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Michael Lynch

Michael is the founder and principal of Highly Persuasive, a brand strategy and positioning practice built on how buyers actually perceive, evaluate, shortlist, and decide. We help companies close the distance between how good they are and how easy they are to choose. Brand, strategy, positioning, messaging, identity & marketing systems for professional services firms, industrial companies, hospitality businesses, and any company growing faster than their brand has kept up with.

Apr 11 2026
How Brand Positioning Shapes M&A Valuation

How Brand Positioning Shapes M&A Valuation

By Branding & Identity, Brand Management, Marketing Strategy & Growth, Messaging & Communications
How Brand Positioning Shapes M&A Valuation Research on professional services acquisitions consistently shows a valuation spread of 20 to 40 percent between comparable firms with similar revenue profiles. The firms at the top of that spread are not necessarily the ones with the highest margins or the cleanest financials. They…
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Apr 11 2026
How to Map Your Competitive Landscape Without Referencing the Competition

How to Map Your Competitive Landscape Without Referencing the Competition

By Brand Management, Business Strategy & Positioning, Luxury & Premium Brand Strategy, Messaging & Communications, Thought Leadership & Authority Building
How to Map Your Competitive Landscape Without Referencing the Competition Most competitive analysis produces a positioning trap, and the trap is subtle enough that most firms don't notice they're in it until the position stops working. The firm studies its competitors, identifies where they are strong and where they are…
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Apr 11 2026
Why Outdated Design Is a Credibility Liability

Why Outdated Design Is a Credibility Liability in the Age of AI

By Branding & Identity, Business Strategy & Positioning, Conversion Optimization & Sales Psychology, Influence & Consumer Psychology
Why Outdated Design Is a Credibility Liability — Even When Your Work Is Excellent Something practitioners in the brand world rarely say plainly: the quality of the work often has almost nothing to do with why a firm loses a shortlist. The technical capability is real. The client outcomes are…
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Apr 10 2026
How a CEO's Speaking Record Shapes the Company's Shortlist Rate

How a CEO’s Speaking Record Shapes the Company’s Shortlist Rate

By Branding & Identity, Business Strategy & Positioning, Conversion Optimization & Sales Psychology, Marketing Strategy & Growth
How a CEO's Speaking Record Shapes the Company's Shortlist Rate Three months before a buying decision is made, the decision-maker is already forming a view. Not a final view. A brief overview. A probabilistic sense of which firms they'd be comfortable working with, which ones they've already encountered thinking from,…
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Apr 10 2026
Why Your Champion Convinced Themselves and Couldn’t Convince Anyone Else

The Portability Problem: Why Your Champion Couldn’t Convince Anyone Else

By Business Strategy & Positioning, Brand Management, Conversion Optimization & Sales Psychology, Messaging & Communications, Thought Leadership & Authority Building
The Portability Problem: Why Your Champion Convinced Themselves but Couldn't Convince Anyone Else There's a version of losing a deal that's harder to diagnose than the ones that end in clear rejection. The champion was real. The interest was genuine. The conversations were substantive. The kind where the other side…
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Apr 10 2026
Is Your Best Thinking Is Building Someone Else's Authority

Is Your Best Thinking Is Building Someone Else’s Authority?

By Messaging & Communications, Branding & Identity, Business Strategy & Positioning, Marketing Strategy & Growth
Is Your Best Thinking Is Building Someone Else's Authority? There are ideas in your head right now that your best clients would find commercially useful. They're sitting in a voice note from a client debrief two months ago. In an email thread where you said something precise about a problem…
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Apr 03 2026
Why Challenger Brands Win More Often Than Market Leaders When the Fight Is About Meaning

How Challenger Brands Win Deals They Should Lose on Paper

By Branding & Identity, Business Strategy & Positioning, Thought Leadership & Authority Building
How Challenger Brands Win Deals They Should Lose on Paper The category leader's advantage is real. More case studies, more reference clients, lower perceived risk, a name the procurement committee already knows. Every structural variable in a standard evaluation favors the established player. The challenger has something more commercially useful:…
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Apr 02 2026
How to Know Whether You Need A Rebrand or Something Else Entirely

How to Know Whether You Need A Rebrand or Something Else Entirely

By Brand Management, Branding & Identity, Business Strategy & Positioning, Marketing Strategy & Growth, Thought Leadership & Authority Building
How to Know Whether You Need A Rebrand or Something Else Entirely When leadership commissions a visual refresh to solve a positioning problem, the firm rarely emerges with clarity. It emerges with a cleaner version of its confusion. The cost is not just the design investment. It's the additional time…
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