Every business has dozens of problems at any given time. Even thriving ones. A new regulation comes up and you have to comply. You have to hire but can’t find the right candidate. Or your clients churn and you have to find out why. Being in business means dealing with problems. It’s the same for…
Category: Positioning
Why A Winning Consulting Positioning Demands Weaknesses (And How To Embrace Them)
In 1970, Listerine’s marketing department was feeling the heat. P&G had launched a new mouthwash brand as a competitor a few years before. They called it Scope. And they attacked Listerine’s obvious weakness — taste. Listerine burned like medicine. Consumers knew it. So Scope entered the market using taste as its differentiator. They claimed a…
The Objection Funnel: Why Credibility Can’t Replace Clarity in Consulting Firms’ Messaging
Most marketers think social proof sells. But it doesn’t. It reassures. And this difference changes how to do messaging right. Imagine going to a consulting firm’s website. You’d like to figure out what they do. But you struggle. Because first, you read an aspirational mission statement that means nothing. Then they bombard you with social…
Points of Parity: Why Saying What Buyers Expect Never Makes Your Consulting Firm Stand Out
You can’t differentiate your brand by using what’s expected. Let me explain with an example. Go to 20 management consulting firm websites. You’ll see that they claim to be different by providing high-quality work. Or by bragging about years of experience. But here’s the problem. These are expected by buyers. All management consultancy firms are…
How To Legally Reduce Your Competition In Crowded Markets
Who wouldn’t want less competition in the market? How easy everything would be. You could charge much more. Clients would stick with you longer, maybe forever. And you’d grow like there is no tomorrow. It’d be a dream come true for every executive. Well, there are ways to reduce your competition legally. The obvious option…
12 Differences Between Incumbents And Challengers (And How Challengers Win)
Every industry has its incumbents. Established players who come at the top of buyers’ category ladders. Like McKinsey and Accenture for consulting. Salesforce and Hubspot for CRM. Or Adobe and Canva for creative software. And then you have the challengers. New and upcoming players who try to get a hold in the market. They compete…
Three Marketing Bottlenecks That Keep Consulting Firms Stuck (And Their Symptoms)
Three marketing bottlenecks keep consulting firms stuck at a certain revenue level: These problems keep the business from growing to its next stage. Some businesses just have one. Some others might have all three to a certain degree. They have different symptoms: 1. Wrong Positioning You create the wrong value and/or for the wrong clients.…
How Clear Positioning Creates a Natural “Flow State” Inside Your Firm
Having clarity around your consulting firm’s positioning has a hidden upside. We usually talk about how it helps you win clients. It raises your perceived value. It makes buyers choose you over others. But it also changes things inside the business. You know what they say. Constraints breed creativity. A blank page is scary because…
The How Chain: A Simple Questioning Method to Reveal Your Consulting Firm’s Onlyness
You might have seen it on the news. On Monday, there was a blackout in Spain (where I live) for 12 hours. No electricity. No phone line. No traffic lights, no metros, no trains. Some people got stuck in elevators for hours. Some others couldn’t buy food since they didn’t have cash. Total chaos. When…
Why Serving Multiple Client Types Kills Growth (And How To Choose The Ideal One)
In 2012, Hubspot was bleeding customers. They spent a lot of resources on customer acquisition. But customers didn’t stick around and churned out after a few months. So their customer lifetime value was low. That meant they couldn’t increase marketing budgets further and hire a bigger team to scale. Hubspot’s executive team realized they had…
