The Gravitational Build - Understanding Commercial Attraction

“The most attractive companies aren’t necessarily those that shout the loudest, but those that have built the most mass in their chosen market position.”

A tale of two companies, both offering marketing services for the technology sector.

The first—call them Pursuit Partners—spends its days cold-calling, mass-emailing, and negotiating to win accounts. Their team is perpetually exhausted from chasing opportunities. They land clients, but constantly scramble to replace those who drift away. Despite years in the market, they still must fight for every conversation.

The second—Gravity Group—appears to operate in a parallel universe. Prospective clients reach out unprompted. Their content receives consistent engagement. When they approach potential clients, doors open easily. They’re invited to pitch rather than begging for the opportunity. Their team focuses on delivery rather than constant hunting.

What’s the difference? Not age—they launched the same year. Not funding—they started with similar resources. Not talent—both employ skilled professionals.

The difference is gravitational pull.

Gravity Group has systematically built commercial mass that naturally attracts opportunities, while Pursuit Partners remains caught in an endless cycle of chase and struggle.

The two companies illustrate what every business leader intuitively understands: some companies seem to develop a certain magnetism in their markets—an invisible pull that draws customers, talent, and opportunities toward them rather than requiring constant outbound effort to secure each opportunity.

This is not magic, luck, or the result of a viral moment. It’s the outcome of something more systematic: the gravitational build.

The Pursuit-Attraction Balance

Every business begins with pursuit. There is no way around this reality. The first customers must be actively sought, engaged, and convinced. In the beginning, the ratio is nearly 100% pursuit to 0% attraction.

In my own experience founding Brightbeam, an enterprise technology consultancy, the early years were an endless cycle of outreach, networking, and proposal-writing. Each project was the result of many conversations, referrals, and persistent follow-up. We operated almost entirely in “pursuit mode.”

During my time working with Cormirus, an education technology company, we faced an even more challenging gravitational reality. Despite creating a product that individual teachers and students loved, we struggled against the overwhelming institutional gravity of the education system. The existing forces—procurement rules, established vendors, budget cycles, decision hierarchies—created a gravitational field so powerful that even interested customers couldn’t easily choose us. We were constantly fighting against established orbits rather than establishing our own.

But pursuit alone is unsustainable. The most successful businesses gradually shift this balance—not from pursuit to attraction in an absolute sense, but towards an improving ratio where attraction accounts for an increasing proportion of new opportunities.

The goal isn’t to eliminate pursuit—that’s a fantasy for all but the most dominant brands in the world. The goal is to ensure that each pursuit effort systematically builds something more lasting than the immediate opportunity at hand.

As Seth Godin puts it in This Is Marketing: “People don’t want what you make. They want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel.”

This fundamental insight underlies the concept of business gravity. Your customers aren’t ultimately attracted to your products or services in isolation—they’re attracted to the transformation, status, relief, or belonging that you offer. And when you consistently deliver that valued state, your gravitational pull grows.

The Physics of Business Attraction

The analogy to celestial physics is more than metaphorical whimsy—it offers a useful model for understanding how commercial attraction operates. Just as in space, business gravity follows predictable principles:

Mass creates pull. In physics, the more mass an object has, the stronger its gravitational field. In business, mass comes from accumulated quality, value, reputation, evidence, and distinctiveness. Each satisfied customer, successful case study, piece of content, and public validation adds to your gravitational mass.

Proximity matters. The closer you are to your optimal market position—the “Goldilocks zone” we explored in the Positioning section—the stronger your pull will be for your ideal customers.

Consistency strengthens fields over time. Gravitational influence is not built through sporadic excellence but through repeated patterns that customers can recognise and anticipate.

Different entities exert different gravitational forces. Not all businesses operate with the same gravitational dynamics. Some are like planets with strong, focused pull in specific orbits. Others are like stars, exerting broad influence across a system. And some are like asteroids, with limited but concentrated influence in niche spaces.

Competing gravitational fields can overpower smaller bodies. As we saw with Cormirus in education, sometimes established gravitational systems are so powerful that new entrants struggle to establish viable orbits—regardless of their intrinsic quality.

Dominant forces create “black holes” that prevent new entrants. In some markets, established players exert such overwhelming gravitational dominance that new competitors need extraordinary resources just to escape their pull.

Where the analogy breaks down, of course, is in the dimension of intentionality. Celestial bodies don’t strategically adjust their composition to attract specific satellites. Businesses, however, can deliberately design their gravitational systems for optimal pull.

The Evolution from Pursuit to Attraction

The most successful companies maintain a dual focus throughout their development—pursuing immediate opportunities while systematically building the conditions for future attraction.

