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Cited from real sources 6 min read Updated August 2026

A framework by April Dunford

April Dunford's Sales Pitch Framework

April Dunford's sales pitch framework turns a positioning document into a conversation. Positioning is what you are. The sales pitch is how you say it to one buyer in about twelve minutes. The framework splits the pitch into two halves. A short setup states your view of the market. A longer payload proves your value against the buyer's alternatives.

The gap nobody plans for

2 halves, 1 unequal

A great positioning doc still loses the room. The pitch is a separate artifact: a short setup on the market, then most of your time on why you, not the other options.

April Dunford Lenny's Podcast Watch at 12:37

The framework

The positioning doc is not the pitch

Most founders treat the sales pitch as a slide-by-slide tour of the positioning doc. That is the failure. Positioning articulates what you are and why it matters. The sales pitch is a sequence that walks one human through their choices and lands them on yours, inside a single short call. The leap between the two is bigger than almost anyone expects, and skipping it is why a sound positioning doc still produces a flat sales conversation.

Dunford's structure has two pieces, and they are deliberately not equal. The first is the setup, which is not about you. It is about the market and your point of view on it. The second is your differentiated value, the why-pick-us part, and it gets the bulk of the call. The setup earns the right to make the second half land. Spend a few minutes there, then move to the meat.

On Lenny's Podcast, Dunford described the split directly:

The pitch structure has two big pieces. So the first is the setup. The setup piece is not about us, it's about the market and our point of view on the market. The second bit is all about our differentiated value, so why pick us over the other guys.
Dunford on the two-part structure Watch at 12:37

Said plainly: build the setup, but spend your time on differentiated value. The pitch is a structure, not a feature list, and it inherits its content from positioning rather than replacing it.

How do I apply it?

Build the pitch in five moves

The setup is three of these. The payload is the last two. Get the insight wrong and nothing after it lands.

  1. 1

    Open with an insight, not a trend.

    The setup starts with your point of view on the market, the problem inside the problem. Pick the one belief about the market that, if the buyer accepts it, makes your value obvious.

  2. 2

    Lay out the alternatives honestly.

    Walk the pluses and minuses of the other ways a buyer could solve this, including the status quo. Naming the trade-offs builds the credibility you spend in the second half.

  3. 3

    Close the setup by getting agreement.

    Before pitching value, confirm the buyer is aligned on your view of the market. If they nod here, the differentiated-value section has somewhere to land.

  4. 4

    Make differentiated value the meat of the call.

    Lead with the value only you can deliver, then explore features inside that context. Sales pitching features instead of value is the most common reason the deck does not convert.

  5. 5

    Build the deck, demo, and script with sales in the room.

    A pitch designed without the sales team is a pitch the sales team will not use. Marketing owns the messaging, but sales has to own the words they say out loud.

The core of a good sales pitch is really deeply understanding your differentiated value. Often the product team did all this work on that when they were building it, but that information never made the jump to sales, because sales isn't even trying to pitch value, they're just pitching features.
Dunford on the gap that kills pitches Watch at 37:01

The fix is structural. The pitch has to carry the value the product team already understood into the words the sales team actually says.

Boundary conditions

When does this pitch fail?

Works best when

  • You already have a sound positioning doc to translate, not a blank page
  • You have a market insight only you can credibly claim
  • Sales helped build the deck, demo, and script, so they will actually run it

Fails when

  • You open problem-solution style, the way every competitor opens
  • The investor pitch gets reused on customers, who care about value now, not future potential
  • The pitch is built without sales, so the team quietly reverts to feature dumps
I was taught to do problem solution right and so we would define the problem like a trend ... data is exponentially growing, you know, and it's like, no, we all know that. All of my competitors could say that, and all of my competitors deal with the trend in the same way.
Dunford on why problem-solution openings flatten Watch at 72:54

There is a known limit. This framework assumes you have positioning to translate. If the underlying positioning is weak, a better pitch structure only makes the weakness articulate. Dunford's own diagnostic is blunt: when a sales pitch fails, the root cause is usually that sales was not involved in building it, or the positioning beneath it is wrong. Fix the foundation before you polish the script.

The sources

Where Dunford discusses this

12:37
Timestamp

Lenny's Podcast · Sales Pitch episode

The two-part structure

The structure has two big pieces. The first is the setup, it's about the market and our point of view. The second is all about differentiated value. Those pieces aren't equal.
37:01
Timestamp

Lenny's Podcast · Sales Pitch episode

Why the deck does not convert

The core of a good sales pitch is deeply understanding your differentiated value. That information never made the jump to sales, so they're just pitching features.
72:54
Timestamp

Lenny's Podcast · Sales Pitch episode

The problem-solution trap

I was taught to do problem solution. We'd define the problem like a trend. All of my competitors could say that, and they deal with the trend the same way.

Where experts disagree

Where operators disagree: is the pitch a narrative you deliver, or a conversation you steer?

April Dunford

treats the pitch as a designed sequence: a short setup on the market and your point of view, then most of the call on differentiated value against the alternatives the buyer is actually weighing. Structure is what stops a sound positioning doc from producing a flat call.

Chris Voss

would say the twelve minutes you spend talking are twelve minutes you are not learning. His opener is a label or a mirror that gets the other side explaining their own position, on the view that the person doing the talking is the person giving away information.

They fail in opposite directions. Dunford without Voss is a polished monologue at a buyer whose real objection never surfaced. Voss without Dunford is a warm conversation that never gives the buyer a reason to pick you. Run the setup, then shut up and label what you hear before you spend the second half.

Useful? Pass it to a founder whose positioning is solid but whose sales calls still fall flat.

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