Strategic Consulting
Applying client intelligence to positioning professional services
Your Asymmetric Strategic Intelligence (ASI) reveals positioning gaps — the decision criteria you don't know your clients are using.
Strategic consulting translates that decision intelligence into operational reality. This is first-principles positioning, not brand theatre workshops where we rearrange platitudes on Post-its.
This is where you put strategy first and put client intelligence before historical assumptions.
Our strategic consulting frameworks come from three decades inside professional services. The frameworks are built by a direct response marketer with an Oxford law degree, who started as the commissioning editor of legal journals, worked in law firm business development and moved to consulting for professional services firms, including national and global players in law, accounting and engineering.
That experience means we understand the difference between what looks impressive written in whiteboard marker and what works outside the meeting room to influence real client choices.
What you build
Positioning frameworks that prove differentiation operationally
Every professional services firm has experienced disappointment after polishing its rhetoric about being different.
Working from decision intelligence that shows what clients value in professional services, our operational mapping locates your differentiation where it needs to show up in your delivery — where clients experience it in ways that matter to their choices.
You can leave your cmpetitors stuck shouting "we're different" with no idea how to prove it. You'll have frameworks that demonstrate differentiation systematically.
Delivery mapping that systematises competitive advantage
Differentiation can't depend on whichever partner your potential clients happen to talk to. We map how your distinctive approach shows up consistently across client interactions, service delivery and relationship management.
This turns positioning from aspiration into operational architecture.
Messaging hierarchies that communicate strategic substance
When you have genuine strategic substance, messaging becomes straightforward. We build hierarchies that communicate what you've built, so you're not caught in a three-year loop of creative "refreshes" of generic positioning.
Everyone becomes confident in your strategic substance because there's actual substance to be confident about.
Why ASI clients commission strategic consulting
ASI reveals intelligence gaps between what you assume matters and what actually drives decisions in your category
Those gaps mean you can't fix messaging until the foundation is evidence-based, not assumptions-based
After ASI shows you why you lose competitive pitches to essentially similar firms, the strategic consulting builds your operational and messaging foundation based on that intelligence.
What assumptions are costing you
For most of our clients, losing a single competitive pitch means anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000 or more in lost fees. Decision intelligence and operationalising what you learn pays for itself in the first major win.
What clients discover
- You thought you knew what mattered (assumptions)
- Decision intelligence shows what actually drives choices (evidence)
- The gap between assumptions and evidence explains why you lose competitive pitches
- Strategy must be built on intelligence
Combining decision intelligence with a strategic positioning and messaging foundation is the difference between decorating mediocrity with better words and putting meaningful distance between you and the competition.
Next step
Strategic consulting builds on the decision intelligence you gain through your Asymmetric Strategic Intelligence (ASI) foundation. If you haven't completed intelligence gathering, ASI is where we start.
If ASI is complete, we'll translate your findings into the systematic strategic advantage your competitors cannot replicate — because your evidence beats their assumptions every time.
Contact us
To discuss strategic consulting that turns positioning into competitive distance, contact asi@taleist.agency or use the contact form below.
We look forward to working with you to capitalise on your intelligence advantage.