Consider Notion, the all-in-one workspace tool that has grown from a small note-taking app to a platform serving millions of individuals and enterprises.

In its early days, Notion operated almost entirely in pursuit mode. The founding team approached potential users directly, attended events, and actively courted technology influencers. Each conversation was a result of deliberate outreach.

But crucially, they designed these pursuit activities to simultaneously build gravitational mass. They focused on creating “whole-product experiences” rather than transactional interactions. They documented user success meticulously. They developed templates and systems that became shareable assets. They treated each user interaction as an opportunity to refine their product while also creating advocates.

As Notion grew, something interesting happened. The ratio began to shift. Users started creating and sharing templates. Technology publications began covering their approach unprompted. Communities formed organically around their product. Their custom templates and integrations ecosystem expanded as users built for each other.

By the time Notion had reached scale, they had developed significant gravitational pull. New users arrived through word of mouth. Content about Notion proliferated without their direct involvement. Enterprise clients began approaching them, having seen Notion spread organically through their organisations.

Today, while Notion certainly still engages in active sales and marketing, their gravitational field has become a primary driver of growth. The pursuit-attraction balance has shifted dramatically from their early days.

This pattern of evolution—from primarily pursuit to increasingly attraction-driven growth—characterises virtually every successful company’s development. The question is not whether this evolution will happen, but how deliberately and efficiently you navigate it.

The Four Gravitational Quadrants

Commercial gravity isn’t one-dimensional. It develops across four distinct but interconnected quadrants, each contributing differently to your overall gravitational field:

Product/Service Design: This quadrant encompasses the intrinsic pull created by your core offering—its quality, functionality, distinctiveness, and alignment with market needs. This is foundational gravity that exists independent of how you talk about or sell your product.

Sales: This quadrant focuses on the evidence, proof points, and credibility you build through direct customer interactions. It’s about turning individual sales experiences into reusable gravitational assets rather than seeing each sale as a discrete transaction.

Marketing: This quadrant involves how you amplify and broadcast your gravitational field, extending its reach to audiences beyond your immediate sphere of influence.

Culture: This quadrant represents how your internal environment, values, and team dynamics create external attraction. It’s the often-overlooked force that makes people want to do business with you beyond product or price considerations.

Let’s examine how different companies have excelled in each quadrant:

Product/Service Design Gravity

Dyson created extraordinary product gravity by reimagining categories that had become stagnant. Their first vacuum cleaner offered visibly different technology and demonstrably better performance in an industry where incremental improvement had become the norm.

What’s notable about Dyson’s approach is how they made their engineering excellence visible. The transparent collection chamber wasn’t just a functional choice—it showcased the product’s effectiveness. The distinctive colours and materials weren’t just aesthetic decisions—they signalled difference in a sea of sameness. Every aspect of the product became a gravitational asset.

This approach has allowed Dyson to extend into entirely new categories—from hand dryers to hair tools to air purifiers—while maintaining gravitational pull. Each new product carries the gravitational signature established by their original offerings.

Sales Process Gravity

Stripe demonstrates how sales interactions can become powerful gravitational tools. Their developer-first approach transformed traditionally awkward payment integration conversations into streamlined experiences that created advocates.

Their famous “seven lines of code” positioning wasn’t just a marketing message—it was embedded in every sales interaction. Their documentation became a sales tool that generated inbound interest. Their implementation process was designed to create immediate success moments that sales teams could reference.

By treating sales as an opportunity to build reusable gravitational assets rather than simply close deals, Stripe created a system where each sales interaction strengthened their overall pull.

Marketing Amplification Gravity

Oatly created extraordinary marketing gravity through a distinctive voice that amplified their positioning. Their conversational packaging copy, provocative advertising, and consistent tone created a gravitational signature that attracted alignment-seeking customers.

What’s instructive about Oatly’s approach is how they used marketing not to create the illusion of quality, but to amplify their genuine differentiation. Their marketing voice was a natural extension of their product philosophy rather than an artificial overlay.

By developing a tone that felt human in a category dominated by corporate speak, they created a gravitational field that pulled in customers looking for authenticity and sustainability without heavy-handed messaging.

Cultural Gravity

Gymshark demonstrates how company culture can become a powerful source of gravitational pull. What began as a small fitness apparel startup has grown into a billion-pound enterprise without losing the community connection that fuelled its early success.

Their culture-first approach—maintaining authentic connections with fitness enthusiasts, hosting community events, and building a sense of belonging around their brand—has created gravitational pull that transcends product features.

By making their internal culture visible and participatory, they transformed what could have been simply a product company into a movement that naturally attracts not just customers but evangelists.

