I want to tell you a story about a word.

One word. And how changing that one word rippled through a business in ways the team didn’t fully see coming.

Before I get into it, let me be upfront: this is a clean, almost elegant example of strategic evolution. Most of the work that happens around strategic theory is messier than this. Harder to see. Harder to name. Harder to get alignment on. I chose this example because sometimes a clean example is the best way to teach a principle that, in your own business, might be a lot more complex to work through.

I was in a quarterly planning session recently with a leadership team I’ve been working with for a while. A growing professional services firm with smart and committed people. Like a lot of businesses navigating the transition from stage two to stage three, they’ve been doing the work: building systems, clarifying roles, getting more intentional about how they compete.

One of the things we do in our planning sessions is review the Results Map, the two-page business plan that covers everything from mission and mindset to long-term goals, annual priorities, and quarterly deliverables. It’s a living document. And tucked inside it is the strategic theory, which answers one specific question: how will we win in the market?

We were working through the Results Map when we landed on theirs. And sitting right there in it was a phrase they’d been carrying for a few years.

“We will win in our market by providing customized care at an affordable cost.”

Sit with that for a second.

On the surface, it sounds fine. Customized care at an affordable cost. It tells the customer what they’re getting, personalized service, and it signals something about price. Accessible. Not intimidating. We won’t break the bank.

For where this company was in the early days, that language made sense. Being affordable is often how you get your first clients when you’re new, when you’re building, when you don’t yet have the reputation to charge a premium. In stage one, the tactical stage, the strategic theory is usually more of a reflection of where you are while you’re getting better at operating. In stage two, you start sharpening it. But here’s the trap: without revisiting that language, the very words that got you here can quietly become the cage that keeps you from getting there.

The person on this team who owns sales and business development paused when we hit that line. She said something like: “I’m starting to think affordable cost doesn’t need to be in there. I think we should say competitive.”

If you heard that in a meeting, you might think: small thing. Synonym. What’s the difference?

The difference is enormous.

Here’s what affordable signals to your team, to your prospects, to your existing clients, and honestly, to yourself.

• Affordable says: “We adjust our price for you. We will bend. If you push back, there’s probably room.”

• Affordable says: “We compete on price.”

• Affordable says: “We’ll take almost anyone who needs what we do, because we can find a way to make it work.”


Here’s what competitive signals.

• Competitive says: “We’re priced fairly relative to the market. We’ve done our homework. We know what good service costs, and we charge accordingly.”

• Competitive says: “We’re not the cheapest option, and we’re not trying to be.”

• Competitive says: “We win on value. On the quality of what we deliver. Not on being the lowest number in a proposal.”


Same service. Same team. Same commitment to clients. But those two words completely change the conversation, and more importantly, they change some critical behaviors inside the company.

The team saw it quickly and got to alignment without a lot of friction. In many ways, they’d already been behaving as if they’d made that decision long ago. This isn’t always how it goes. Sometimes the shift in strategic theory takes months of difficult conversation. But the principle holds regardless: the language you use to describe how you compete has real consequences.

The Ripple Effects

When a company shifts from being the affordable option to being the competitive, high-value option, that shift doesn’t stay contained to a marketing page. It touches everything.

It changes the conversation with new prospects. If you’ve been leading with affordability, your sales conversations probably look a certain way. You’re spending energy justifying your price. Fielding questions about what’s included, whether there’s flexibility, whether you can match a competitor’s number. You’re selling from a position of defending your value. When you shift to competitive positioning, that conversation changes. You’re not defending anymore. You’re saying: here’s what we do, here’s what it costs, and here’s why clients who are a good fit don’t leave. That attracts a different kind of client.

It changes who you’re actually targeting. When you’re no longer trying to be the affordable option, the answer to “who’s in our tribe?” shifts. The right-fit client is no longer the business owner who needs to pinch pennies on professional services. It’s the business owner who understands that what this firm does isn’t a commodity. It’s a strategic asset. Building your sales and marketing around finding those people is a stage three move.

And then there’s the part that’s hardest to sit with.

It forces you to look at the clients you already have who no longer fit.

I don’t want you to skip past that. When you make a strategic shift like this, you will have clients in your current book of business who no longer align with where you’re going. Maybe they came in because you were the affordable option. Maybe you’ve bent over backwards for them, held their rate when everyone else went up, built workarounds your team has to maintain indefinitely. I’d be hard-pressed to name a company I’ve worked with that doesn’t have those clients. We call them legacy clients.

Some of those clients, when you start acting like a stage three company, will push back. Some will leave. And here’s the hard truth this leadership team was starting to wrestle with: that might be okay. In fact, it might be necessary.

One of the leaders said something that stuck with me. They’ve been doing price increases two years in a row, new territory for them. She said something to the effect of: “I think some of that’s okay. I’m okay with starting to lose some of them. We can bring on others who can support it.”

That is stage three thinking.

The weight of the wrong-fit client always, always, comes at the expense of the right-fit clients. Your team’s time and energy are finite. When they’re consumed managing clients who’ve never really valued what you do, it comes directly out of the bandwidth you have for the clients who do.

A Few Things Worth Doing

If any of this is landing close to home, here’s where to start.

Audit your strategic language. Pull out your mission statement, your strategic theory, your marketing position, whatever you have. Read it with fresh eyes. Does it describe where you were, or where you’re going? Is it language you wrote when you were fighting for every piece of business you could get, or language that reflects what you’ve actually become?

Have an honest conversation about your tribe. Not who was the ideal client. Who is the ideal client now, given who you are and what you deliver? Be specific. What do they value? How do they think about buying decisions? The more specific you are, the more clearly you can see who fits and who doesn’t.

Be willing to look at the mismatches. Go through your client list and ask: if we were onboarding this company today, would we take them? If the honest answer is no, that’s a conversation that eventually needs to happen. There’s a right way to do it, with care, proper timing, and a plan. But you can’t manage a transition you won’t acknowledge is necessary.

And if you have a waiting list, trust what it’s telling you. This team does. They have more business coming in than they can currently take on. A waiting list is leverage. It means you get to choose. When you’re in scarcity mode, you take everyone. Know which situation you’re in.

One word. Affordable to competitive.

The team saw it quickly, but make no mistake. It wasn’t a small edit. It was a declaration. We know who we are now. We know what we deliver. And we’re ready to position ourselves accordingly.

That’s not a marketing decision. That’s a leadership decision.

If you’re somewhere in that stage two to stage three transition and something here made you a little uncomfortable, sit with that. The discomfort is usually pointing at the conversation you’ve been avoiding.

What would change in your business if you updated one word?























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