Positioning for B2B service businesses
Positioning is the structural reason a buyer chooses you over every alternative, including doing nothing. For a service business it decides four things: which buyer you want, what you want to be known for, why that buyer should choose you, and what you stop saying.
What positioning is, commercially
Most firms treat positioning as a sentence for the top of the website. It is a set of decisions, and the sentence is what is left once they are made. Which buyer has the budget, a problem that is costing them something now, and the intent to act. Which category that buyer files you in, and whether you can own it or only rank in it. What you do differently in a way a competitor cannot copy by changing their copy. And what to say first, in the buyer’s words.
Once those decisions are made, the rest of the commercial machine gets easier. Price is challenged less, because the comparison the buyer was making has gone. Sales conversations shorten, because you have stopped explaining what you are. Enquiries arrive better fitted, because the message filtered them before you did.
Why capable firms look interchangeable
Take your website and swap your name for a competitor’s. If the page still reads as true, you have described the category and left yourself out. That test fails for most established service firms, and the reason is referrals. A firm built on introductions has never had to explain why it should be chosen; the person making the introduction always did that. The explanation never got written down.
A production studio with sixteen years of work and Emmys on the shelf had never put into words why a client should choose it, because introductions had done that for sixteen years. When the long-form market contracted, so did the introductions, and the diary filled with £10k jobs. A stranger reading its website found a list of what it could do and no reason to pick it over the three other studios in the tab bar.
The second cause is drift. Each year a capable firm says yes to one more kind of work, because it can. After ten years it can do a great deal and is known for none of it.
Why more leads will not fix it
Lead volume multiplies whatever message it lands on. If the page gives a buyer no reason to choose you, more buyers arrive, read the same page, and leave for the same reasons. The agency’s report shows traffic up, and the enquiries are the same size as before. I have watched firms spend on ads, cold outreach and LinkedIn campaigns in turn, with the same positioning underneath each, and get the same result from each. The spend was fine. It was pointed at a message that had not changed.
Position first, then promote. In that order a modest budget works. In the other order a large one amplifies the confusion that was already there.
The three foundations, in order
1
Niche first. A niche is a buyer with three things at once: the means to pay, a problem that is costing them something now, and the intent to act on it. An industry is a category, and categories do not buy. A niche is a person in a situation.
2
Positioning second. Once the buyer is chosen, positioning is the reason that buyer picks you. It has to be structural: something in how you work, what you take on or how you charge that a competitor cannot match by rewriting a headline.
3
Messaging third. Messaging turns the position into the words the buyer already uses about their own problem, and into an offer that feels safe enough to act on now.
The order matters because each depends on the one before it. Messaging written before the position is settled produces polished confusion. A position built before the buyer is chosen is a strong position for the wrong audience. I diagnose in that order and I fix in that order.
What positioning cannot do
It will not sell a service the market does not want, and it will not rescue a firm that cannot deliver. It does not replace a sales process, a pricing decision or the work of running a channel. It gives those things a message worth carrying. If the demand is not there, I will say so on the first call, because the work only holds on top of a business that has already sold.
What it looks like when it is fixed
A CRM consultancy that had been one of many became the firm for revenue recovery, and its average order value nearly doubled. A consultant selling £5k packages to buyers who wanted them cheaper repositioned around a different buyer and sold a £90k package. The work was the same. The reason to choose it had changed.
Evolve.
A £350k-a-year Pipedrive consultancy the market read as one more Pipedrive partner. Repositioned as a Revenue Recovery System, so the value could be counted. Average order value nearly doubled.
Maddox Dixon.
£5k packages and the buyers that price attracts. Repositioned around the buyer who values the outcome. A £90k package, just over £1m in 18 months, and later the sale of part of the business.
Questions founders ask
Is positioning the same as branding?
No. Branding is how you look and sound once the position is decided. Positioning is the decision itself: which buyer, which category, why you. A rebrand on top of an undecided position produces a better-looking version of the same confusion.
Do I have to turn work away?
Some, in time, and less than you fear. Narrowing is about what you lead with and who you pursue. Established clients outside the niche stay. New work outside it stops being chased. Most firms find the narrower position brings in more of the work they wanted and quietly starves the work they did not.
How long does it take?
The decisions take ten days inside the 21-Day NPM, and the assets are rewritten in the ten after. The market’s answer takes longer, which is why I stay involved until the revenue milestone we agree, and not until the deck is delivered.
How do I know positioning is the problem, and not the marketing?
Three signs. Enquiries come in but the right ones do not convert. You are compared on price with firms that are not at your level. Your best clients are much larger than your typical client and you cannot say why you won them. If two of the three are true, the marketing is carrying a message that does not work, and more of it will not help.
What does a positioning consultant actually do?
Makes decisions with you that you have been avoiding, then writes them into the places buyers look. In my case that is a diagnosis of your niche, position and messaging; two strategy calls where the directions are presented and one is chosen; a deck that records the decisions; and your website, profile and sales assets rewritten from it. Then I stay involved until the work has produced the revenue we agreed.
If the swap test failed when you read it, the first call will tell you how much of the problem is positioning and how much is something else.