A score is only useful if the reader can see how it was reached and disagree with it. A baseline that arrives as a single figure and a recommendation is a verdict wearing the costume of a measurement.
Four surfaces, separately
The baseline scores positioning, offer architecture, sales process and buyer journey separately, because they fail independently and they are rebuilt independently. An aggregate hides which one is dragging, and the aggregate is usually the only number a firm remembers.
What sits underneath
Each surface carries the evidence it was scored against. For buyer reality that includes a profile of how buyers in that market actually research and decide, a map of where scepticism forms, and a summary of the friction in recent lost deals. These are artefacts the client keeps and can hand to someone else.
They are also the part that makes the score arguable. A client who disagrees with a score can go to the evidence and say why. That happens, and the exchange is more useful than agreement would have been.
A horizon
The last component is a validation plan with a date on it. Without one, a baseline becomes a historical document that everybody cites and nobody re-runs. With one, it becomes the first of a series, and the second measurement is where the value is.