Call them when...

The best referral you’ll ever get happens at a lunch you’re not at. Someone describes a problem. Someone else puts down their fork and says, “You need to call these people.”

What problem does that person need to hear for your name to come out?

That’s the positioning question. It isn’t “what do we do?” A capable business can answer that for a whole website. Design, advice, delivery, project management, ongoing support. All true. None of it helps the person at lunch, who isn’t going to memorise your navigation menu.

Breadth isn’t the problem. Equal billing is.

Most businesses with a positioning problem don’t lack capability. They have plenty, and they refuse to rank it. Every service gets the same space on the homepage, the same slide in the pitch, the same line in the email signature. Inside the building that feels fair. Outside, it reads as “we do everything”, which buyers translate as “we’re not especially good at anything”.

The usual fix makes it worse. Someone suggests “end-to-end solutions” or “your total partner”. It keeps the peace in the boardroom and gives nobody outside it a reason to pick up the phone.

This is the trade-off leadership teams avoid. Positioning is a choice about what goes first, and choosing what goes first means choosing what goes second. There’s no version where every capability stays on the front page and the market still remembers you for something.

My test is blunt. If your positioning didn’t upset at least one person inside the business, you haven’t made a choice. You’ve written a summary.

Choosing isn’t shrinking

The fear behind the avoidance is that choosing a lead means losing the rest. It doesn’t.

KSA Architects had decades of experience across residential, commercial, education, interiors and refurbishment work. That breadth was real and it had built the practice. But principal Kirstie Stewart had reached the point where she didn’t want KSA to keep presenting itself as broadly as it had. She wanted to be deliberate about the work it pursued.

So the job wasn’t to throw anything away. It was to decide what deserved the spotlight. Hum worked with Kirstie and the team to unpack the experience already inside the practice and find where its strongest commercial opportunities sat. Circular Design became the organising brand idea, giving language to the collaborative, iterative way KSA already worked. The broader experience stayed, supporting the business in the background. It just stopped competing for the front page.

Kirstie’s line says it better than any framework: “We always knew how we worked. We just didn’t have the language for it.”

That’s how most good positioning happens. The answer is already inside the building. It needs choosing, naming and getting out.

Give each candidate a fair trial

When there are several plausible leads, give each its own page and make it earn its place. Four questions do most of the work.

Who has a reason to act? “Manufacturers” is a category. “A plant manager with a shutdown booked and a modification that has to be finished before production restarts” is a situation you can recognise, price and win.

Why would they shortlist us? Write down proof a buyer can check: a comparable job, a reference who’ll talk about the handover, a method nobody else uses. “Highly experienced team” is a claim that needs proof of its own.

Do we want ten more of these? Ask whoever runs the schedule what ten more jobs like the last one would do to the margin and the team. The work that brings cash in fastest can still be a terrible thing to be known for.

What moves into second place? If nothing changes on the website, in the pitch or in the meetings you agree to take, you haven’t chosen.

Then take the two strongest candidates to people who buy or refer your work, one at a time. Ask when they’d call you and who they’d compare you with. Don’t ask which headline they like. A buyer can love every word and still give the job to someone else.

The homepage isn’t a seating plan

In bigger firms, moving a practice off the front page feels like a demotion, so nobody does it. Separate the jobs instead. The homepage helps a stranger decide whether to look closer. The capability pages help an interested buyer find the right specialist. Neither exists to settle internal status.

What to do on Monday

1. Ask three people who know your business well, a client, a referrer and a staff member, to finish one sentence: “Call them when…” Don’t prompt them.

2. Compare the answers. If you get three different businesses back, you’ve found the problem.

3. Put the owner, the person who sells the work and the person who delivers it in one room. Run the four questions on your top two candidates.

4. Write down what moves to second place, and change one thing this month to prove it: the homepage headline, the first slide of the pitch, or the work you say yes to.

5. Set a date one buying cycle out to check whether prospects are describing the work you chose.

Revisit the choice when the market or the margins move. Not when someone senior feels left out of the hero banner.

Sources & notes

• KSA Architects case study, Hum, including Kirstie Stewart’s quote

• The plant manager example is illustrative, not a client.

Continue with The best thing about your business never leaves the building. If you want a next step, see Hum’s fractional CMO page.