The Ten-Minute Window

Picture this.

You've just finished a strong call with a VP of Revenue. The conversation was intelligent. You diagnosed well. You reframed the issue. You saw the moment when they leaned forward and said, "Yes, that's exactly what we're dealing with."

They end the call energized.

Then the window opens.

Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. That's how long your offer has to survive without you - before your positioning either gets shared or dies quietly in a hallway you'll never see.

The CFO asks: "Remind me again, what exactly do they do?"

There's a pause.

"They can help us with strategy." "They do commercial transformation." "They'll customize the approach to deal with our situation."

None of those statements are wrong. But none of them travel. And that's the moment the project quietly stalls.

Now imagine a different scenario.

Same VP. Same energized call. But this time, when the CFO asks what you do, the answer is:

"They run a 6-week pipeline reset for $20M-$100M B2B SaaS companies when inbound conversion drops below 10%… just like us."

The CFO nods. "Well, that’s relevant. Set up a meeting."

The difference? The second answer survived the window.

If what you do cannot be clearly repeated by someone who isn't you, it doesn't move inside an organization or across a network. And if it doesn't move, you don't get hired.

This essay is about how to design positioning that travels, and the specific tests you can use to know whether yours will.

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Positioning = Transmission

Early-stage consultancies think they need a more polished narrative. They assume the answer is better content, tighter storytelling, more persuasive decks. That’s never the case.

The real constraint is simpler: Can someone remember and repeat what you do, for whom, and when?

Only you can try to convince and persuade prospects. But anyone can describe your work to others - a past colleague, a client, an acquaintance - and put you in front of someone who just entered the market and will see you as an obvious choice.

Positioning is not performance. It’s transmission.

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Why Smart Founders Build Fragile Positioning

All of the early-stage consultancies I worked with are founded by people who were rewarded for nuance.

They were senior operators. Transformation leads. Strategy directors. Experts inside complex environments where every situation was different, oversimplification was dangerous, and "it depends" was the only honest answer.

That mindset is an asset in delivery. But it becomes a liability when you’re positioning and bringing your services to market.

Markets do not optimize for nuance. They optimize for recognition.

If your explanation requires context, caveats, and careful qualification, it may be intellectually accurate - but it leads to a commercial dead end. You're delegating the work of clarifying how you can be of help to the listener. They have enough on their minds already.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

A consultant tells me: "We do organizational transformation, but every client is different. Sometimes it's culture, sometimes it's process, sometimes it's leadership alignment. We adapt."

I ask: "When should someone call you?"

Long pause. "When they're ready for change."

Well, that's not positioning. That's a horoscope. People remember what they can slot into a clear box. Nuance rarely has a box.

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You're Not Dumbing Down

Think of it like designing a house. You can have multiple rooms, where you help clients solve different problems. But if you want people to find you, you need one entry door they can easily find and knock on.

That's what the relay problem is really about. You are not narrowing your expertise. You are narrowing your entry point.

Buyers don’t need to understand your full methodology to decide whether a conversation is worth it. They need to recognize themselves in your description. It needs to be obvious why and when you can be of help.

Make the "what" obvious. Keep the "how" sophisticated.

Once hired, nuance returns. You'll adapt to the client's situation, bring judgment to bear, customize the engagement. And once inside, most engagements naturally expand.

Clarity buys you the room for nuance, not the other way around.

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The Trigger Is the Position

Companies do not wake up thinking: "We need consulting."

They wake up thinking:

• "Pipeline growth has flattened."
• "Renewals are quietly dropping."
• "We just reorganized and leadership is misaligned."
• "Production scale has broken our delivery cadence."
• "Fundraising stalled after the last board meeting."

People do not search for services. They search for relief.

If your positioning is built around capabilities instead of situations, you are forcing the market to do extra work. Extra work rarely happens.

The most reliable way to become retrievable is to anchor yourself to a recognizable trigger. Not a generic capability. Not a broad ambition. A moment.

