Grow Beyond Founder-Led Sales. Position Your Firm to Win.
Pressure-test your positioning foundation in one sitting
Compare the three strategies for entering or repositioning a market
Decide which strategy your firm can actually win — and what has to be proven first
Before anything is built, the positioning has to work. Strategy is not a document. It is proof.
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Built for Firms at the Ceiling of Founder-Led Growth
✓ This Is For You If
- You lead a B2B professional services firm doing $2M–$25M in revenue
- Growth has flattened or gotten lumpier despite strong delivery
- Most new business still comes from the founder or one or two rainmakers
- Marketing feels expensive, inconsistent, or impossible to measure
- You can describe what you do, but struggle to explain why a buyer would choose you over an incumbent
✕ This Isn’t For You If
- You’re pre-revenue and still validating the service itself
- You’re a product company, agency-of-record, or e-commerce brand
- Your firm is 200+ people with a mature strategy function in place
- You’re looking for tactical playbooks — ads, SEO, outbound, content
Three Parts. One Strategic Decision.
The worksheet mirrors the sequence we use with consulting clients — foundation first, strategy second, trade-offs made explicit.
Positioning Foundation
Five questions that surface the raw material every positioning strategy is built on. If any can’t be answered confidently, that’s the work that has to happen first.
- —Who your ideal client actually is
- —The problem, in the buyer’s language
- —What you’re truly competing against
- —What makes you a better option
- —Why that advantage matters to them
Market Positioning Strategy
The three strategic paths available to a professional services firm and a structured exercise to pick the one your firm can win from where it sits today.
- —Which strategy fits your firm today
- —Where you want to be in 3–5 years
- —What has to be proven first
Strategy Comparison
A side-by-side look at the advantages and trade-offs of each strategy so the decision is made with full visibility into what you’re choosing and choosing against.
- —Advantages of each path
- —Risks and trade-offs, made explicit
- —Sequencing notes — how firms graduate between strategies
Pick a Position That Can Be Won, Not Just Occupied
Head-to-Head
Compete directly against established market leaders on the same playing field. The fastest path to revenue, but without a demonstrable reason for the buyer to switch, it becomes a resource war that favors the incumbent.
Niche Submarket
Carve out a defined segment of a broader market and serve it with specialization generalists can’t match. “Big fish, small pond.” The most common right answer for most firms, but the ceiling is real.
New Category Creation
Define and own an entirely new market category. The highest ceiling and the longest timeline. Category creators become the default, but education costs are real and traction lags effort.
Positioning that has not been validated with real buyers is a hypothesis, not a strategy.
Miles Kailburn, Founder/CEO of OTM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTM is a marketing consultancy that helps professional services firms define their strategy, align their team, and build a scalable growth engine that attracts, engages, and converts. This worksheet is drawn directly from the positioning work we do with firms inside the OTM Path to Growth®.
meetotm.com · Fort Collins, CO
Questions, Answered
How long does this actually take to complete?
About 45 minutes if you work through it alone. Ninety if you involve your leadership team, which we recommend. The disagreements that surface between you, a co-founder, and your head of sales are usually where the real positioning insight lives.
Is this really free? What's the catch?
No catch. The worksheet is genuinely free and doesn’t require a credit card or a call. It’s excerpted from work we already do with consulting clients. We’ve found that firms who complete it on their own get real value, and a small number reach out when they want help operationalizing what comes out of it.
What if we can't answer the Part 1 questions confidently?
That’s the most common outcome, and it’s diagnostic, not a failure. If Part 1 reveals shaky ground, that’s the real work that needs to happen first, before any positioning strategy is chosen. The worksheet is designed to surface exactly that.
Will you try to sell me something after I download?
You’ll get one email with the PDF attached, and an occasional note on professional services growth. If you want to talk to us about a 30-minute consultation, there’s a link in the worksheet itself, but we don’t chase. One click unsubscribes you entirely.
How is this different from a generic positioning framework?
Most positioning frameworks are built for product companies or early-stage startups, and they don’t translate cleanly to professional services. This one is built specifically for firms selling expertise, where the buyer, the competitive set, and the economics are different, and where founder-led sales is the usual first growth ceiling.
Do the Work. Prove the Strategy.
The worksheet is the first step. What comes next is testing the positioning with real buyers. A strategy that hasn’t been validated is still a hypothesis.