The Gravitational Counter-Example: Juicero

The gravity concept is perhaps best illustrated by a notable failure. Juicero raised $120 million to create a $400 connected juice press that used proprietary packets. Despite significant investment in technology and marketing, it failed to generate meaningful gravitational pull because it solved a non-existent problem.

The gravitational collapse occurred when journalists discovered users could squeeze the packets by hand, achieving the same result without the expensive machine. No amount of pursuit activity could overcome this fundamental gravitational weakness.

The Juicero story demonstrates that gravity cannot be manufactured through investment or marketing alone—it must be built on authentic value aligned with genuine market needs.

Gravitational Development Stages

Companies typically progress through four distinct stages of gravitational development, often operating in multiple stages simultaneously across different aspects of their business:

Borrowing Gravity

When you have limited gravitational mass of your own, you can temporarily leverage the pull of established entities. Early-stage Monzo (then Mondo) did this effectively by using the gravitational pull of the tech community, securing coverage on Product Hunt and creating a waiting list that generated curiosity.

Borrowing gravity is not about misleading association but about strategically positioning where existing gravitational fields can help establish your initial presence. This might mean appearing at established events, securing distribution through trusted channels, or aligning with respected individuals in your sector.

The key is to use borrowed gravity as a launchpad for building your own gravitational field, not as a permanent strategy.

Building Gravity

The building stage focuses on creating your own initial field of attraction through consistent delivery of value. This is where Gymshark’s event strategy proved effective—each interaction with the fitness community added incremental mass to their gravitational field.

During this stage, documentation becomes crucial. Every customer success, implementation story, and positive outcome should be captured as a gravitational asset that can generate future pull. The focus is on converting individual victories into systematic attraction.

Building gravity requires patience and consistency. The compounding effect takes time to manifest, but each point of value delivery adds to your growing field.

Focusing Gravity

As your gravitational field develops, the focus shifts to concentrating pull in your optimal market position. This is where Stripe’s refinement of their developer-first approach proved so effective—they didn’t try to be all things to all people but doubled down on their core gravitational strength.

The focusing stage often involves difficult decisions about what not to pursue. It requires the discipline to refuse opportunities that would diffuse your gravitational field, even when they seem attractive in isolation.

The reward for this focus is a stronger, more coherent pull that begins to create self-reinforcing momentum.

Redirecting Gravity

Markets evolve, and successful companies must sometimes redirect their gravitational fields while maintaining essence continuity. Oatly demonstrated this as they expanded from a niche alternative milk to a mainstream brand challenging conventional dairy.

The redirection stage requires careful balance—maintaining the core gravitational signature that built your success while evolving its expression to remain relevant. This is where essence work becomes critical, ensuring that changes in manifestation don’t undermine your fundamental attraction.

Navigating Competitive Gravitational Fields

Not all market positions offer equal opportunity to establish gravitational pull. Sometimes, as with Cormirus in education, your chosen orbit places you in direct opposition to overwhelmingly powerful existing forces.

Before investing heavily in gravitational development, assess the viability of your intended position:

Identify dominant forces. Map the established entities with overwhelming gravitational pull in your sector—whether large competitors, institutional systems, or platform owners with ecosystem control.

Assess escape velocity requirements. Determine what resources would be required to break free of established gravity and establish your own orbit. This includes financial investment, time horizon, and potential allies.

Find viable orbital positions. Look for spaces where you can establish pull without directly opposing dominant forces—market segments underserved by established players, positions orthogonal to existing gravitational fields, or “Trojan point” positions that leverage larger forces.

Make go/no-go decisions. Develop clear criteria for evaluating whether to persist in challenging established gravity or find alternative orbits. Sometimes, as we reluctantly concluded with Cormirus, the gravitational resistance is simply too great to overcome with available resources.

ARM Holdings offers an instructive contrast to the Cormirus experience. When entering the processor market dominated by Intel and AMD, they didn’t try to compete directly in the same orbit. Instead, they focused on low-power designs for mobile devices—a position where dominant players had less gravitational strength. From this viable orbital position, they gradually built their own significant gravitational field.

Managing Your Gravitational Portfolio

As your business evolves, each new offering affects your overall gravitational coherence. The question isn’t simply whether a new product or service will succeed in isolation, but how it will interact with your existing gravitational field.

Dyson provides an excellent case study in maintaining gravitational signature across a diverse portfolio. Each new category they enter—whether air purifiers, lighting, or hair care—reinforces their core gravitational identity of visible engineering excellence, unexpected approaches to established categories, and distinctive design language.