For example:

• "When B2B SaaS companies cross $20M and inbound conversion drops below 10%, we run a 6-week pipeline reset to rebuild ICP, sequences, and manager cadence."
• "When private healthcare clinics struggle with no-shows above 15%, we redesign scheduling systems to recover lost capacity."
• "When mid-sized manufacturers miss delivery SLAs after scaling production, we rebuild operational cadence to stabilize throughput."
• "When professional services firms hit 50+ employees and utilization drops below 70%, we redesign resource allocation to recover billable capacity."
• "When nonprofits hit a fundraising plateau after leadership transition, we rebuild donor segmentation and board reporting rhythm."

Each sentence answers one core question: When should someone think of you?

If the answer to that question is unclear, you have a relay problem.

Notice the structure each of these sentences follows:

When [ICP] hits [trigger], we [duration + action] to improve [metric].

I call this the Safe Sentence Formula. It's not a tagline. I like to think of it as a transmission protocol, or the simplest test of whether your positioning can travel without you.

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Choosing the Right Trigger

"But we see multiple problems."

Of course you do. Most consultancies can help across several domains.

The issue isn't capability breadth. It's entry-point clarity.

When selecting a trigger to anchor your positioning, prioritize the one that is:

1. Frequent in your target market.
2. Painful enough to demand action.
3. Owned by a clear budget holder.
4. Tied to a measurable business outcome.
5. Costing the organization money now.

If the trigger is rare, abstract, or owned by no one in particular, it will not generate consistent retrieval.

Now, a few questions I got after sharing the first version of this essay:

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How to measure "frequent"?

Here's a simple test: In a sample of 100 target accounts, how many would encounter this trigger within a 12-month period?

If the answer is fewer than 10, your trigger is too rare for early-stage firms. You'll spend too much time waiting for the market to come to you.

(Exception: If you're in an acute, crisis-driven space. More on that below.)

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How to identify who "owns" the budget?

Look for the executive who gets measured on the outcome your work improves.

• Stalled pipeline → CRO or VP Revenue
• Manufacturing throughput → COO or VP Operations
• Utilization drop → Managing Partner or COO

If the trigger creates pain for multiple executives but no single owner, it's a coordination tax. Your champion will have to build internal consensus before hiring you. That's friction.

(Here’s a rule of thumb: Can they pilot your work without committee approval? If yes, clear owner. If no, that’s diffuse ownership.)

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What if I have multiple valuable triggers?

Test them. Run two positioning experiments in parallel, with different market segments, so you're not sending mixed signals to the same audience:

• Track which trigger generates more qualified inbound.
• Monitor which one converts faster in conversations.
• Measure which produces stronger referral velocity.

After 90 days, commit to the winner. Yes, you’ll need to invest more time and energy in marketing than you’d naturally would. But it’s really worth it.

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What if my trigger is infrequent but high-value?

You can either find a more frequent symptom of the same underlying problem, or accept that you're selling what I call "acute services". Turnaround work, crisis comms, breach response. Rare, irregular, and usually urgent.

If you're choosing that path, you'll need a non-conventional go-to-market strategy (I cover the logic in detail here). But in short: acute boutiques grow through a small set of proximity partners who see the crisis first, so strategic partnerships end up complementing referrals.

Chances are you can find a more frequent symptom of the same underlying problem, though, but haven't invested the time to look yet. If that's the case, do it this week.

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The Political Mechanics of Internal Relay

The relay metaphor becomes even more important if your consultancy serves the mid market or large organizations. Inside an organization, clarity is political.

Your internal champion (whoever your point of contact is) is not rewarded for sounding smart or repeating a rehearsed pitch. They're measured on how well they can justify the spend. They earn credit for picking the explainable, low-risk option. They will always choose inertia over putting their reputation on the line.

