Overcoming the fear of Specialisation: A Primer for Data Consultancy Founders (who are a small fish in a big data lake)

If you want to drive data management consulting sales via the web, you'll soon realise the importance of positioning and specialisation for attracting clients into your sales funnel.

Having a bland, generic, positioning can make it incredibly difficult to grab attention online and stand out from the crowd of other data firms jockeying for limited clients.

A Case in Point

I help data management businesses (e.g. software/consulting) to market and sell their services more effectively.

The actual method I teach helps you attract clients whether you're a lawyer, a management consultant, a startup accounting SaaS firm - it doesn't matter.

But I have certain data-centric assets and expertise that give me an 'unfair advantage' over other generalist business coaches or 'social media experts':

• I've been a data management consultant since 1993 (mostly data quality, data migration, and enough DG/BI/ETL/Metadata to be credible)
• I've launched several data-focused media websites and community forums that have a large following (e.g. Data Quality Pro / Data Migration Pro / Data Quality and Data Governance Professionals Forum
• I've got an extensive personal network of data-related contacts (circa 20,000+)
• I've created thousands of content assets and marketing resources, both for my own websites and as a hired content strategist/author for the likes of Experian, SAS and many more
• I've got a deep understanding of running a data management consultancy and selling data management software

So for me to offer my services to a general audience doesn't make sense - it wouldn't be leveraging my unfair advantage.

Hence, my focus on data, and specifically data consultancies, as my 'bullseye' target.

But of course, I still work with Data Software vendors because my sales and marketing method applies equally to software and consulting scenarios - it's the same process.

I don't turn people away - I just don't make 'software vendors' such a big part of my positioning.

And that may change in future, that's the beauty of specialisation and positioning!

Dimensions of Positioning

Given that specialisation is a crucial aspect of positioning, here are some 'dimensions' you can adopt to specialise your firm:

• Technology (e.g. Collibra, Snowflake, Metadata etc.)
• Industry (e.g. Insurance, Banking, eSports, Retail)
• Problem (e.g. BCBS239, Fraud, Data Breaches)
• Data Disciplines/Functions (e.g. BI, Data Quality, Data Governance, Cloud)
• Departmental Functions (e.g. HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales)
• Business Processes (e.g. Accounts Receivables, Billing Ops)
• Demographic (e.g. CDO, CIO, CFO, COO)
• Firmographic (e.g. SME, Global-Mega-Corporates, Startups)
• Maturity Level (e.g. Immature vs Sophisticated)
• Event-Specific (e.g. "Firms who are pre/post M&A")

As you can see, specialisation can be more involved than just picking a tech or data function for your consultancy - there are many more dimensions to consider.

What you soon realise is that there are two sides to the positioning equation:

• LHS: Market Segments (what do people need based on various dimensions?)
• RHS: Solution Segments (what stuff can we sell them?)

So for my LHS<->RHS fit it could look something like this...

"I help data consultancy founders win more clients using myDataBrand - a simple but effective sales and marketing system for creating a predictable method of discovering, attracting and converting new clients to your data services - every day."

If you took 'data' out of that last sentence, it wouldn't resonate with you the same way.

If you're not in the data industry, it will likely repel you.

But that's the point of positioning - you want to repel people.

You want to attract 5-Star customers that are a perfect fit. 

You need clients who are so specialised, so perfectly aligned to your offer, that they stand a far better chance of getting results and helping you achieve the revenue goals you've set for your business.

Your Quest - to be Different

Let's take a random boutiqe consultancy strapline from off the web

"XXXXXXX helps organizations make smart, data-driven decisions by translating their data into meaningful and actionable information."

Memorable? Not really.

If you substituted the logo, it would sound like tens of thousands of other data analytics firms.

Now, that's fine if you're a big firm with account reps, sales teams and marketers galore. You'll have an entire machine to generate leads and opportunities.

But if you're a small firm, lead generation probably falls to you, the stressed out, maxed out consultancy founder, or your co-founders.

By positioning your data firm to service the needs of a specific LHS market segment and a RHS solution segment, you create instant differentiation.

Which is rocket fuel for lead generation because you become instantly memorable, easier to refer and far more attractive to clients searching for the specific problems you solve.

Instead of being a small minnow, fighting it out with all the other minnows in a huge data lake (pun intended), you can now become the big fish (perhaps the only fish!) in a very small pond.

That makes it easier for you to charge premium prices and work with the clients who you are most specialised to serve.

