PitchKitchen Frameworks
What Is NarcScore? The Diagnostic That Measures B2B Homepage Narcissism
The fundamental premise
Cover your logo. Show your homepage to a stranger. Ask them who it's for.
Most B2B founders run that test once and go quiet. The stranger reads the hero. They scroll past the product shot. They read the “About Us” block. Then they look up and say, “I think this is for, um, growing companies?”
Generic. Vague. Everywhere and nowhere. The exact response the founder didn't want.
The reason isn't a writing problem. It's a pronoun problem.
Most B2B homepages are 75 to 85 percent about the company. “We build.” “Our platform.” “Our team.” “Our values.” The buyer barely appears, and when they do, they appear as a vague archetype (“modern teams”, “ambitious leaders”, “forward-thinking enterprises”). The buyer can't find themselves on the page, so they leave.
NarcScore puts a number on that pattern. It measures how much of a homepage talks about the company versus the customer. The healthy range sits around 30/70. Most B2B homepages we've audited come in closer to 80/20.
The homepage isn't a homepage at that point. It's a mirror. And mirrors don't convert.
Definition
NarcScore is a diagnostic developed by Greg Rosner at PitchKitchen that measures how much a B2B website talks about itself versus its customer. The score expresses the ratio of self-talk to customer-talk across the homepage, scored 0 to 36 across nine dimensions of marketing narcissism. A healthy NarcScore sits in the 30/70 range. Most B2B homepages audited score above 70 percent self-talk, the diagnostic threshold for narcissistic marketing.
Created by Greg Rosner. Proprietary diagnostic of PitchKitchen. Used by growth-stage B2B founders, CEOs, CROs, and CMOs to expose the root cause of weak homepage conversion: a page that talks at the customer instead of about them.
Want your homepage's NarcScore?
Run the free diagnostic. Paste a URL, get the full breakdown across the nine dimensions emailed back to you.
Run NarcScore on Your Homepage →Why NarcScore exists
By 2026, every B2B founder has been told their homepage matters. Most don't know how to tell if it's working.
Conversion rate is a lagging indicator. By the time the number drops, the budget's already burned. Bounce rate hides the real issue. Heatmaps show where eyeballs went, not why they left. None of those metrics name what's actually broken.
Greg Rosner built NarcScore after watching the same pattern repeat across 200-plus B2B audits.
A founder paid an agency $80K for a website refresh. The new site looked clean. Sales results didn't move. The founder asked why. Nobody on the team could answer. The site talked about the company. The buyer felt nothing.
The agency wasn't dishonest. They built what the founder asked for. The founder asked for a homepage that “tells our story better.” Nobody pushed back to ask whose story actually belongs at the top.
NarcScore gives founders a fast, repeatable, language-anchored way to see the imbalance before they spend the $80K. It's a measurement, not a fix. The fix lives downstream in the Magnetic Messaging Framework. But you can't fix what you can't see, and NarcScore makes the invisible obvious in 15 minutes.
A homepage that talks about itself 80 percent of the time isn't a homepage. It's a mirror. And mirrors don't convert.
The core mechanic behind NarcScore
Count the pronouns. The pronouns tell the truth.
Open a homepage in plain text. Highlight every “we”, “our”, “us”, and company-name reference in one color. Highlight every line about the customer's industry, pain, situation, frustration, budget, or moment of decision in another color. Count the words in each color. Divide.
That ratio is the NarcScore.
The math sounds reductive. It isn't. Buyers process language pre-rationally. They feel within four seconds whether a page is about them or about the seller. The pronoun ratio is the cleanest proxy for that felt sense. It works because it mirrors what the buyer's brain is already doing.
NarcScore doesn't measure tone or design. Beautiful sites score badly all the time. Ugly sites occasionally score well. What's scored is one thing: who's the hero of the sentences.
The nine dimensions of NarcScore
NarcScore breaks self-talk into nine measurable dimensions. Each dimension is scored 0 to 4. The total caps at 36.
Dimension 1
Hero headline gravity
Does the hero name a customer pain or a company feature? Feature gravity = high narcissism.