They need a Safe Sentence. Something they can say that:

• Sounds like a known budget line item.
• References a recognizable business tension.
• Implies contained scope, and points to a metric executives already track.

Compare:

"They rethink commercial architecture."

Versus:

"They run a 6-week reset to fix stalled inbound conversion."

The second sentence is safer.

It references a familiar tension (stalled conversion). It implies duration (6 weeks). It suggests a predetermined scope. It feels actionable.

A safe sentence reduces the perceived risk of sponsorship.

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The Political Defensibility Checklist

Before you finalize your Safe Sentence, test it against these four questions:

1. Budget line item: Does this sound like something with precedent? ("Sales process optimization" beats "growth architecture redesign.")
2. Business tension: Is this a problem executives already discuss? (Check their earnings calls, board decks, all-hands.)
3. Contained scope: Can they imagine when it starts and stops? (6 weeks beats "phased transformation.")
4. Tracked metric: Do they already measure this? (Conversion rate beats "commercial maturity.")

If your positioning forces your champion to improvise under scrutiny, you've introduced friction. Friction accumulates. Under pressure, people default to what is easy to explain.

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Two Growth Physics

This is why the Safe Sentence matters more for early-stage boutiques than for established firms.

Large firms grow through brand gravity. Someone mentions "digital transformation for healthcare" and three big names come to mind. Their reputation does the relay work.

Early-stage consultancies find traction through relationship activation and narrow inbound - referrals and strategic introductions, not recognition. That distinction changes the physics of growth entirely.

To introduce you, someone must know what problem you solve, for whom, in what situation, with what outcome.

If they hesitate while explaining you, they will hesitate before making the introduction. People do not refer nuance. They refer clarity.

There is a difference between:

"They're incredibly smart."

And:

"You should talk to them. They help companies like ours fix stalled pipeline after Series A."

The second sentence moves pipeline. The first sentence only flatters the founder.

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The 30-Second Relay Test

There is a simple way to evaluate your positioning.

Imagine someone who knows your firm reasonably well. A former client, a peer, a friendly operator. Ask them: "What do we actually do?"

If their answer contains a specific situation, a specific type of company, and a tangible outcome, you likely pass.

If it contains broad capability language, abstract ambition, or words like "transformation," "enablement," or "strategy" without context, you likely fail.

Passing does not require perfection. It requires clarity under compression.

Here's how to run the test properly:

1. Send your one-sentence positioning to five people outside your firm.
2. Wait 24 hours.
3. Ask them to repeat it back from memory.
4. Don't correct them. Just listen.

What survives reveals your relay survivability. What degrades reveals what you need to fix. You are only ready to scale referrals when they recall all three elements: (1) situation, (2) ICP, and (3) outcome correctly.

(One note: Don't overfit to five similar people. If they're all in the same network or share your jargon, their recall won't predict how prospects will remember you. Choose a mix.)

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Language That Travels

Consultants often use language that feels precise within their circle but awkward outside it.

Words like: Commercial architecture. Strategic enablement. Organizational uplift. Holistic transformation.

This should be obvious, but unfortunately consultancy founders still forget it. The market does not speak in frameworks. It speaks in symptoms.

Instead of "revenue enablement transformation", try "helping sales teams convert more of what marketing already generates."

Instead of "operational capability enhancement", try: "stabilizing delivery after rapid scale."

If your language feels impressive but uncomfortable to repeat aloud, it won't travel. People need to hear it once and say it back.

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What Happens When the Relay Works

I worked with a cybersecurity consultancy that repositioned from "enterprise security advisory" to "breach readiness assessments for mid-market healthcare companies failing SOC 2 audits."

Before: 15 intro calls per month. 2-3 proposals. 1 close every 8 weeks.

After: 10 intro calls per month. 5 proposals. 2 closes every 6 weeks.

They talked to fewer people. They closed more deals.

Why? Conversations started differently. First calls shifted from "Tell me about your security practice" to "We just failed our SOC 2 audit for the second time. Where do you typically find the gaps?"

