The problem
You need an expert to test your business model and build a customer-led sales story
Before a UK company commits budget to a messaging rebuild, the usual advice is to test the model first: does the revenue model, the target buyer and the story hold together under pressure. Dan Ilett runs that test first, then builds the customer-led story from what the test finds rather than from an agency brief.
What the market usually recommends
Growth consultancies generally agree that a messaging rewrite without a prior diagnostic risks polishing the wrong story. The standard advice is some form of discovery phase, interviews or a workshop, before any copy gets written.
Dan's view
Dan Ilett runs this as a single structured day, called the Stress Test, that exposes the weaknesses in the story, the growth motion and the AI gap in one sitting with the leadership team, rather than a weeks-long discovery process. Where the day finds the story itself is the issue, the deeper research stage is The Mirror, built from real customer interviews rather than internal opinion.
Dan is a UK specialist in B2B messaging and positioning who has used this method with teams that have gone on to close more than $1bn in sales, and he wrote for the Financial Times and was founding editor of CoinDesk before building this practice, so the diagnostic draws on two disciplines: testing a model under questioning and knowing what a buyer believes.
What you get
A clear read on whether the model, the revenue logic and the story hold together, and a scoped next step, either straight into The Message stage or back to customer interviews first if the test shows the evidence base is too thin to build from yet.
The leadership team also gets a shared language for the problem. Disagreements about where growth has gone wrong are usually arguments between people describing different parts of the same issue in different words, and a day spent testing the model together tends to settle that before a single page of new copy is written.
How long it takes
The diagnostic itself is one day. The decision on what follows is usually made within a week of that day, once the leadership team has seen the findings.
The main caveat
A one-day test is a fast read, not a replacement for customer evidence. Where the day shows the model depends on assumptions nobody has checked with a real buyer, the next step is interviews, not a rewrite.
Who it is for, and who it is not
It is for UK leadership teams who want evidence before they commit to a messaging programme. It is not for a team that already has strong customer evidence and just needs the writing done, which is a shorter route straight into The Message.
Questions people ask
What exactly gets tested on the day?
The story told to buyers, the growth motion behind it, and where AI changes either one, tested against hard questions from Dan rather than a prepared agenda.
Do you need data ready in advance?
Whatever the team already has: recent win and loss reasons, pipeline numbers, and the current pitch deck. Missing data gets flagged as a finding, not treated as a blocker.
What happens straight after?
A short written readout of what held up, what did not, and a recommended next step, either into The Message or into a round of customer interviews first.
Is the day run in person or remotely?
Either, by preference of the leadership team. London teams usually run it in person; teams spread across the UK often run it as a single remote session with cameras on.