25 years in enterprise IT. The last eight running positioning, competitive intelligence, product launches, and sales enablement inside VMware and NetBrain. Now I run that exact function for you, fractional, with AI doing the work an entire team used to.
Sound Familiar?
If any of these sound familiar, you are exactly who I built this for.
- Sales cannot explain what the product actually does, and nobody is quite sure why.
- You know AI matters for your business, but nobody on the team can actually build with it, only talk about it.
- Marketing feels like a lot of activity and not much direction.
- You need a senior marketing voice, but you are not ready for a full time hire.
- Your last launch did not land the way it should have, and you are not sure why.
None of those are really about talent or effort. They are about not having the right person in the room yet.
What I Actually Do
Twenty five years of hands-on enterprise IT experience, the systems and network side most marketing people never touch. The last eight of those years, I ran this exact function, positioning, competitive intelligence, launches, sales enablement, inside VMware and NetBrain, two of the biggest names in their categories. I built a competitive intelligence program from nothing, 23 published pages that sales actually used. I owned positioning and messaging. I ran product launches start to finish, naming, positioning, sales enablement, the whole motion. I worked directly with Gartner, Forrester, and other industry analysts. I ghostwrote thought leadership for a CTO. I worked weekly with a PR agency to get a company’s name into the industry conversation.
One example: I inherited a competitive intelligence program that was a year out of date and read like a features race instead of something sales could use. I rebuilt it as a daily AI-run brief instead of a quarterly manual slog, plus a rating system for when a competitor is actually worth partnering with instead of just fighting. Six months in, that history rolled up into one report that showed exactly where we’d pulled ahead, real trend lines, not a gut feeling, and it started showing up in sales calls and analyst conversations with a paper trail behind it. Read the full breakdown →
I am not describing a resume. I am describing what I did every day, and what I can do for you.
This isn’t a leap for me either. I started in help desk and server rooms, then lived every side of this industry: the customer running the technology, the partner selling and installing it, and the vendor building it, VMware and NetBrain among them. I’m doing this again now, just for more than one company at a time.
Don’t take my word for it. Twenty five years of real work, named companies, actual links, is on the record.
How I Actually Work
Most people who call themselves fractional are trading on an old title. They used to be a CMO or a CTO somewhere, so now they say they can do it for you too. That’s not a process, that’s a resume with a different label on it.
I built mine into an actual method, four steps, I call it Nigel’s Way. It’s adapted from real intelligence-tradecraft discipline, the same thing analysts use to keep from getting fooled by their own first instinct. It’s not just for competitive calls. I run it on positioning decisions, launch calls, any call where being wrong is expensive.
State It. Every call starts with the actual answer, not the background. The recommendation, the rating, what to do, in one sentence, before anything else.
Test It. Before I lock that call, I argue against it on purpose. I lay out every real competing explanation for what I’m seeing, whether that’s why a launch didn’t land, what a competitor’s move actually means, or whether a repositioning is the right call, and weigh the evidence against each one honestly. Whatever’s left standing is the one with the fewest holes, not the one I liked best walking in.
Map It. When something genuinely could go more than one way, I don’t guess at a single future. I chart the real range of outcomes against what actually drives them, and name the one signal that tells me which way it’s breaking, before it breaks. Most calls are settled enough to skip this step. The ones that aren’t are exactly where it earns its keep.
Check It. Every call gets a real date and a real trigger to revisit it, not “keep an eye on it.” When that trigger fires, I go back and check what actually happened against what I said would happen. That’s what makes it a method that gets sharper over time, not a one-time deliverable.
I built this running competitive intelligence, and teaching sales how to talk about a product with real confidence instead of a script. Somewhere in there I noticed the same pattern every time: I could see step five was going to break before anyone else had finished arguing about steps two, three, and four.
That’s the real thing underneath all four steps. I’m not trying to predict the future. I am the guy who makes sure the whole methodology holds, not just the part that feels good early on. Not everyone wants to hear that a later step is shaky while they’re still celebrating an early one. I’d rather say it now, while it’s cheap to fix, than watch it become the reason something breaks down the line.
Who I Help
Companies that need one real thing done well. A competitive analysis, a case study, a launch brief, a set of blog posts that actually sound like you. Scoped, delivered, on a timeline you can plan around, not an open-ended retainer.
Medium companies missing one senior piece. Maybe it is a launch that needs to land right, a competitive intelligence program built from scratch, or an interim leader while you look for the real hire. I plug into exactly that gap.
Larger companies that already have a team. The value here is a bounded, specialized project, especially anything AI. A competitive intelligence build or audit, an AI adoption engagement, a focused launch sprint for one product line.
Where AI Fits In
I do not just talk about AI, I build with it every day. It runs as my actual coworker, not a novelty. That same practice is what I bring into your business, real systems that keep working after I leave the room, not another slide deck about the future of AI.
I Bring in Help When It Is Not My Lane
Some things are not what I do, paid media, a full PR campaign, custom software builds. When a project needs one of those, I bring in people I already trust and already know. You get the right expert for that piece, not a generalist stretching to cover ground they do not really know.
The Investment
Real numbers, not a “let’s talk and find out.” Every engagement gets scoped to what you actually need, but here’s the range so you know before you ever get on a call.
One real deliverable: $2,000 to $5,000, priced before you start, not after. Want it ongoing instead of one and done? The same range works as a light monthly retainer for a defined, bounded set of hours, not the whole function.
Missing one senior piece: $8,000 to $15,000 a month, or a scoped project like a competitive intelligence build, $15,000 to $30,000. Roughly a day a week and up, depending on how embedded you need me.
A bounded, specialized engagement: $15,000 to $25,000 a month, or a scoped project, $40,000 to $75,000 and up. A day or two a week of senior, specialized time.
Anything touching competitive or strategic information starts with an NDA if you want one, before you have to ask.
Everything above happens over video, wherever you are. If an engagement calls for me on-site, travel is billed at cost, no markup, and we agree on that before it happens.
What the First Call Actually Is
Not a sales pitch, and not a “let’s get to know each other.” Twenty five years doing this job means I can usually tell inside thirty minutes whether I’m the fix, and if so, what that actually looks like: a focused sprint, a 90 day engagement, or six months as your interim marketing lead. You walk away with a straight answer, not a follow up email chain.