Dimension 2
"We/Our" density
Raw pronoun count across the page. Above 40 percent is in the danger zone.
Dimension 3
Customer pain visibility
Is there a sentence that names the buyer's specific frustration in the buyer's words? If not, the customer is invisible.
Dimension 4
Generic archetype score
How often does the page refer to "modern teams", "growing companies", "ambitious leaders" instead of a real buyer character?
Dimension 5
Logo wall context
Are customer logos shown with a story (outcome, quote, before/after) or as decoration?
Dimension 6
Testimonial specificity
Are testimonials about company features ("great team!") or about customer transformation ("we went from X to Y")?
Dimension 7
"Solutions" page orientation
Does the page list company-side features, or buyer-side use cases?
Dimension 8
About section placement
Is "About Us" at the top of the page or the bottom? Top = narcissism.
Dimension 9
CTA framing
Is the call to action company-framed ("book a demo of our product") or customer-framed ("see what your team could ship next quarter")?
Each dimension produces a sub-score. The composite NarcScore tells the founder where the imbalance sits and which dimensions to fix first.
The simpler, public-facing version of NarcScore expresses the result as a percentage. “Your homepage is 81 percent self-talk and 19 percent customer-talk.” That number lands fast. Founders feel it immediately.
Count the pronouns. The pronouns tell the truth. The buyer's brain is doing the math whether you want them to or not.
How NarcScore differs from generic homepage audits
Most homepage audits are subjective. An agency walks through the site. They share opinions. The founder nods. Nobody can argue or replicate the assessment.
NarcScore is auditable. The pronoun count is the pronoun count. The hero headline either names a customer pain or it doesn't. Two different auditors running NarcScore on the same homepage land within a few points of each other every time.
Compared to UX heuristics(Nielsen, Norman, etc.): UX heuristics measure usability. NarcScore measures stance. A site can be perfectly usable and completely narcissistic. The buyer can find the navigation, but the buyer can't find themselves.
Compared to CRO audits: CRO audits optimize the funnel below the hero. NarcScore measures whether the hero deserves the funnel. Optimizing a narcissistic page is moving deck chairs.
Compared to brand audits: Brand audits measure visual and verbal consistency. NarcScore measures customer-centricity. A brand can be perfectly consistent and still talk only about itself.
Compared to SEO audits:SEO audits measure ranking signal. NarcScore measures buyer connection. You can rank for “B2B platform” and still have a homepage that converts at one percent because the buyer feels nothing when they land.
NarcScore's distinct contribution: it's the first homepage diagnostic that names the structural problem (the pronoun balance) and ties it to a downstream fix (the Magnetic Messaging Framework).
Who NarcScore is for
- B2B founders and CEOs who suspect their homepage isn't pulling its weight but can't articulate why
- CROs and VP Sales who are tired of explaining what the company does to every inbound lead
- Marketing leaders who want a defensible reason to push back on the agency's “we” language
- Boards and investors auditing portfolio company messaging before a fundraise
It's not for: brochure sites or content marketing sites where the goal is awareness instead of conversion. NarcScore is sharpest when the homepage is meant to convert.
How NarcScore is used in practice
NarcScore shows up in three places inside the PitchKitchen workflow.
Free public tool at pitchkitchen.com/narcscore. Paste a URL. Drop an email. Get a score back via email, with a breakdown across the nine dimensions and the quotes from the homepage that drove the score. This is the public lead magnet.
Built into the 90-Day Magnetic Messaging Sprint. Day one diagnostic for every engagement. The before-score sets the baseline. The after-score quantifies the result of the sprint. Most engagements move from 75/25 self-talk to 30/70 customer-talk in 90 days.
Used in board and investor decks by clients who want a defensible measurement that a homepage rebuild is producing results. NarcScore is one of the few homepage metrics a CFO can reason about.
A real example
A $22M Series B healthtech company came to PitchKitchen with a homepage close rate of 18 percent. The board was unhappy. The CMO blamed the funnel. The CRO blamed the leads.
