Every Consultant Has a Positioning Problem. Most Solve It Wrong.
The instinct is to go broad. The market rewards specificity.
Ask ten consultants what they do and you will get ten variations of the same answer: "I do strategy, brand development, creative direction, and partnerships." Each word is accurate. The collection is meaningless. When you say you do everything, you are positioning yourself as nothing in particular.
The fear behind broad positioning is obvious: if I narrow down, I will miss opportunities. What if a client needs brand strategy but I described myself as a creative director? What if someone needs partnerships but my site only talks about hospitality? The fear is that specificity means exclusion. It does not. It means recognition.
Consider two consultants. One describes herself as a "brand strategy and creative consultancy offering services across hospitality, fashion, lifestyle, and luxury." The other describes himself as "the person Australian luxury hotels call when they want to create experiences guests talk about for years." Both might deliver the same work. But when a luxury hotel needs help, which one do they call?
The second consultant will also get calls from restaurants, bars, members' clubs, and event companies. Not because he positioned himself for those industries, but because the specificity of his claim implies depth. If he is good enough for luxury hotels, he is probably good enough for a high-end restaurant. Specificity creates a halo. Breadth creates a shrug.
The positioning framework that works for consultants is not a tagline exercise. It is an answer to one question: "What do you want to be known for?" Not what you can do. Not what you have done. What you want the market to associate with your name. This is a smaller claim than most consultants want to make, and that is exactly why it works.
A positioning statement for a consultant should pass three tests. First, it should be something you can own. "Brand strategy" is not ownable; a thousand people claim it. "Creating cultural collaborations between luxury brands and emerging Australian designers" is ownable; almost nobody claims it. Second, it should be immediately understood by the buyer. No jargon, no buzzwords, no abstract concepts. If a prospective client reads it and has to ask "but what does that actually mean?" the positioning has failed. Third, it should make some people think "that is not for me." If nobody self-selects out, the positioning is too broad to be useful.
The practical application is not to change what you do. It is to change what you lead with. Your website, your LinkedIn headline, your introduction at events, your email signature: these are the surfaces where positioning lives. Lead with the specific claim. Let the broader capabilities emerge in conversation.
A consultant who leads with "I create experiences for luxury hotels" will, in the discovery meeting, naturally reveal that she also does brand strategy, creative direction, and partnerships. But by then, the prospect is already engaged. They called because the positioning was specific enough to be relevant. The breadth of capability is a bonus, not the opening pitch.
The hardest part of positioning is not finding the right words. It is accepting that the right words are narrower than everything you can do. That acceptance is the difference between a consultant who is always explaining what they do and one who is always being asked to do it.
Positioning is one stage of seven.
Claiming your territory is a single step. The 12 Principals programme surrounds it with the product, the app, and the systems that turn a sharp position into a business that scales beyond you.