• Instead of: "So what exactly do you do?", they heard: "We've been dealing with exactly that."
• Instead of: "I'm not sure where you fit", they heard: "That's actually something our compliance team has been flagging."
• Instead of: "Let's stay in touch", they heard: "You should speak to our CTO."

(Usual disclaimer: This isn't a controlled study. We also made changes to pricing, messaging, how they activate their network. But the pattern is consistent across firms that tighten positioning: fewer conversations, faster conversions.)

Clarity does not guarantee conversion. But without clarity, conversion rarely begins.

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The Downstream Effect

Clarity compounds.

When your positioning is repeatable:

• Referrals increase.
• Conversations narrow faster.
• Proposals become tighter (you're not explaining what you do every time).
• Qualification improves (poor fit prospects self-select out).

Founder dependency also reduces. Not because you engineered scale, but because your offer can circulate without you narrating it every time.

I'm not promising this solves every growth problem. It doesn't. But it removes one critical bottleneck: the inability to be remembered. And retrieval is a serious constraint most early-stage consultancies don't realize they have.

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When Triggers Don't Exist

One objection we haven't addressed:

"What if we're creating a new category? What if there's no existing trigger because buyers don't know this problem exists yet?"

Fair question. Category creation is real (although I never recommend it as a path for first-time founders). Sometimes you are naming a problem that has no existing language.

But even in category creation, you don't start with abstraction. You start with symptoms buyers already feel.

Take "revenue operations" as a category. Early RevOps consultants didn't lead with "We build revenue operations functions." They led with symptoms:

• "Sales and marketing blame each other for pipeline gaps."
• "Your CRM data is a mess and nobody trusts the forecast."
• "Reps spend more time on admin than selling."

The trigger wasn't "hire RevOps." The trigger was "these three things are broken and nobody owns fixing them."

Once you've earned trust through symptom-based positioning, then you can introduce the category language. But leading with it is commercial suicide.

If you're in true category-creation mode, your job is to:

1. Anchor to the clearest existing symptom (even if it's just a piece of what you solve).
2. Use that symptom to start conversations.
3. Earn the right to name the category from inside the room.

The relay still applies. You just need to find the recognizable pain point that gets you in the door.

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Speaking With Buying Committees

Enterprise deals often involve multiple stakeholders with different concerns. CFO cares about cost. CRO cares about pipeline. COO cares about execution.

You don't need separate positioning for each. You need a primary trigger that one person owns, plus some credible coverage of adjacent symptoms.

Example: "We rebuild go-to-market for SaaS companies stalling post-Series B" (owned by CEO/CRO) + "which typically includes fixing pipeline attribution, realigning comp plans, and tightening sales-to-CS handoffs" (covers CFO and COO concerns).

The safe sentence gets you in. The adjacent symptoms keep other stakeholders from blocking.

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One Insight to Take Home

There are many reasons early-stage consultancies struggle to find commercial traction. But in my experience, it's rarely about lack of expertise.

Most often, they stall because their expertise is not anchored to a recognizable situation.

Positioning is not about being impressive, clever, or convincing. If you want to become someone's go-to option - the obvious choice when a specific problem surfaces - your first goal is to make your message retrievable.

If people cannot clearly say when to call you, they won't. And if your sentence cannot survive being repeated by someone who isn't you, you will not be in the room when decisions are made.

That's the relay. Design for it.

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Run Your Own Relay Test This Week

Your Safe Sentence draft:

"When [ICP] hits [trigger], we [duration + action] to improve [metric]."

________________________________

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Budget owner for this problem:

________________________________

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24-Hour Relay Test: Send to 5 people, wait 24 hours, ask for recall:

• Did they remember the situation? (Y/N)
• Did they remember the ICP? (Y/N)
• Did they remember the outcome? (Y/N)

All three? You're ready to circulate. Missing any? That's what to fix.