That's why I focus on the data niche in my coaching and training.

There are tens of thousands of generic sales and marketing coaches. There is even a smaller bunch of specialists who focus exclusively on consulting and professional services firms.

There's no point in my competing head-to-head with those folks because their blogs have more content, they have more testimonials, and their podcasts have been going for many, many years.

But data?

That's a much easier niche in which to stand out from the crowd of other sales and marketing trainers.

And the same thing applies to your business model.

There's no point going 'head-to-head' with PwC, Accenture, Capgemini, Baringa, Slalom - not to mention the thousands of smaller boutique specialists who have a proven track record.

If you're struggling to get sales, adopting a 'something for everyone' approach to positioning doesn't work when you're a small firm.

You need to stand out to get noticed, and that starts with your positioning.

So ask yourself: are you standing out in your niche?

If not, what is that costing you?

Is your generalist mindset accelerating or decelerating the growth of your business?

Let's look at the impact of positioning and specialisation using a case study.

The Financial Incentives for Dominating Your Niche

A great example of positioning specialisation was adopted by a company called Datanomic back in the noughties.

Datanomic had a great product called dn:Director which had mass appeal as a data quality solution. 

(I know because I was a reseller!).

dn:Director could serve a broad array of data quality functions (e.g. profiling, parsing, cleanse, dedupe) across all data domains (e.g. Customer, Equipment, Location).

The challenge for Datanomic was competition - it was a bustling marketplace, with companies like Trillium, FirstLogic, Ataccama, IBM, Informatica and many others, all jostling for a limiting pool of opportunities.

Quite often, inferior products would get bought just because they had big-brand appeal. 

(If you've ever run a data firm, chances are you've seen that same scenario play out several times).

Amidst all the competitive noise, Datanomic noticed their dn:Director product was being adopted by some banking clients to solve the problem of PEP and Watchlist screening (finding Politically Exposed Persons in customer data).

Sensing the opportunity, they doubled down on that specialisation by bringing out a variant of their product called dn:Sentry to strengthen the branding and appeal directly to the Watchlist marketplace.

They started hanging out at trade shows where people with 'PEP' problems would be hanging out.

And of course, they reflected this shift in their website, blog copy and brand messaging:

The results were dramatic. Sales took off. 

Datanomic became a niche leader in PEP and Watchlist screening and were later acquired by Oracle.

But fundamentally, the core product was still dn:Director, their original data quality workhorse. They had simply strengthened their positioning around the PEP problem aligned the LHS<->RHS positioning fit.

Consider for a moment how tightly focused their niche was, then imagine that sigh of relief a senior banking leader would have felt back in the late noughties when they stumbled across a product that, straight out of the box, solved their PEP and Watchlist problems?

You want that kind of relief and resonance in your messaging and positioning.

You want people to say - "At last, we've found someone who can take this problem away and address our needs".

If you're connecting and reaching out to lots of people, and no-one is buying your stuff, and it was the same situation pre-covid, then your positioning is out of whack.

There is something wrong with your LHS<->RHS specialisation.

Either the market is wrong for your service, or your service is wrong for the market.

Don't just keep ramping up the pressure by...

• Connecting and pitching more and more contacts on LinkedIn or
• Cold-calling more and more prospects or
• Running more and more ads

Stop.

Doing 'more and more' with a weakened positioning is madness.

Look deep into your possible dimensions of specialisation and talk to the marketplace to see what will resonate. 

Test a new position. 

Put out LinkedIn posts, webinars and articles to see what resonates.

Change your LinkedIn profile and see if your connections improve.

See what questions people ask on webinars.

Explore what topics and challenges people want to learn about in your content.

React, Refine, Reset

Don't just keep doing the same thing if the same thing doesn't work.

React to what the market is telling you, refine your positioning and reset your sales, marketing and delivery systems to align a specialised offer to the needs of a specialised audience.

And get some external help so you're not listening to the same voices that took you down a generalist positioning in the first place.

Next Steps

If you want help resetting your positioning and tying it to a sales and marketing system that generates a predictable pipeline of opportunities - book a (free) Breakthrough Call today.

Together, we'll discuss where you are right now and what your roadmap needs to look like for attracting opportunities to a more specialised proposition within a niche marketplace: https://mydatabrand.com/breakthrough

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"Working with myDataBrand is ‘the necessary magic’ for every Data Consultancy Founder who is ready to take their offering to the next level" - Lara Gureje, Datoculi