3 Sales Messaging Laws from Brenden Dell (2026)

Last Refreshed: March 2026 with updated statistics and tool information.

High-impact sales messaging starts with knowing exactly who you are for, what you will be famous for, and how to frame your solution around the customer’s pain — not your product features. These are the core principles from messaging expert Brenden Dell, author of The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging.

From Daniel Conn, GTM Strategist, graph8: “Most B2B teams fail at messaging before they ever hit send. They describe their product instead of the buyer’s problem — and buyers can tell the difference immediately. The best-converting sequences I’ve seen don’t lead with features; they lead with a pain that makes the prospect feel seen.”

Our weekly CIENCE Enterprise Sales Development (ESD) podcast is an engaging space that brings together some of the brightest minds involved in lead generation, marketing, data, and technology today. Hosted by Eric Quanstrom, CMO of CIENCE, we introduce top-tier guests who share their experiences, insights, advice, and philosophies behind their success.

In our Best of ESD series, we feature messaging expert Brenden Dell, president of Brenden Dell Inc. and best-selling author of The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging. CIENCE works with 2,500+ B2B companies across 250+ industries, and messaging quality consistently separates the teams generating pipeline from those chasing noise.

Brenden discusses effective principles that provide B2B teams with a rubric for sales messaging that will break through the noise and help engage high-quality prospects. Check out these highlights from our featured podcast.

Meet Brenden Dell

Brenden has worked with a wide range of clients, from enterprise brands to early-stage startups. He was also a key member of the positioning campaign for Gong, a platform that accelerates B2B sales and marketing teams’ productivity. Here are some of our favorite moments from this episode:

Where Sales Messaging Consulting Begins

Brenden began the interview by talking about his experience as a messaging mentor. While most of his clients already have impactful B2B marketing campaigns running, they look for Brenden’s advice to boost their return on investment (ROI), engagement rates, and other brand positioning metrics.

For Brenden, crafting the perfect message for inbound and outbound efforts is all about treating people as people, understanding their most profound pain points, and making an honest, easy-to-remember promise of how your solution might help overcome their current situation.

“What I do better than anything else is really listen to people. I can take something that a customer says in an interview, that they didn’t even realize how smart it was, and bring that back out and resurface it.” —Brenden Dell

In Brenden’s mind, the importance of messaging has to do with the possibility of changing a paradigm for potential buyers. Maybe they have done the same thing for years, deploying the same tools, and making the same decisions. In his experience, no change equals no sale, and no decision is the most common reason deals don’t close.

Listen to the full podcast now:

Enterprise Sales Development with Brenden Dell

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The Power of Branding in Sales

According to Brenden, the most compelling reason that gets people to buy something, especially B2B clients, is directly connected to the fame surrounding the brand, product, or service they wish to hire.

As prospects already know what they want, and the desire to belong to that specific tribe works with the best possible option out there, the brand or product has accomplished a certain degree of recognition. Pipeline growth becomes exponentially easier.

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“One of the things I say to clients is that it’s better that half the market loves you and half the market hates you. The biggest problem comes when people have no idea who you are, and they subsequently don’t care and don’t investigate and so forth.” — Brenden Dell

Sales Positioning and Messaging

What Brenden’s team tries to accomplish while working on positioning and messaging is determining what the company is going to be famous for — and that’s the simplest way of seeing it.

According to his process, three core questions must be answered as the foundation of any outbound messaging campaign:

• Who are you?
• Why are you different?
• And how are you going to state those things in an impactful way?

By defining your brand/product/service as a champion and investing in that fame upstream, companies get less price resistance as prospects start thinking that you are already the right decision.

Watch it now! See the Brenden Dell podcast on YouTube

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Pre-Product vs. Post-Product Market Fit

To design solid messaging, companies need to figure out where they are standing at the moment. Brenden recommends thinking in terms of pre-product market fit and post-product market fit, as each variation needs to be approached differently.

If a company is early in the pre-product phase, it needs to determine what they sell, what problem it aims to solve, and who cares about it. This stage is more sales-development grounded, and choosing what potential value props to test is all that matters at this moment.

On the other hand, post-product market fit is more about enhancing the story the brand is telling, systematizing and crystallizing it so you can execute go-to-market strategy in a consistent fashion that prospects can connect with.

“You need to help people to understand what is the change that you’re promising, the pain that you’re solving, the benefit you’re bringing them, and deliver this message in a consistent way.” —Brenden Dell

Deliver the Right Messaging to Prospects

Three Types of Customer Demands

Brenden strongly believes in getting your customer to use their words to describe their pain. This allows you to surface the insights that help you identify what’s different about your product — and why they chose you over competitors.

“Something that we always do with brands is ask their customers: ‘Bring me back to when you bought this thing, what was going on in your life? What was going on in your world? What influenced that decision to buy?’” —Brenden Dell

To start walking the path to fame, companies must determine what type of demand they aim to focus on. The three kinds of demand are:

• New concept. An unexplored idea that usually involves combining two or more existing proposals. Prospects won’t be familiar with the product, so sales and marketing teams must work hard to educate potential buyers.
• New paradigm. A retooling of an existing process — entering a product in a different market or with a fundamentally different approach than its predecessors.
• Established category. Similar competitors already exist, so the value proposition is often related to better pricing or a measurable upgrade in service.

High-Impact Sales Messaging

Brenden’s first law in The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging is this: Know who you are for. In B2B, you’re selling to savvy buyers who often know the landscape better than the people trying to sell to them.

If you don’t understand who you’re talking to, or where they’re struggling, you can’t message effectively. Marketing and sales teams that miss this fail to distinguish between pain relievers and vitamins — and B2B prospects only buy must-haves.

“If we take one principle of effective messaging away from any of this, it would be: How do you really focus on them and not on you?” —Brenden Dell

Ready to put these principles into practice? CIENCE has helped 2,500+ B2B companies across 250+ industries build messaging that fills pipeline — earning a 4.6/5 rating on Capterra.

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Whether or not you decide to work with us, you’ll walk away with a clear picture of where your pipeline is leaking and what it would take to fix it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 3 types of customer demand in B2B sales messaging?

Brenden Dell identifies three demand types: new concept (an unexplored combination of existing ideas requiring heavy education), new paradigm (a retooling of an existing process with a different approach), and established category (competing against similar products on pricing, service, or features). Your messaging strategy must match whichever demand type your product falls into.

What is the difference between pre-product and post-product market fit messaging?

Pre-product market fit messaging focuses on discovering what you sell, what problem it solves, and who cares about it — it is sales-development grounded and experimental. Post-product market fit messaging is about systematizing and crystallizing the story your brand tells, flowing into the market consistently so prospects can connect with a clear, repeatable narrative.

How do you create sales messaging that cuts through inbox noise?

According to Brenden Dell, the key principle is focusing on the customer, not yourself. Answer three questions: who are you, why are you different, and how will you state those things memorably. Lead with the pain you solve rather than features you offer, use customer language gathered from real interviews, and build fame around one clear promise rather than trying to be everything to everyone.