Read more → Harnessing AI for ExecsOne day with your leadership team building, naming and running their own Claude agents. Hands on. No vendor pitch.
Read more → Bid CheckI read your enterprise bid and tell you the lines that will not hold under procurement scrutiny.
Get a Bid Check →A snapshot of the next dates across the four workshops. The full list lives on the calendar page.