When a boutique consulting firm sits down to write its positioning, the conversation usually starts with ambition: what the founders want to be known for, the clients they would like to win, the work they enjoy most. Those are fair questions, and on their own they tend to produce a line that a competitor could use just as easily.
I prefer to start with evidence. A firm that has been working for a while already holds a record of what clients have paid it for. It sits in the last five engagements.
The method
Take your last five paid engagements. Five is enough to suggest a pattern and few enough to finish in an afternoon. For each one, write four short answers:
Who called? The role of the person who made first contact, and the kind of organisation they were in.
What happened just before they called? The trigger. It might be a new leader, a lost deal, a funding round, a failed launch or a merger.
How did they describe the problem? Their words, from the first email or call, before you translated them into your vocabulary.
What was different when you finished? The change they would describe to a colleague, in one sentence.
Put the five sets of answers side by side and look for repeats.
What to look for
A repeated trigger is the most useful finding. If three of five clients called within weeks of a leadership change, you have a working idea of when your buyers start looking, worth testing with the next few conversations.
Repeated client words are your messaging, ready made. Clients describe problems in plain language, and a prospect with the same problem will use similar words. Writing your messaging in those words makes it easier for that prospect to see themselves in it.
A repeated change tells you what to promise. It is often narrower than the services list on your website, and more believable for it.
If nothing repeats, ask whether the firm has been taking whatever work arrives. If it has, decide what the firm wants to be hired for before you work on the wording.
Turn it into a line
Draft one sentence that uses what repeated: who you help, the moment they call, and the change you deliver, in their words. Then put it through the swap test from an earlier post: replace your firm's name with a respected competitor's and read it aloud. A line built from your own engagements has a better chance of passing, because it describes clients and moments a competitor may not share.
Repeat the exercise every six months, so your positioning keeps up with the work you are actually being hired for.
This is the starting point for the positioning work I do with boutique consulting firms.
Look at your last five engagements. What happened in each client's organisation in the month before they called you?