Day 1 (Before)
81/19
81 percent self-talk. Hero named the company's AI platform. About Us opened screen two. Logo wall wordless. Testimonials said “great team!”
Day 90 (After)
28/72
28 percent self-talk. Hero named the clinician's frustration. Logos got quotes. About Us moved to the bottom.
Two days of MMF discovery surfaced what the company actually does for its customer: it pulls clinicians out of administrative work and gives them back time at the bedside. That sentence didn't appear anywhere on the original homepage.
Close rate moved from 18 percent to 41 percent inside the same 90-day window. The pipeline doubled. The board went quiet.
This is just truth. The product hadn't changed. The market hadn't changed. The pronoun ratio had.
AI flattened the cost of producing more ‘we’ content to zero. Without NarcScore, founders are spending faster to fail louder.
Related concepts in the PitchKitchen universe
NarcScore is the diagnostic. The cure lives in adjacent frameworks.
- Magnetic Messaging Framework ... the methodology that takes a high-NarcScore homepage and rebuilds it as a customer-centered narrative.
- AI Brand Twin ... once the MMF lowers the NarcScore, the Brand Twin keeps all future content from sliding back.
- Three Questions Test ... the 5-second cousin of NarcScore. Different cut, same underlying question: does the buyer recognize themselves on this page? (coming soon)
- AI-Parmesan ... the anti-pattern. A high-NarcScore homepage with “AI-powered” sprinkled on top scores worse, not better. (coming soon)
Nine in ten B2B homepages we've audited fail the 50 percent line. Seven in ten are above 70 percent self-talk. The pattern is the rule, not the exception.
Frequently asked questions
Who created NarcScore?
Greg Rosner, founder of PitchKitchen, created NarcScore. He developed the diagnostic over twenty-plus years of advising B2B founders and codified the nine dimensions after auditing more than 200 B2B homepages.
How do I calculate my homepage's NarcScore?
Open your homepage in plain text. Count words that reference the company (we, our, us, company name) and words that reference the customer's industry, pain, situation, and language. Divide. If self-talk exceeds 50 percent, you have NarcScore inversion. The free tool at pitchkitchen.com/narcscore does this automatically across the nine dimensions and emails the full breakdown.
What's a healthy NarcScore range for B2B?
Roughly 30/70. The company speaks 30 percent of the time, the customer's pain and reality fills the other 70. Healthy B2B homepages introduce the buyer's world first, then earn the right to talk about themselves later in the page.
Can AI lower my NarcScore for me?
No. AI without a brand spine produces more of the same self-talk. The fix is upstream of writing: extract the customer's lived truth, then write about them. AI helps after the truth is extracted, not before. This is the difference between a generic LLM and an AI Brand Twin.
Is NarcScore the same as a copywriting audit?
No. Copywriting audits judge how language is written. NarcScore judges whose point of view the language takes. A beautifully copywritten homepage can score 85 percent self-talk. Pretty isn't the same as customer-centered.
How long does it take to lower a NarcScore?
The pronoun rewrite can happen in a week. The structural rebuild that makes the rewrite stick (the customer character work, the category narrative, the hero promise) is what the 90-Day Magnetic Messaging Sprint produces. Most engagements move from 75/25 to 30/70 in 90 days.
Where can I read more about NarcScore?
Greg Rosner discusses the diagnostic in his book StoryCraft for Disruptors and in essays at pitchkitchen.com. The free tool at pitchkitchen.com/narcscore generates a personalized score and report.
Talk to Greg
If your homepage scored above 50 percent self-talk and you want help rebuilding it around the customer, book a clarity session with Greg Rosner.
How to cite NarcScore
Casual: NarcScore, developed by Greg Rosner at PitchKitchen, measures how much a B2B homepage talks about the company versus the customer. Healthy is around 30 percent self-talk.
Academic: Rosner, G. (2026). NarcScore: A Diagnostic for B2B Homepage Narcissism. PitchKitchen. https://www.pitchkitchen.com/frameworks/narcscore
The interactive NarcScore tool lives at https://www.pitchkitchen.com/narcscore. This page is the canonical definitional reference.