The Power of Positioning versus Promotion For Consultancy Firms

As an owner of a consultancy firm looking for more clients, and perhaps also better quality clients, you will want to know the one strategy that stands head and shoulders above all.?

Promoting your services is probably the most natural thing to do to attract clients.? It seems like it's the obvious thing to do because we see so many people in consulting and professional services promoting themselves or their firm with “here’s who we are and what we do.” ?Whether that's on their website or networking meetings or BNI meetings or anytime that you have an opportunity to talk about your firm, typically it's about who you are and what you do.

In this article, I'm going to present an alternative to that, because consulting firms that are promoting their services in that way are actually pushing people away.

Any type of promotion or self-assertion creates resistance. It creates questions in the mind of the recipient of those messages. It triggers questions like, who are you to say that? This then leads to, who can I compare you with? Why should I believe you? ?Why should I trust you? Will what you're saying work?

In our promotions, we try to answer those questions, but the success is severely limited because we have triggered scepticism and analytical evaluation.

I want to tell you about a better way to answer those questions, not through promotion, but through positioning.

Now, when we have a strategy of authority positioning, we don't need to resort to promotion, because authority positioning is about demonstrating our expertise, demonstrating our authority, by informing our ideal clients about how they can overcome their biggest challenges. It is not about us and what we can do, it's about them and what they can do through the process we recommend.

When we talk about promotion, it's about how we do things, the way we operate, the services we provide. But with positioning, we are sending almost a subliminal message to our clients that we have the expertise, we have the experience, we have the knowledge, we are trustworthy, we are believable, because we're explaining to our ideal clients the way they can overcome their challenges.

When we show them how it's done, typically they will want our help to get it done. In most cases, our premium clients want help to get it done quickly, to get it done right first time. Your ideal clients don't want to experiment and try it themselves, even if they are shown how to do it. They will come and ask you to solve it for them or with them, but they won't typically want to do it themselves because they understand the value of having expertise. Your ideal clients are the ones who know that it's better to invest time and resources into effective solutions because of the opportunity cost that's wasted when they try to do it themselves.

Positioning then, is about delivering value in your marketing. It's about delivering content that educates and informs, but even more than that, helps shift your ideal client's beliefs because right now they're stuck in their problem because they don't believe their problem can be solved.

Authority positioning is about delivering value that shifts your ideal client's beliefs to see not only that they have a problem that can be solved, but using you, or your firm, is the best way they can get that problem solved.

Instead of triggering scepticism with promotion, when you show your clients how their problem can be solved, it becomes believable. You don't have to promote yourself and talk about your qualifications, your expertise, your experience, or your credentials. When you show them how a problem can be solved, you are automatically credited with authority in that area. So, you don't have to promote those things on your website or in your talks or in your conversations with people when you can show them how to solve their problem. None of that matters because what's most important to your premium level clients is getting their problem solved, not what your experience and credentials are. When they can see that you can deliver a solution they want, nothing else matters, because the important thing for them is the solution to the problem and being able to shift from stuck in the problem to free of the problem.

My recommendation is that you change your approach to marketing based on promotion to marketing based on authority positioning, by making your marketing content so valuable in itself, that potential ideal clients will want to read it, watch it and listen to it.? Promotion creates resistance.? Positioning creates demand.