When evaluating portfolio decisions, consider:

Essence Alignment: How strongly does the new offering connect to your core essence? Does it feel like a natural extension or a disconnected addition?

Gravitational Contribution: Will the offering strengthen your overall field, create neutral impact, generate conflict with existing pull, or divert resources needed for core gravity building?

Portfolio Coherence: When mapped together, do your offerings create a coherent gravitational signature or a fragmented field pulling in different directions?

Evolution Strategy: How will you maintain essence continuity as your portfolio evolves over time?

The discipline of gravitational focus often means saying no to opportunities that would diffuse your pull, even when they appear profitable in isolation. As we explored in “The Elegance of No,” strategic subtraction can be as important as addition in building coherent gravity.

The Gravitational Assessment

To evaluate your current gravitational strength and identify development priorities, consider the following framework:

1. Gravitational Foundations

Rate your business in each quadrant from 1 (Weak/Inconsistent) to 5 (Strong/Consistent):

Product/Service Design: How much intrinsic pull does your offering create?

• Do customers naturally want to tell others about their experience?
• Does your product/service solve problems in visibly different ways?
• Have you created distinctive elements that become talking points?

Sales Process: How effectively do sales interactions build ongoing gravity?

• Do you systematically document customer successes?
• Are sales materials designed to be shared beyond the immediate prospect?
• Do you transform sales conversations into reusable assets?

Marketing Amplification: How well do you broadcast your gravitational field?

• Does your voice stand out distinctively in your category?
• Are your communications designed to reach beyond immediate prospects?
• Do your marketing assets generate engagement independent of campaigns?

Culture: How strongly does your internal environment create external pull?

• Is your company culture visible and attractive to outsiders?
• Do team members naturally attract interest in your company?
• Have you developed rituals or practices that outsiders want to learn about?

2. Pursuit-Attraction Ratio

Assess your current balance:

Inquiry Sources: What percentage of leads are inbound vs. outbound?

• Track the origin of each new opportunity over a 3-month period
• Calculate the ratio of completely inbound to partially or fully pursued leads

Effort Distribution: What percentage of resources go to pursuit vs. nurturing attraction?

• Audit time allocation across teams related to outbound vs. inbound activities
• Assess budget distribution between pursuit and attraction-building

Conversion Rates: How do conversion rates compare between pursued and attracted opportunities?

• Compare close rates between inbound and outbound opportunities
• Analyse velocity differences in the sales process

Revenue Balance: What percentage of revenue comes from attracted vs. pursued sources?

• Track revenue by origin over a 12-month period
• Analyse trends in the ratio over time

3. Gravitational Stage Identification

Determine your primary stage across each quadrant:

Borrowing Stage:

• Heavily reliant on partners, platforms, or established entities for visibility
• Limited independent recognition in the market
• Few unique assets that generate pull

Building Stage:

• Creating initial assets that generate modest independent gravity
• Beginning to see some unprompted interest
• Established methodology for capturing success as gravitational assets

Focusing Stage:

• Clear gravitational signature that is recognised in your market
• Consistent inbound interest from target segments
• Refined understanding of what creates maximum gravitational pull

Redirecting Stage:

• Established gravitational field that needs evolution
• Changing market conditions requiring gravitational adaptation
• Need to maintain essence continuity while refreshing expressions

4. Gravitational Field Mapping

Visualise your current pull:

Primary Sources: Map the specific elements creating the strongest attraction

• Particular products, features, or service aspects
• Content, methodologies, or intellectual property
• Team members, culture, or company practices

Reach Assessment: Identify gravitational reach across different audiences

• Where do you have strong pull vs. limited influence?
• Which segments show greatest responsiveness to your gravity?
• Are there untapped audiences where your gravity could extend?

Field Coherence: Identify potential gravitational conflicts or inconsistencies

• Are different aspects of your business pulling in contradictory directions?
• Do all touchpoints reinforce the same gravitational signature?
• Are there disconnects between your intended and actual pull?

Competitive Context: Map dominant gravitational forces in your market

• Which entities exert overwhelming pull in your space?
• Where are there viable orbital positions with less resistance?
• What would be required to escape established gravitational systems?

5. Value Proposition Portfolio Assessment

Evaluate how each offering contributes to your overall gravitational field:

Essence Alignment: Rate each offering from “Direct Expression” to “Contradicts Essence”

• Does the offering naturally express your core purpose and values?
• Would customers recognise the connection to your essence?
• Does it feel like an authentic extension or a forced addition?

