"Have you ever done work in the higher ed space?" She asked. 

"Well... the agency hasn't done work in higher ed yet, but I have worked with several higher ed clients prior to starting the firm." I replied.

I could tell that this VP of Marketing for a large regional university wasn't terribly convinced by my answer, and I honestly couldn't blame her. I wasn't lying, I had worked on several higher ed accounts, but it was several years prior, and it was in strictly a paid media capacity (I was the Director of Paid Media for a prominent local agency).

We were an upstart agency, pitching an all-encompassing marketing engagement across several practice areas (content, paid media, SEO) and while we had come recommended to this prospective client, us being a relatively unknown upstart was a risky bet for this VP. At the end of the day, client's don't buy generic expertise; they buy specific, recent, contextually relevant judgement that they feel confident will drive results.

Why specificity matters (the client’s risk math)

Clients look at specificity as proof of competence. If you can clearly show that you have solved the same or similar problem for the same or similar business, they will assume that you can do it again. If you have done it several times, they will be even more confident. Dozens of times? Even better.

This doesn't mean that there isn't any value in cross-polination from other industries - there definitely is. But cross-polination only happens when you have seen enough on both sides so you are able to pattern match. But if you've never been in their shoes, never seen what they see, and never dealt with what they are dealing with, you don't have a baseline for that pattern matching. And your prospective clients know that. 

They know when you are stretching to connect the dots. They know this because you aren't able to ask the contextually relevant, nuanced questions they expect. Contextual relevance reduces risk. It signals you’ve solved this kind of problem for this kind of company under these constraints. Let's say you are an emerging biotech startup coming out of stealth mode, looking for life sciences management consulting firm to help you launch and commercialize:

• ICP fit: would you work with a general management consulting firm that's worked with a few biopharma companies in the past, amongst many other industries, or with a firm that specifically works with emerging biopharma and nothing else?
• Situation fit: would you work with a firm that deals with biopharma at all stages, or a firm that specializes in first-time launches in new theraputic areas? 
• Stakeholder fit: would you work with a firm that's used to working with enterprise pharma executives, or one that really understands how to help enterprise executives thrive in the startup environment?
• Regulatory context fit: would you work with a firm that's used to working with enterprise pharma that has access to lobbying, or a firm a firm that's used to helping emerging biotechs navigate the rapidly changing regulatory landscape?

Why recency matters (the half-life of expertise)

If specificity is proof of competence, then recency is a marker of confidence. Markets, tools, and norms change fast. What worked a year ago may be wrong now. Recency is proof that your frameworks, playbooks, and mental models are updated to today's environment.

Let's keep going with our life sciences example. If the firm you are considering hasn't updated their launch playbooks to adapt to the Favored-Nation Prescription Drug pricing executive order that was signed in May, then whatever they are recommending is likely to miss the mark. Showing old wins when the context has changed is a red flag.

In football, you don’t hire a coordinator because they once ran a West Coast offense. You hire the one with last week’s game tape beating the defense you’ll face on Sunday. Specificity: their offensive scheme fits your roster and the head coaches culture. Recency: it worked against today’s bitter rivals.

The positioning impact (make the invisible visible)

Positioning is how you want your ideal clients to see you, in the market you serve, in relation to other firms. And to be seen in a particular way requires you to make some bets and take some specific actions - like solving a particular set of problems for a niche client set. This means that positioning is a wrapper for specificity and recency. 

Consider converting vague claims, to specific ones. Not "digital transformation for legacy enterprise businesses" to "Helping IT leaders in complex, compliance-heavy organizations unlock speed, agility, and growth by evolving from project-driven overload to product-driven focus." And then ensure that your services and related case studies reflect this.

