Usable card
“I’m not signing a clock I don’t control.” Operator, pilot standup, invited observation. Verbatim. Not cleared for public ads. Useful as a private test of any success-metric sentence.
Claude · Language
Keep the sentence they used when they argued
Buyers do not decide in the vocabulary of your category page. They decide in shorter, riskier phrases: burned, stuck, on the hook, not my quarter, the night shift will hate this. A Claude language note stores those phrases with the role that said them and the touchpoint where they appeared. Paraphrase is allowed. Unmarked paraphrase is how a fear becomes a feature request.
Why the upgrade hurts the finding
“We got burned last time” and “they experienced implementation risk” are not the same evidence. The first tells you the political cost inside that team. The second tells you that a researcher owns a textbook. When the upgraded line reaches positioning synthesis, the buyer no longer hears themselves, and the test — read it back and ask what is wrong — fails quietly. They nod. They do not repeat it in the meeting you are not invited to.
Collect language in the interview while the argument is being retold, not at the end under “any words you’d use to describe us.” That closing question produces advertising. The argument produces decision language. The sequence that gets you there is the one in decision-maker interviews. Ask them to say the opposing sentence too, the one used by the person who wanted to wait.
A bank, tagged so roles do not blur
Each card in the bank carries the phrase, the role, the touchpoint, and whether you were allowed to quote it beyond the team. Champions say “unlock.” Operators say “another login.” Legal says “who signs if this leaks.” If you average them into a persona paragraph, you will write a page nobody in the buying group claims. Definitions of those roles live in the glossary. The place each phrase showed up belongs on the touchpoint map.
Unusable card
“Customers want confidence.” No role, no scene, no quote. This is a mood from a workshop. It cannot support a friction name or a headline.
Buyer phrase beside the vendor rewrite
| Heard in the decision | What teams are tempted to publish |
|---|---|
| “The night shift got burned.” | “Change management made easy.” |
| “Nobody will own the sentence that the pilot worked.” | “Measurable ROI in weeks.” |
| “Legal still has the file.” | “Enterprise-grade trust.” |
| “We’ll keep the spreadsheet until the contract’s up.” | “Rip and replace with confidence.” |
The right column is not forbidden English. It is forbidden as a substitute for the left. If a line in the right column cannot be walked back to a card, it does not belong in a Claude synthesis. It also does not become more true by adding a percentage. The stalls those phrases point at are sorted under purchase friction.
Language is an input, not a tagline contest
When the bank has cards from more than the friendliest role, you can compress. Not before.