Gravitational Contribution: Assess each offering’s effect on overall pull

• “Strengthens Field”: Reinforces existing gravitational signature
• “Neutral Impact”: Neither strengthens nor weakens overall gravity
• “Creates Conflict”: Sends contradictory signals that weaken pull
• “Diverts Resources”: Consumes energy needed for core gravitational building

Portfolio Evolution: Identify approach for maintaining coherence over time

• How will you ensure new offerings strengthen rather than dilute gravity?
• What governance will guide portfolio decisions?
• What criteria will determine when to prune offerings that weaken pull?

Based on this assessment, you can plot offerings on a Portfolio Coherence Matrix with axes of essence alignment and gravitational contribution, creating a visual map of your overall gravitational coherence.

The Gravity Building Roadmap

With a clear assessment of your current gravitational strength, you can develop a sequential approach to building commercial gravity:

Foundation Phase: Identifying Your Gravitational Centre

• Clarify what will create your primary gravitational pull
• Align gravity development with your established essence and positioning
• Select initial gravity-building priorities across the four quadrants
• Establish baseline metrics for tracking the pursuit-attraction balance

Acceleration Phase: Concentrated Gravity Building

• Focus resources on highest-potential gravitational elements
• Document and systematise successful attraction patterns
• Convert pursuit activities into attraction-building opportunities
• Develop feedback loops to amplify gravitational momentum

Expansion Phase: Extending Gravitational Reach

• Broaden your gravitational field while maintaining centre strength
• Develop multiple gravitational elements while ensuring coherence
• Create systems to scale attraction without diluting pull
• Balance exploitation of existing gravity with exploration of new sources

Evolution Phase: Adaptive Gravity Management

• Monitor market changes that may affect your gravitational field
• Refresh gravitational elements while maintaining positioning coherence
• Develop complementary gravitational fields for different audiences
• Establish governance to manage your gravitational portfolio effectively

Implementation Across Business Types

The gravitational approach requires adaptation for different business contexts:

Early-stage startups with minimal track record should focus on:

• Creating documentation systems to capture early successes
• Developing distinctive assets that can generate early gravity
• Borrowing gravity strategically from established platforms or partners
• Converting each customer interaction into shareable proof

Growing companies transitioning from pursuit to attraction should focus on:

• Systematising what has worked to create initial gravitational pull
• Refining positioning to concentrate gravity in optimal market spaces
• Developing content and thought leadership to extend gravitational reach
• Building cultural practices that reinforce gravitational identity

Established organisations refreshing faded gravitational pull should focus on:

• Auditing current sources of gravity to identify strengths and weaknesses
• Reconnecting with essence to ensure authentic gravitational development
• Updating expressions while maintaining positioning continuity
• Pruning offerings that dilute overall gravitational coherence

Service businesses have unique gravitational challenges and should focus on:

• Making methodology and approach visible through frameworks and tools
• Documenting outcomes systematically as gravitational assets
• Developing distinctive service experiences that create natural reference points
• Building gravity through team members as embodiments of approach

Measuring Gravitational Progress

Tracking the pursuit-attraction balance over time requires both quantitative metrics and qualitative indicators:

Quantitative Metrics:

• Inbound vs. outbound inquiry ratio
• Referral and word-of-mouth percentage of new business
• Conversion rates for attracted vs. pursued opportunities
• Content engagement independent of promotion
• Social mention frequency without company instigation

Qualitative Indicators:

• Nature of initial conversations (familiar with you vs. starting from zero)
• Depth of pre-existing knowledge about your approach
• Questions asked during sales processes
• Reasons given for choosing your offering
• Language used when customers describe you to others

Set realistic timeframes for gravitational development. Significant shifts in the pursuit-attraction balance typically take 12-24 months of concentrated effort, with incremental progress visible at 90-day intervals.

Gravity as Cumulative Advantage

Commercial gravity represents a fundamental shift in how businesses relate to their markets—moving from constant pursuit to increasing attraction through systematic mass-building.

The most attractive businesses aren’t necessarily those with the biggest marketing budgets or the most aggressive sales teams. They’re the ones that have patiently built gravitational mass in viable market positions, creating pull that brings opportunities to them with decreasing effort over time.

This gravitational development is not a replacement for active business development, particularly in early stages. But it offers a path to sustainability that pure pursuit can never achieve. Each gravitational asset you develop compounds over time, creating cumulative advantage that becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome.

As we explore specific gravitational strategies in the chapters ahead, remember that the goal isn’t gravitational perfection—it’s steady improvement in the pursuit-attraction balance. Even small shifts in this ratio can dramatically impact business sustainability, team wellbeing, and competitive advantage.

The question isn’t whether you’ll completely eliminate pursuit—you won’t. The question is: what kind of gravitational mass are you systematically building, and where?