279 Five-Star Reviews

Let me tell you about Mr. Happy Chimney.

That's the actual name. Not a positioning exercise that took six months and cost fifty grand. Not the output of a brand workshop where everyone argued about adjectives. Just: Mr. Happy Chimney.

The business cleans chimneys. Repairs them. Does general maintenance. The person who shows up at your door? Also happy. (His last name isn't actually Happy, but it should be. Missed opportunity there.)

I hired him this fall. Been a customer for about three years now. The person who answers the phone is cheerful. The scheduling is painless. When Mr. Happy himself arrives—infectiously happy, as promised—he explains what he's doing, answers questions I didn't know I had, and leaves the place cleaner than when he started. Then he sends a thank-you email.

I looked him up on Google a while back. 279 five-star reviews. And counting.

Here's the thing that got me: Mr. Happy Chimney isn't revolutionizing anything. He's not deploying AI-powered soot-removal technology or running growth experiments or optimizing his customer journey funnel.

He's just absurdly clear about what he does. Happy person. Clean chimney. Done.

And that clarity—that annoying, unsexy, boring clarity—makes everything else work.

Meanwhile, in B2B Land

Most B2B companies I talk to can't explain what they do in one sentence.

Not because they're dumb. Not because the product is too complex. Because they've convinced themselves that clarity is for simpler businesses. Chimneys, sure. But enterprise software? Professional services? That requires nuance.

No. It requires a thesaurus and a death wish.

Here's how this usually goes:

You ask the CEO what the company does, and you hear about "empowering distributed teams to collaborate seamlessly across the entire workflow lifecycle."

You ask the VP of Sales, and it's "helping enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journey."

You ask an account executive, and you get some variation on "we're sort of a hybrid of Slack and Asana, if you squint."

None of this is wrong. It's just useless.

The result? Sales cycles that drag on for months. Not because the product is complicated. Because every prospect has to do the translation work themselves. What does this actually do? How is it different from what we're doing now? Why should we care?

Mr. Happy Chimney doesn't have that problem.

The Thing Nobody Wants to Admit

Most B2B marketing problems are sequencing problems.

Companies skip the foundations—clarity on who they're for and what they actually do—and jump straight into tactics.

You don't need more content. You need to be clear about who you're for.

You don't need better ads. You need to be clear about what you actually do.

You don't need a rebrand. (You almost never need a rebrand.) You need to stop using words like "innovative," "transformative," and "next-generation" as if they mean something. Oh, and “AI-enabled”? Your VCs might be impressed, but your customers want to know why it matters.

I had a call a while back with a founder whose company had a genuinely useful product. Clear market need. But when I asked what made them different from the dozen other alternatives out there, I got this:

"We're really customer focused."

Right. As opposed to all those companies that hate their customers?

I pushed. "Okay, but what makes you different?"

“We really understand the pain points.”

"Right. But so does everyone else in your space. What's the thing only you can say?"

Pause. Then: "Well, we have a really strong team."

Still not an answer.

His team was burning tens of thousands a month on Google Ads and LinkedIn campaigns. None of it was working. Not because the tactics were wrong. Because they were pouring budget into a leaky bucket with "UNCLEAR POSITIONING" stamped on the side in 48-point font.

Mr. Happy Chimney doesn't have that problem.

You can't execute your way out of a clarity problem. (Though plenty of people try.)

The 47-Page Brand Book That Nobody Reads

Mr. Happy Chimney doesn't have a brand book.

His motto is four words: "Happy Chimneys - Happy Clients." That's the ethos. No workshop required.

But he's nailed something most B2B companies spend months—sometimes years—trying to figure out: clarity.

It's him and his wife running the operation. Two people, completely aligned on what they do and how they do it. No misalignment. No mixed messages.

Because there's nothing to misinterpret.

Now ask three people at your company what you do and who you're for. Go ahead. I'll wait…

Okay, did you get the same answer? Or did you get three variations on a theme, each one slightly more jargon-heavy than the last?

If it's the latter, congratulations. You're normal. Also, you're hemorrhaging money on marketing that can't possibly work because nobody—including your own team—knows what you're actually promising.

It Doesn't Have to Be This Hard

I'm not saying you need to rename your company "Mr. Happy [Insert Product/Service Here]." (Though I reckon "Mr. Happy Budget Preparation Software" would make a killing if they could deliver on that promise.)

But you do need to answer three annoyingly simple questions:

Who are we for?

What do we do?

Why does it matter?

If you can't answer those in 30 seconds—clearly, specifically, without defaulting to buzzwords—you have a real marketing problem. Not the 'run more ads' kind. The 'we skipped the foundations' kind. And there are deeper questions you'll need to wrestle with after these (how you're meaningfully different, what context makes that difference obvious), but first you need to clear this basic bar.

No amount of content, campaigns, or "brand refreshes" (bloody hell, I hate that phrase) will fix it if you can't.

The companies I've worked with that make real progress on this—the ones where marketing starts to feel easier, where sales cycles begin to shorten, where customer success spends less time cleaning up confusion—they're moving towards one thing: alignment.

Ask the CEO and the VP of Sales what the company does, and you get the same answers. Sales makes promises the product can actually keep. Marketing focuses on what prospects genuinely care about. Customer success fields fewer questions that should have been answered before the contract was signed.

Things start to align.

Just like Mr. Happy Chimney.

The Bit Where I Don't Tell You What to Do

Look, I'm not naive. I know some of you reading this have complex products and services. I know you're selling to committees, not individuals. I know your buyers need six demos, three business cases, and approval from someone named Gerald in procurement. (It’s always Gerald.)

But that's not an excuse for being unclear.

If anything, it makes clarity more important. Because the more complicated your sales process, the more chances you have to lose people. And every bit of confusion—every vague value prop, every jargon-stuffed pitch deck, every "let me circle back with my team on that"—is a leak in the bucket.

Mr. Happy Chimney doesn't have leaks.

He shows up on time. Does what he said he'd do. Leaves 279 five-star reviews in his wake.

It's not complicated. It's not a growth hack. It's not particularly innovative.

It's just clarity, delivered consistently. Which, apparently, is revolutionary in B2B.

Maybe we've overcomplicated this. Maybe we've turned positioning into something it doesn't need to be.

Not every company needs months of workshops. Some just need to stop hiding behind jargon and say what they actually do in a way that people can relate to.

Strip all that away, and it comes down to something embarrassingly simple: be clear about who you're for, what you do, and why it matters.

Answer those three questions well enough that a stranger would understand, and most of your marketing problems solve themselves.

Even if your product is decidedly less cheerful than chimney cleaning.