Why narrow positioning earns more than broad positioning

Most experts describe what they do in the broadest terms they can manage. “I help businesses improve operations.” “I work with leaders on growth.” The instinct behind this is to keep options open and turn away as little work as possible. The instinct is wrong, and it’s expensive.

A broad description makes you comparable. The moment a buyer can line you up against ten other people who say roughly the same thing, the only variable left to compare is price. Broad positioning doesn’t protect your pipeline. It quietly commits you to competing on rate.

Compare two ways of saying the same expertise. The first: “I help SaaS companies with retention.” The second: “I help Series A SaaS companies cut customer churn from 15 percent to under 10 percent within six months.” A founder living that exact problem reads the second one and thinks, this person is for me. Nobody has that reaction to the first.

Specificity creates pricing power because it creates scarcity. Price is set by competition. When you serve everyone, you compete with everyone, and abundant supply pushes your number down. When you serve a narrow, clearly defined buyer with a clearly defined problem, you compete with very few people, sometimes with no one, and that scarcity is what lets you hold a premium.

The fear is always the same. Narrowing turns work away. It does, and that’s the point. A positioning statement that excludes nobody includes nobody in any way that matters. Exclusion is what gives inclusion its meaning. The buyer who feels precisely understood is created by all the buyers you chose not to address.

The principle holds across the field, with a small adjustment by type of practice. Coaches should position around a specific moment rather than a vague promise of breakthrough, because every coach promises breakthrough. “I help technical founders through their first year as CEO” names a real, emotionally loaded transition. Fractional executives should position around an inflection point, not a part-time role. “I prepare B2B SaaS companies for Series A financial due diligence” makes you indispensable in a way that “fractional CFO” never will.

Positioning is the first move in the VALUE framework, the V, and it comes first for a reason. Value conversations and tiered pricing both depend on the client already understanding why you, specifically, are the person to talk to. Get the positioning wrong and everything downstream gets harder.

Sell Destinations, Not Journeys includes a positioning worksheet that turns a generic description into something a buyer self-selects into. See the book