Make your agency the obvious choice: Key takeaways

If you’ve ever looked around the agency landscape and thought everything feels a bit same-y, you’re not imagining it. As Roland Gurney put it in his masterclass, most agencies “offer the same kind of services to a broad range of clients, and they mostly do it in the same ways” . That sameness is what turns agencies into commodities. When clients can’t see a meaningful difference between you and the next shop, decisions default to speed, price, or convenience. Nobody wants to end up as the safe-but-forgettable option.

At Gray Matters we see this all the time. Founders feel like they’re working harder every year for the same results. Pipelines stall, referrals lose momentum, and growth becomes reliant on luck rather than intention. Roland’s session cut through the noise and reminded us that positioning isn’t a fluffy brand exercise. It’s an operational decision. A commercial decision. And often the missing piece in why agencies struggle to grow.

Here are the lessons that stood out and how we see them play out in the real world.

1. Generic agencies invite generic outcomes

Roland began by holding up a mirror to the market. Thousands of agencies. Countless identical claims. Websites so interchangeable “you could swap the logo out and nobody would notice” . It’s bleak, but honest.

The cost of that indistinguishability is huge. When clients treat you like a commodity, every part of running the business becomes harder: price pushed down, timelines squeezed, decision-making slow, and value questioned. The irony is most agencies are not generic on the inside, but they sound it on the outside.

From a Gray Matters perspective, this is where positioning is always the first domino. When your story is unclear, your entire sales system feels heavy. Founder energy gets wasted on chasing the wrong clients, salespeople struggle to articulate impact, and marketing ends up being “spray and pray.” Fix the positioning, though, and everything downstream becomes simpler.

2. Strong positioning starts with one uncomfortable question: who?

Roland’s framework begins with the most important (and often avoided) piece: narrowing your target client.

Not just by sector or size, but by a specific problem they consistently face. Most agencies stop at the first layer (for example, “we target SMEs”), but Roland argues that without understanding their psychological, commercial, or situational drivers, the positioning will always remain superficial.

He encourages agencies to ask themselves a provocative question: Could you grow your business around one specific type of client? Most founders instinctively say no, but the data often says yes. Roland suggests scoring your past clients against speed, spend, source, and stress, a quick exercise that nearly always reveals patterns you hadn’t noticed before .

We use something similar when onboarding clients at Gray Matters. Nine times out of ten, the “best fit” segment becomes blindingly obvious once you look at the numbers and the emotional labour side by side. And once you accept that not every client is for you, the rest of your growth strategy becomes radically easier.

3. Stop selling services — sell solutions

One of Roland’s strongest critiques is that agencies think in terms of lists of services. Branding. PPC. Social. Content. It forces the client to do the hard work of figuring out what they need, or drags you into writing bespoke proposals from scratch every time.

Instead, he encourages repositioning what you sell as solutions: programs, pathways, products, packages, or entry offers that move a client from A to B in a clear, structured way. Done well, this not only showcases expertise but makes your offer more referable, more memorable, and easier to buy .

This is something we see agencies resist at first, usually because it feels restrictive. But in practice, packaged solutions reduce friction without limiting creativity. The client gets clarity; you get focus; your sales team gets something sellable.

4. Your “how” is often your hidden differentiator

When all agencies in a category sound the same, the advantage often sits in how you do the work. Roland argues this is where true differentiation can live: a philosophy, a method, a tool, a framework, a particular consultancy step, or even a pricing model that’s distinct enough to act as a signature.

His advice? Reverse engineer your best projects. Somewhere along the journey, you almost certainly made a decision, ran a process, or added a layer of thinking that others wouldn’t. That moment often holds the seed of your intellectual property — the piece worth naming, trademarking, or building your narrative around .

At Gray Matters, we see this constantly. Agencies underestimate their own methods because they’ve become “just how we do things.” But when you centre them and communicate them clearly, clients suddenly see structure rather than chaos, and confidence rises fast.

5. Your story should be about the client, not you

The final part of Roland’s model focuses on the why, not your founder origin story, but why a client should care. He sees this as the area where agencies slip quickest into self-indulgence.

A strong story begins by framing the client’s problem, then explaining your solution, naming your IP, and ending with proof and outcomes. It’s a narrative centred on their world, not your credentials .

In our work, this is where founders experience the biggest shift. When you stop talking like someone trying to be chosen and start talking like someone who understands the client’s moment, everything sharpens: the website copy, the pitch deck, the outreach emails, even the tone you adopt in discovery calls.

It’s the moment you stop sounding like everyone else.

A wider reflection: positioning isn’t a marketing exercise, it’s an act of discipline

Roland’s session was full of practical tools, but the underlying message was bigger: you cannot become the obvious choice without making some brave decisions.

You must close the gap between your internal expertise and your external story.
You must resist the temptation to appeal to everyone.
You must stop giving clients the burden of figuring out what you do.
And you must decide what you want to be known for — even if that means narrowing your field.

As we often say at Gray Matters, business development isn’t a task, it’s a mindset. Clear positioning is what turns growth from accidental to intentional. It gives your sales engine something solid to run on. And it helps clients recognise your value long before the pitch.

If you’re feeling stuck, it’s rarely because you’re not good enough. It’s usually because the market can’t yet see what makes you different. Roland’s framework gives agencies the tools to fix exactly that.

And once you do, selling stops being a grind and starts feeling like momentum.

To watch Rolands’s masterclass on-demand, join our Online membership and you will get access to all our previous and upcoming masterclasses.

You can connect or follow Roland Gurney on LinkedIn and find out more about his consultancy services Treacle Agency