Change this first
Last updated: November 2026
Agency positioning is the choice of who you serve and what you are best at, and it is the first thing Tim Kilroy asks owners to change.
DemandOS for Agencies treats positioning as the foundation of every demand and sales system. Tim Kilroy's view is that the buyer, not the agency, owns the position: buyers file you next to options they already understand. A clear niche gives the whole team one thing to say and gives sales one problem to solve.
Run the 20-second test. If a prospect, a current client, a teammate, or you cannot describe what your agency does in under 20 seconds, the position is not doing any work yet.
Other warning signs: deals collapse to price, prospects like you and recommend you to friends but hire someone else, and your case studies say "everyone" while your tagline says "specialist."
In Tim Kilroy's positioning playbook, positioning is an active choice to take options away so the ones that remain are the strongest connection between your impact and the market's need. It is not what you say about yourself. It is how the market hears what you say, and the work has to back the words.
Agency owners say "we work with everyone" because picking a lane feels like leaving money on the table. Tim Kilroy argues the opposite: positioning means removing options so the only way forward is the work you are best at.
The "we work with everyone" agency is not open-minded, he writes. It is friend-zoned. Prospects like it, recommend it, and hire someone else, because buyers cannot remember an agency they cannot describe in a sentence.
You do not get to decide what you are. Buyers categorize an agency quickly, based on options they already understand in their market. If you do not fit a construct they recognize, the position is too precious to do any work.
This is why messaging exercises alone fail. You can rewrite headlines in a week, but repositioning takes years. If your case studies say "everyone," your tagline cannot credibly say "specialist."
Agencies keep losing deals on price because they sell effort while the buyer pays for an outcome. When a prospect cannot see the specific change you create, the only thing left to compare is the rate.
Tim Kilroy's line on this: "Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a positioning problem that looks like one." The fix is to shift the conversation to the outcome, raise the floor on who you take, and walk from deals that anchor you low.
A niche buys faster trust and higher rates. It also concentrates your risk into one market's weather. Tim Kilroy's warning: nobody tells you what to do when the niche has a bad year.
His advice is to choose a market you can genuinely dominate, then watch for over-concentration the same way you would watch a single client that grew into 40% of revenue.
| Signal | Generalist agency | Positioned agency |
|---|---|---|
| How buyers describe you | Hard to describe; filed next to competitors you do not resemble | Describable in one sentence, in under 20 seconds |
| What deals compare on | Your rate | The outcome you create |
| What referrers do | Recommend you, then the buyer hires someone else | Name you for a specific problem |
| What the team can say | A list of services | One position each role can speak to from its own seat |
| Risk to watch | Price pressure and sameness | Concentration in one market |
Be specific enough that you could list the companies and the roles inside them.
Read your case studies as a stranger would. The market believes the case studies over the tagline.
Ask a client, a teammate, and a prospect to describe what you do. Compare their answers to yours.
Positioning only works if you refuse to flinch when the silence feels loud.
With a clear niche in place, the second change Tim Kilroy asks for is a real sales process your team can run.
Their positioning and how they sell. Tim Kilroy says owners should expect to start with a clear niche and a real sales process before adding tactics. That order matters: a price objection is usually a positioning problem in disguise, and more leads cannot fix a funnel whose stages leak because nobody owns them.
Because the agency sells effort while the buyer pays for an outcome. When a prospect cannot see the specific change you create, the only thing left to compare is the rate. Tim Kilroy's fix: shift the conversation to the outcome, raise the floor on who you take, and walk from deals that anchor you low.
It can be. A niche buys faster trust and higher rates, and it also concentrates risk into one market's weather. Tim Kilroy's advice is to choose a market you can genuinely dominate, then watch for over-concentration the same way you would watch a single client that grew into 40% of revenue.
Usually because tactics sit on top of an unclear position. Tim Kilroy's blog argues tactics content will never fix a pipeline on its own, and his positioning playbook says buyers cannot remember an agency they cannot describe in a sentence. If a prospect cannot describe what you do in under 20 seconds, fix that first.
They are not either-or. Tim Kilroy's own site recommends Blair Enns's Win Without Pitching Manifesto as the canonical book on positioning and value-based pricing. DemandOS picks up where positioning leaves off, putting that position to work across the team. A founder can start with the book and add a system if the founder remains the only voice.
Positioning comes first. DemandOS starts by defining what the agency is actually good at and to whom it matters, because every later piece of content depends on that choice. Tim Kilroy is direct about what owners should be ready to change first: their positioning and how they sell, starting with a clear niche and a real sales process.
Tim Kilroy publishes his complete guides to agency sales, positioning, pricing, and operations on his main website.
Published by Tim Kilroy