The buyer’s de-risking checklist (what they look for, explicitly)

Your clients are looking for confidence in your competence. They are looking to de-risk their buying decision, because the cost of getting it wrong is simply too high. As your ideal clients evaluate options, they will likely look for the following:

• Same-problem, same-context proof in the last 6–12 months.They want to know that you have solved their problem, or a similar one in a similar context, before.
• Concrete artifacts: before/after operating model maps, playbooks with timestamps, updated partner ecosystem, current tool fluency. 
• Evidence you understand their constraints: margin targets, discount structure, union rules, data privacy, regulatory timelines. They will expect you to ask them questions that show this understanding. 
• Current stack fluency: Screenshots, integration diagrams, partner badges. They want to know that they can easily plug you into their way of working, and will likely ask questions like "what's your experience with XYZ platform?"
• Constraint literacy: How you hit margin targets, discounting structures, regulatory timelines. They want to know that you can work within these constraints.

How to sharpen specificity

Identify the specific problems you are best at solving, and for who. Create a simple matrix that has ICP segments across the top and problems solved along the side. Use your historical project data to identify the problems and segments where you have delivered the best work and where you have seen the best financial results (revenue and profit). Narrow it down to no more than 1 - 2 "money situations" where you have have a recent track record.

Use this matrix as an input into your positioning work.

Related reading:

• Do You Really Have an ICP?
• The 4 Questions: A Framework to De-Risk Your Business

How to refresh recency  

Once you have decided to appropriately niche down, having enough recent and specific work won't be a problem. The problem will be keeping your marketing and business development materials up-to-date. Here are some things you can do to help with that:

• Build a “recency layer” into delivery: quarterly playbook reviews, tool audits, vendor briefings. This should be part of your regular QBR and project post-mortem processes.
• Ship dated assets: “2025 Field Guide,” “Q3 Survey Data”. Case studies that are no more than a year old.
• Create a rolling “Last 10” page: the last ten projects, summarized in 3 lines, anonymized if needed. For example, for a staffing firm, this would be the last 10 roles that were placed. For a digital transformation firm, this would be the last 10 transformations that were completed. For a tax advisory firm, this would be the last tax savings for the last 10 clients.
• If you really believe that your case studies from a few years ago are just as relevant today as they were then, simply remove any time stamps or dates. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. And that's ok.
  
  That said, you should always be looking to generate new case studies, even if the old ones are technically still fine. The process of getting developing them can create another valuable touchpoint for your client, where you get real feedback.

Common traps (and how to avoid them)

• Your laundry list of sectors or industries isn't helping you if you are a boutique firm. Unless you have both specificity and recency in each of the ones you have listed; unless you consistently deliver great results for each; unless you consistently have adequate project profitability for each; unless all of these things are true, you probably need to pare things down.
• Your logo scroller and logo slide in your sales deck aren't doing you any favors either. Everyone knows that half of these clients you haven't worked with in years. You aren't fooling anyone. You are better off having anonymous case studies without a logo or a name, than with a giant list of logos that nobody really believes.
• Your “proven process” centerpiece is probably not all it's cracked up to be, unless of course it is. But if it isn't, avoid talking about it completely and instead focus on highlighting the specific situations you solve now.

Leadership & operating implications

The ability to show both recency and specificity won't happen on their own. Founders need to step up and choose depth over breadth. That means leaning how, and being comfortable with, saying "no" to projects outside of your core competency and clients outside of your core ICP. Of course, you need to balance this with the need to have strong cash flow. If you need to take on clients or projects that don't help with this to meet payroll, that's ok. Though this should be a last resort rather than a rule, and if you find this to be a consistent issue, where you aren't able to attract your ideal clients, then you have an entirely different problem to solve. 

Organizationally, you need to ensure there is alignment on what ideal clients look like, on getting more of them, and on evangelizing their successes. This means developing an incentive structure that rewards saying "yes" to the right work. Business development and delivery teams need to co-own collecting case studies and testimonials, and ensuring that the most up-to-date ones are available.

While your positioning may shift a bit over time, your messaging can and should evolve with the market much more frequently. It's a good cadence to be in where messaging is reviewed on a quarterly basis against qualitative and quantitative data. The segments where you are seeing success, and the way clients are talking about their problems, may change based on market shifts. As these changes happen, make sure that your case studies, website messaging, and sales decks are being updated accordingly.

The hard truth

If your expertise isn’t specific and recent, it’s not credible. And in consulting, credibility is everything.

If you want some help thinking and working through this for your firm, now is a good time to book a Focus Session as they are 20% off through the month of September.

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