AR / VR / Metaverse companies build products that work, then struggle to explain why anyone should buy them. Winston Francois embeds with your team to build positioning that speaks to real buyers, not pitch decks. We have done this with category-creating companies and we bring that operator experience directly into your go-to-market.
The Problem
Your Demo Wows. Your Pipeline Does Not.
AR / VR products are often technically impressive but impossible to evaluate from a website or one-pager alone. Buyers leave demos excited and then go silent. The problem is not the product – it is that your positioning forces buyers to do the translation work themselves. When your messaging requires a live demo to land, your top-of-funnel is broken by design, and every sales cycle is longer and more expensive than it needs to be.
You Are Positioned Against Competitors, Not Against the Status Quo
Most AR / VR companies position themselves against other AR / VR companies. But the actual competitor is usually doing nothing, using a legacy system, or building internally. When your positioning ignores the real alternative – inaction – you shrink your addressable market and invite price competition from other early-stage companies who are just as confused as you are about who the buyer actually is.
Different Buyers Are Hearing Completely Different Stories
In AR / VR, you often have technical buyers, business unit sponsors, and procurement all involved in a single deal. Without deliberate positioning by persona, your sales team improvises a different story for each stakeholder. The result is internal misalignment at the prospect company, longer sales cycles, and deals that stall because no single champion can make the case internally on your behalf.
Category Creation Without a Category Narrative
Many AR / VR companies are legitimately creating a new category but are trying to describe it using the language of existing categories. This produces messaging that sounds familiar enough to not alarm anyone and specific enough to not excite anyone. Category creation requires a point of view – a clear argument about why the old way is broken and why your way is the only logical response. Without that narrative, you are just another option.
How We Help
We start with a positioning audit – not a survey, not a brand workshop. We interview your current customers, your lost deals, and your sales team to understand the gap between what you say you do and what the market actually hears. Most AR / VR companies discover in this phase that their positioning is solving an internal communication problem, not a buyer education problem. That distinction changes everything about where to invest.
From the audit we build a positioning architecture: a core position statement tied to a specific buyer problem, supporting claims that are verifiable, and a clear articulation of what the alternative is and why it is worse. This is not a tagline exercise. It is the foundation that your sales deck, your website, your outbound, and your partner conversations all build from.
We then move into execution. One of the things that separates Winston Francois from a consulting engagement is that we stay embedded through execution. We are in the Slack channels, on the sales calls, in the pipeline reviews. When positioning hits a real buyer and does not land, we adjust in weeks, not quarters. That feedback loop is what makes positioning actually work.
For AR / VR companies in particular, we pay close attention to the channel strategy that positioning must support. Whether you are selling direct to enterprise, through system integrators, or through platform marketplaces like Meta or Apple Vision Pro, the positioning levers are different. We build messaging that works in the context your buyers actually encounter it.
Measurement is built into how we work from the start. We define leading indicators – demo request quality, sales cycle length by stage, win rates by persona – before we finalize positioning. This gives us a clear read on what is working within the first 60 days rather than waiting for quarterly results to come in. Our measurement practice is covered in more detail on our measurement services page.
What we deliver
- Positioning audit report – gap analysis between internal messaging and buyer perception across 3-5 key segments
- Core positioning architecture – position statement, proof points, and competitive framing for each primary buyer persona
- Messaging playbook – approved language for website, sales deck, outbound, and partner materials with version history
- Sales enablement integration – positioning translated into talk tracks and objection handling for your specific deal stages
In AR / VR, the hardest positioning problem is not explaining what your product does – it is explaining what it replaces and why now. Every deal you lose to 'not this year' is a positioning failure, not a product failure.
Our Methodology
We run positioning engagements in 90-day sprints. The first 30 days are diagnostic – audit of existing materials, buyer interviews, and competitive landscape mapping. We go into this phase with specific hypotheses about where the positioning is failing, and we test them against real buyer data rather than internal assumptions. By the end of day 30, we know exactly what needs to change and why.
