The commercial power of being less comparable

I’ve always been a little sceptical of some of Blair Enns’ more provocative takes around pitching, pricing and specialisation. From a distance, some of it felt slightly performative to me.

But I listened to one of his podcasts this week and realised his core point is actually pretty fundamental. The less comparable your agency is, the more commercial power you have.

At DirectionGroup, we used to laugh at the old adage: “Two clients in a vertical is a conflict. Three is a specialisation.” But there was truth in it.

We were a B2B agency that increasingly specialised in technology marketing. And once we started seeing the same kinds of businesses, buyers and challenges repeatedly, we got better, faster.

We understood the client’s industry, sure. But because we also understood the audiences they were trying to influence, clients saw and felt value, fast.

Our people developed a genuine understanding of cloud infrastructure, connectivity and IT security. They could hold meaningful conversations with subject-matter experts, ask better questions and get to valuable thinking faster.

Looking back, I think what clients were really responding to wasn’t just category expertise. It was the feeling that we really understood the people they were trying to reach.

It’s easy to think about specialisation as a marketing thing. A sharper proposition or a cleaner website.

But it actually makes you easier to buy. Your agency becomes harder to compare against generic alternatives because clients can tell you’ve solved versions of their problem before. 

You become associated with a particular kind of problem, buyer or expertise area. Trust builds faster, conversations go deeper earlier and confidence increases on both sides.

And that has a knock-on effect on pricing, pitching and growth. Not just the ‘shop window’.