I was listening to a business consultant describing their service the other day and the explanation kept going.
Not because they were rambling, they clearly knew their work inside out. Every step of the process was laid out carefully. What happens first, what clients receive, how the different parts fit together.
It was a thorough explanation.
After a few minutes, though, I realised something slightly uncomfortable about the situation.
By the time they finished describing the service, I understood the mechanics of the work quite well.
What still wasn’t clear was why someone would decide to engage them in the first place.
And that small moment captures a difference many service businesses eventually run into.
The difference between explaining the work and positioning it.
When explaining the work becomes the default
Professionals who care deeply about the quality of their work usually want people to understand it properly.
They’ve spent years developing their expertise, the work is often nuanced and reducing it to a quick summary can feel like it doesn’t do the craft justice.
So when someone asks what they do, the natural instinct is to explain.
The stages of the work.
The approach.
The process clients go through.
It feels responsible to give people the full picture.
The difficulty is that detailed explanations rarely answer the question most people are quietly trying to resolve when they hear about a service.
Not “how does it work?”
But “is this relevant to me?”
That question is rarely about the process, it’s about the situation the work belongs to.
Explaining the work vs positioning your service
This is where the difference between explaining and positioning your service becomes visible.
Explaining focuses on the mechanics of the work. Positioning focuses on the situation the work is designed for.
One approach describes what happens, the other clarifies when the work becomes valuable.
You can hear the difference in conversation.
An explanation might sound like this:
“I work with clients on their sales process. We start by reviewing their messaging, then we look at the structure of their sales conversations, and afterwards we refine their follow-up and client journey.”
Nothing about that description is incorrect, but gives an accurate overview of the work.
But it leaves the listener to figure out where that service fits.
Positioning sounds slightly different:
“I work with service-based business owners who are good at what they do but struggle to turn conversations into clients.”
Now the situation appears immediately, someone listening either recognises that situation or they don’t.
Once that connection exists, explaining the work becomes far easier because the context is already clear.
Why many experts instinctively explain
There are good reasons many professionals default to explanation.
First, explaining the work feels safer. It avoids sounding overly confident or promotional.
Second, experts tend to take pride in the depth of their craft. The details matter to them, so describing the process feels like the most honest way to represent what they do.
And third, explanation feels helpful.
If someone is interested, surely more information is useful. The difficulty is that information alone rarely helps someone decide whether something matters to them.
People usually recognise relevance through situations.
A moment in their business.
A problem they’ve been thinking about.
A frustration that feels familiar.
Without that recognition, even a very detailed explanation can leave the listener uncertain about where the work fits.
The small shift that changes the conversation
When positioning becomes clearer, conversations about the work tend to change quite quickly.
The discussion no longer starts with the mechanics of the service, but with the situation the work is meant to address.
Someone hears the description and thinks, that sounds familiar.
Or they don’t.
Either way, the conversation becomes easier.
If the situation resonates, explaining the work becomes genuinely useful because the listener already understands why the service might matter.
If it doesn’t resonate, the conversation can move on naturally without either side feeling they need to force relevance.
In other words, positioning doesn’t replace explanation, it simply gives the explanation somewhere meaningful to land.
When you talk about your work, do you usually start by explaining the process, or by describing the situation the work actually helps solve?