Harshal

Jun 224 min read

Trials Of Defining Niche, Persona, And Sales Motion For My Consulting Business

A Self-Disclosure Of My Steps, Trials, And Frameworks

If you are building a startup or a consulting practice, you’ve heard the importance of knowing your niche, positioning, and go-to-market plan. A salesperson will first ask you, “Who is your ICP?”

Initially, I didn’t know what an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) meant. Now, I understand its meaning, but I still struggle to define my ICP.

I share my attempts at identifying these for my consulting business as of Q2 2024. In a later post, I will discuss the challenges faced and potential next steps.

I spent 3 hours and 29 minutes writing this series of 3 posts. You will need 4 minutes to read this post.

Defining A Consulting Niche Or Positioning

I used tips from David Fields’ book to research the market to identify my niche.

Writing case studies from client projects helped me identify my value and marketable skills. I defined my niche as:

I help B2B SaaS companies grow their revenue by guiding their content marketing strategy.

I prepared 3 versions of introductory pitches: concise, short, and long. The long pitch includes the above niche and the below text:

For example, I helped a SaaS company grow its revenue by 30% via a content marketing strategy. I redesigned the website for a B2B company and recommended an eCommerce marketplace plan to target 18% revenue growth.

Taking a step back, I started working in tech 12 years ago, including at Twilio and Cisco in San Francisco and Ireland. I worked at Twilio during its 10x growth from 800 to 8,000 employees. This enabled me to do many projects in getting and retaining customers. For example, I increased customer retention by reducing support requests by 40%.

Sales For Nerds’ Positioning Framework From Mimiran

I listen to the Sales for Nerds podcast by Reuben Swartz, who also has a CRM for consultants, Mimiran. I used the following framework to identify my positioning. It was a difficult process.

Positioning

My ideal prospect is:
Prospects seem good but are actually a bad fit if:
I’m different than my prospects’ typical options because:
My larger mission, my “dent in the universe” is:
My success metric for that mission is:
By the date:
My biggest challenge is:

About Me

I got into this field because:
For fun, I like to:

Defining Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

I defined my Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) as B2B SaaS companies and the below criteria.

Roles and seniority:

Message VP and above roles in functions except for product management or engineering.
Message director and above roles in marketing.
Message Product management or engineering VP and above leadership roles only if close.
Message any C-level, especially sales or marketing.

Connectivity:

1st-degree connections.

Company Type:

Not a FAANG type of large tech company.
eBay etc. is fine.
If a startup, then at least series A and 3 years old or more. Else bootstrapped and 3 years or more.

Establishing Sales Motion

I created a standard outreach template:

Hi Jane,

It’s been a while since {joint experience at work or university}.

Great to see your updates about {from LinkedIn posts or profile description}. I see you are now in roleX at CompanyX.

I would love to catch up with you and hear how things are going.

Would you be open to a quick virtual chat next week?

I found some resources and individual feedback helpful in creating the template. Resources:

I spoke with and received feedback from friends and experts, who were incredibly helpful. Here are a few of them in alphabetical order: Jodi at Consulting Success, Jane Moran, Leena Nair, Mahesh Deshpande, Monica Misra, Prabhat Dutta, Russell Cooper, Tash Taj, and Tejas Kotecha.

Book Yourself Solid’s Framework For Positioning

I found a framework from Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid book to help me find my consulting positioning. I used it to think through my positioning. Using it made me realize I did not have the right positioning yet.

Book Yourself Solid’s module 1 helps identify your positioning.

Illustration from BYS Illustrated. Written Exercise:

Part I: Introduce your target market.
Part II: Identify and summarize the three biggest and most critical problems that your target market faces.
Part III: List how you solve these problems and present clients with investable opportunities.
Part IV: Demonstrate the number-one most relevant result you help your clients achieve.
Part V: Reveal the deeper core benefits your clients experience.

Handling Objections

I prepared answers for the FAQs below based on my conversations and by taking input from ChatGPT. I created a virtual co-founder in chatGPT to be a sounding board.

FAQs:

Can you help a startup?
Why did you start consulting?
What is your consulting experience?
How do you approach identifying customer insights that are not immediately obvious?
In your experience, what are the most common challenges companies face when trying to implement a content marketing strategy?
Considering the rapid changes in digital marketing and SaaS, how do you stay updated with the latest trends and technologies to ensure your strategies remain effective? OR How do you keep your strategies and insights up-to-date and ahead of market trends?
How do you differentiate your approach from others in the market?
Achieving such growth numbers is remarkable, but how sustainable are these strategies in the long term?
Considering your background is heavily in product management, how have you adapted your skills to focus on growth marketing and strategy?
How do you tailor your approach to fit each client's specific needs and challenges?

Challenges And Next Steps

I faced many challenges in defining my consulting business’ product-market fit or GTM strategy. I’ve shared my challenges here: Challenges In Achieving PMF For Solo Consulting

I outlined potential next steps to grow my consulting business via GTM changes here: Revamping GTM Strategies For Solopreneur Consulting Success