Pemberley No. 14
Where the argument on selling expertise moved
Six picks for a consultant building an authority practice: what strategy actually is, why hours are the wrong unit, and how a position gets chosen.
In your niche this week
What you actually sell
The oldest argument in professional services, back in rotation as AI makes deliverables cheap.
- KalzumeusDon’t Call Yourself A Programmer makes the case that you are hired for business outcomes, not hours at a keyboard.
- aprildunford.comPositioning vs Strategy vs Vision separates the three words your services page keeps blurring together.
Saying it in public
The voices in your orbit on why visibility is part of the work.
- The Business of AuthorityIn Defense of Repetition on saying your thing again and again until the market hears it.
Pick of the week
What Is Strategy?
Michael Porter · Harvard Business Review
The 1996 essay under every positioning decision you will ever make. Porter separates operational effectiveness (doing the same things better) from strategy (choosing different things, and accepting the trade-offs). For a practice of one it reads almost like a worksheet: what your services page refuses to offer is the strategy.
Open OriginalPick 2
The Win Without Pitching Manifesto
Blair Enns · Win Without Pitching
Twelve proclamations on selling expertise from a position of power, readable in full online. Enns starts where most practices stall: the generalist who pitches free thinking to buyers who hold the upper hand. Specialize, and the dynamic inverts. The founding text of the expertise-first business development school.
Open OriginalPick 3
A Quickstart Guide to Positioning
April Dunford · aprildunford.com
Her Obviously Awesome method, compressed to a working guide: start from the alternatives your buyers actually compare you to, isolate what only you have, and map it to the segment that cares most. Written for products; transfers to an advisory practice with almost no translation.
Open OriginalPick 4
Hourly Billing Is Nuts
Jonathan Stark · jonathanstark.com
The book-length version of Stark’s drumbeat: selling time punishes your own efficiency, caps your upside, and puts you across the table from your client on every invoice. Value pricing is the exit. Read it before your next proposal, if only to know exactly which side of the argument you are on.
Open OriginalPick 5
1,000 True Fans
Kevin Kelly · The Technium
The smallest viable audience, stated plainly: a thousand people who will buy anything you make. An advisory practice runs on far fewer, which is the comfort of the piece; you do not need to be famous, you need to be the known name to a small, well-chosen room.
Open OriginalPick 6 · Podcast
The 5 Things That Happen Right After You Specialize
Jonathan Stark and Rochelle Moulton · The Business of Authority · with David C. Baker
Baker on the stretch nobody writes about: the first months after you narrow the practice, when the fear is loudest and the referrals have not caught up yet. A candid map of what changes, in what order, from the author of The Business of Expertise.
Listen to the episodeIn the wider conversation this week
The Atlantic
Stewart’s case against consulting’s scientific pretensions. The argument your practice has to survive.
Watching: The consulting business model · Harvard Business Review
Christensen on why solid firms unravel as modular offerings pick off the work. A decade and change on, it reads as the AI chapter’s prologue.
Content ideas
Where the week meets your work: starting points for your next piece.
Positioning
Porter’s trade-offs, run for a practice of one: the services you refuse to offer are the strategy. Audit your own page against it.
Prompted by Harvard Business Review
Pricing
The retainer after hourly: what scoping outcomes instead of hours does to the renewal conversation. Stark’s argument, tested against your last three engagements.
Prompted by jonathanstark.com