On my morning walk yesterday, thinking through a branding proposal I’d been working on, it hit me: almost every founder I sit down with has a similar issue. It’s not that they’re bad at what they do — in fact, they’re exceptional. It’s that they can’t tell me what they do — not clearly, not concisely, not confidently. Not in a way that would make me want to hire them on the spot.
Ask them, and you’ll get a paragraph. Sometimes three. Usually it starts with “well, it’s complicated” and ends somewhere near “we do a lot of different things for a lot of different clients.” Which might be true. It’s also not very helpful to potential clients or colleagues who want to understand.
Here’s the thing: if you’re a legal; financial and accounting; management and IT consulting; marketing and public relations; human resources services; coaching, training, and consulting, or other B2B professional services firm, you’re mostly selling something nobody can put their finger on. There’s no product shot. No packaging. No obvious “before and after.” You’re selling expertise, judgment, processes, relationships, outcomes, trust. That makes positioning harder, and not optional. And it means your words have to do all the work that a product shot might do for someone else.
So before you send another introduction email, write another “thought leadership” piece, or pitch a new client — it’s important to get this part right first. Everything else is built on top of it.
First, let’s clear up the jargon.
Part of why this gets muddy is that the words we use to describe ourselves aren’t nearly as clear as we think they are — even within the same industry.
It’s a problem I see constantly in business consulting, advisory services, and coaching. Someone will introduce themselves as a “business consultant,” and you have no idea if that means they’re going to sit across the table asking hard questions about your leadership style, or if they’re going to roll up their sleeves and restructure your operations. A “business coach” and an “executive coach” sound nearly identical — but one is working with growth-stage founders on mindset and accountability, and the other is exclusively developing C-suite leaders. A “fractional COO” isn’t advising from the outside at all — she’s embedded, actually running part of your operation. And an exit-planning advisor is doing something else entirely: quietly getting your financials and org chart ready for a sale that might be two years out. And yet, they are all business consultants.
Same industry. Completely different services, completely different buyers — and if your own positioning doesn’t make clear which one you are, you’re asking your prospective client to do the work of figuring it out. They won’t.
4 questions that actually matter for positioning.
To be clear, positioning is all about shaping how customers think about one brand compared to other choices. Your positioning statement defines your brand’s unique value, target audience, and what makes it special. Every strong positioning statement answers four questions:
- Who are you?
- What do you do (or how do you help)? Not your job title. Not your industry category. The actual thing that changes for someone because they hired you.
- Who do you help? Not “everyone who needs [service].” The real, specific person or company you do your best work for.
- How do you do it differently than anyone else? This is the one people skip, because it requires actually knowing your competitive landscape — and being honest about what makes you different, not just what makes you good.
And for bonus points:
- What’s the outcome? What does life, or business, look like for your client after they’ve worked with you? This is often the part people remember.
Answer these questions honestly, in your own words, and you’re most of the way to a positioning statement that works.
Clear isn’t enough — it has to sound like you
Here’s where a lot of positioning work goes sideways: leaders get coached into “clarity,” and what comes out the other side is a statement so safe and generic it could belong to any firm in your industry. Clear, but forgettable. Correct, but invisible.
But figuring out the clear and concise language is tricky. And it’s not easy to do for yourself.
The goal isn’t just to answer the five questions. It’s to answer them in a voice that’s unmistakably yours — the phrases you actually use, the perspective only you bring, the thing you’d say to a prospective client over coffee if you weren’t worried about sounding “professional enough.”
That’s the difference between a positioning statement that’s technically accurate and one that makes someone stop and think, “wait, that’s exactly what I need.”
Where it belongs
Your positioning statement needs to be a natural part of your conversation, and it needs to be reinforced in your online presence and communications materials. And it’s the first thing a visitor should see on the homepage of your website. Your positioning statement should be so clear and “so you” that you can use it, almost word for word, in your bio, your proposals, your LinkedIn headline, your next conference introduction. It never ceases to amaze me how many service firms skip this step. It’s especially important for those that don’t have their business category (accounting, coaching, HR, exit planning, etc.) as part of their name. Positioning and reassurance statements front and center, please.
Why this comes first
Thought leadership, sales conversations, online presence, presentations, and other communications work better and faster once your positioning is clear. If someone lands on your homepage confused about what you do, no amount of smart posting on LinkedIn is going to fix that.
An effective and inspirational positioning statement does far more.
- It informs partners, prospects and colleagues of how you are different,
- It helps define your company and its culture uniquely and authentically
- It helps other members of your team tell your story; so all are speaking from the same page
- It enables you to be more memorable and consistent to your target market, which creates more brand value.
Start with how you think. Be specific. Be consistent. Be genuinely, unmistakably you. That’s the foundation of a brand worth building.
Get the foundation right, and everything you build on top of it — company insights, the social presence, the pitch — gets easier and more clear. Make sure the audience you care about gets you, right from the start.
If you’re ready to reexamine your brand positioning statement, reach out to insight180. With more than 25 years in the branding business, we help make the process painless, productive, and — dare we say — pleasant for your organization. Contact us through our website.
insight180 is a brand advisory firm helping purpose-driven organizations clarify who they are, stand apart in crowded markets, and align strategy, messaging, and identity to support growth and long-term value. We’d love to help you build yours.
— Wendy Baird, president and brand strategist
