Positioning Your Expertise

Positioning your expertise — not your solutions — is probably the highest ROI thing you can do for your agency or consultancy business.

It is the most nuanced of shifts to your value proposition but it looks something like this:

Most clients are tired of getting pitched by agencies who claim to have the most unique, innovative, etc solution. And unless your customer is at a certain level of scale and complexity, positioning yourself as “full service” is actually a disservice to the value you offer.

Agencies, especially digital / creative / design agencies, often find themselves in a field of sameness with their competitors — at least, as far as their client buyers are concerned.

So what ARE your biggest differentiators as an agency? Here’s some hints:

It’s not your agency brand. That doesn’t matter to many buyers.

Your fancy pitch decks also don’t matter.

Nor does your “proprietary” delivery process.

Now here’s the important clarification:

Your brand is important, but not as a differentiator. Same goes with your delivery process. Clients don’t care if you have a patented 3-step process to get from discovery to insight to solution. They’ve already seen that slide in a dozen other agency presentations and despite the thinking and rigor that went into them — they unfortunately don’t care.

What they DO care about is that you have flexible options for how you service them as an agency — we’re talking about service models, fee structures, team retainer, etc.

So what DOES matter to them?

Your work quality matters.

Your thinking matters.

Your leadership team matters.

And crucially — your ability to understand THEIR business matters. Your expertise is the #1 thing that matters to them.

How to shift from selling solutions to selling expertise

First, it requires simply by shifting your narrative from:

“We have the right solution for you, here it is”

to something more along the lines of:

“We understand your problem the best, here’s how”

It’s fairly nuanced, but ulimately straightforward, and has a significant impact on how your frame your conversations with clients. If they truly believe you understand them better than your competitors, you will have to work significantly less to sell in your solutions.

And that’s not all.

Pricing Power

That position ofexpertise will give you more pricing power. You can now pricing based on value rather than other pricing levers such as hours, scope, efficiency, speed, etc.

Authority

You also built trust and authority with your clients. You get more visibility into the business. You get brought into planning conversations sooner than you used to, giving you an advantage.

Measurement

You’re no longer measured against the way things have been done in the past, but are able to provide new perspectives that carry weight.

But of course, there’s not some single tactic you can use to shift into an expertise mindset. It requires multiple parts of your agency, multiple teams, multiple people in key roles to operate with this approach.

Jon Sukarangsan is a growth and operations consultant that works with ambitious service-based companies and agencies. He’s been a leader at leading agencies like Critical Mass, Edelman, Huge and BASIC/DEPT, and has helped transform product and marketing practices at companies like Google, Samsung, Citibank and more. JonSukarangsan.com