Days 31 through 60 are strategy and first execution. We build the positioning architecture, pressure-test it with your sales team and a small set of current customers, and begin integrating it into your highest-leverage assets – usually the sales deck and the website hero. We treat these as live experiments, not final deliverables, and we watch conversion signals closely from the moment they go live.
Days 61 through 90 are optimization and handoff. We are adjusting based on real pipeline data, training your team on how to maintain and evolve positioning as the market shifts, and building the internal processes so the work does not degrade when we roll off. Most clients extend beyond 90 days because the market keeps moving, but the core system is fully operational by the end of the sprint.
How We Work
The first 30 days are structured around discovery. We conduct buyer interviews, audit your existing sales materials, map your competitive set, and document where your current positioning breaks down in real deals. You should expect to involve your head of sales, 2-3 current customers, and 1-2 recently lost prospects in this phase. The output is a clear diagnostic that your team can act on immediately even before strategy is finalized.
On the Winston Francois side, you get a senior positioning lead who has operated inside companies, not just advised them, plus support from our research and content functions. We embed into your team via Slack, attend your pipeline reviews, and join calls when positioning is being tested live. This is not a monthly check-in model – we are inside the work with you.
Weekly rhythms include a standing call to review pipeline signals and adjust messaging in real time. Monthly we produce a positioning health report that tracks leading indicators – demo quality scores, win rates by persona, average sales cycle by segment. This creates accountability and gives leadership a clear view of what the positioning investment is producing.
Most AR / VR engagements run 4 to 6 months for the initial positioning build and validation cycle. Companies that are earlier stage or going through a funding round sometimes compress this to 90 days. Companies in the middle of a category creation push typically extend to 6 to 9 months because the market narrative needs active management as the category develops.
- Faster sales cycles – buyers can evaluate the product without a live demo as the first touchpoint
- Higher pipeline quality – inbound and outbound leads are better matched to your actual ICP
- Stronger internal alignment – sales, marketing, and product are working from the same story
If your ar / vr / metaverse company needs product positioning leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a Product Positioning engagement cost for AR / VR / Metaverse companies?
Positioning engagements typically run $15,000 to $35,000 per month depending on the scope of buyer research, the number of personas being addressed, and how much execution support is required. A focused 90-day sprint with one primary persona and two segments will be at the lower end.
How long before we see results from Product Positioning?
Leading indicators – demo request quality, sales cycle stage conversion, and objection frequency – typically shift within the first 60 days as new messaging goes live in your highest-traffic touchpoints. Lagging indicators like win rate and average contract value take 90 to 120 days to show meaningful movement because they depend on deals that were already in flight when the engagement started.
How does the Product Positioning team integrate with our existing staff?
We embed directly into your existing team structure. That means joining your Slack workspace, attending the sales and marketing meetings that are relevant to positioning, and working alongside your head of sales and marketing leads on live deals and campaigns.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional Product Positioning agency?
Most positioning agencies hand you a document and leave. We stay embedded through execution and treat the first deliverable as a hypothesis, not a final answer.
How do you measure ROI from Product Positioning for AR / VR / Metaverse?
We track a specific set of leading and lagging indicators that we define at the start of the engagement. Leading indicators include demo request volume and quality, inbound to SQL conversion rate, and objection frequency by stage. Lagging indicators include win rate by persona, average sales cycle length by segment, and average contract value. For AR / VR companies specifically, we also track how often deals stall at the 'not this year' objection – which is often a direct signal of positioning failure rather than budget or timing issues.
What type of AR / VR / Metaverse company is the right fit?
We work best with AR / VR companies that have product-market fit evidence – meaning they have closed real deals with real customers – but are struggling to scale those wins because their messaging does not transfer across the sales team or into new segments. The ideal stage is Series A through Series C, though we also work with post-revenue pre-Series A companies that need to tighten positioning ahead of a funding round. We are not the right fit for companies that are still searching for product-market fit, because positioning cannot fix a product problem.
