The Commercial Strategy Map

Can the market quickly understand what you are genuinely the right firm for?

Working a client can describe your firm back to you almost word for word, and your best proof is doing active selling somewhere, not sitting quietly on a page nobody opens.

Drifting your positioning reads like every other consultancy's, clients discover your specialism by accident, and your strongest case study is buried three clicks deep.

This usually isn't a marketing problem, it's a decision problem. Most founders can list ten things their firm is good at, which is exactly why the market can't tell what it's for. Position on everything and clients default to comparing you on the one thing that's easy to compare: fee. Firms that get found for the right reasons made a call, on purpose, to be known for less.

• Position
• Message
• Audience
• Proof story

Do you understand, and can you prove, the true value your business creates?

Working you can quantify impact beyond placements made; clients recognise the depth, not just the outcome.

Drifting value is described only in placement or fee terms; the deeper commercial impact is never actually measured.

Founders often undersell their own value because they've never had to prove it, contingent recruitment rarely asks you to. But once you can name the real commercial impact of the work, pricing conversations change shape entirely.

• True value
• Impact

Does the way you sell prove the claim you make in the market, across every channel, not just one?

Working BD doesn't depend on one person, senior conversations feel like consultancy rather than order-taking, and there's a visible rhythm across the channels that actually bring in work.

Drifting most new business still runs through the founder's little black book, the team can source but not sell, and whichever channels exist happen almost by accident.

This is rarely a lead-generation problem, most firms already have more channels open than they properly run. The real gap is usually rhythm: outbound that starts strong and quietly dies, referral relationships never asked for a next one, expansion conversations that only happen when a contract's about to lapse. Channels don't fail from a lack of ideas, they fail from a lack of a repeatable cadence.

• Inbound
• Outbound (proactive + reactive)
• Expansion & reactivation
• Partner channel

Are you paid for the value you create, or only for the recruitment output the market already knows how to buy?

Working retainers are a normal, comfortable conversation, senior or complex work is priced differently, and margin reflects the thinking given away, not just the placement made.

Drifting every fee conversation starts from the market rate, value-based pricing is something you've talked about but never actually done.

Underpricing rarely looks like underpricing from the inside, it looks like being 'competitive,' or 'easy to work with.' But a fee conversation that starts from the market rate is a vote for being interchangeable before you've said a word. Firms that get paid for value made that decision earlier in the relationship, by pricing the outcome rather than the placement.

• Pricing
• Product structure
• Ecosystem
• Consultancy shift