STP consulting: the constraint-driven service filter

<p>You know the drill. You launch a consulting practice. You have a skill. You help people. But when it comes to marketing, you get stuck in the textbook models. You read about STP: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning.</p> <p>You segment based on industry or revenue. You target the ones that look richest. You position yourself as "thought leadership" or "trusted partner."</p> <p>The result is a marketing strategy that is polite, vague, and identical to every other consultant who ever existed. You sound like a photocopied promise.</p> <p>The standard STP framework is built for selling detergent. It assumes massive markets and slow-moving competition. Your reality is smaller, faster, and much, much colder. You are a service builder. You need a system that spits out concrete client criteria, not academic definitions.</p> <p>The real secret to high-leverage consulting is not identifying who <em>needs</em> help, but identifying who is structurally and psychologically ready to <em>receive</em> it. This requires a filter, not a map.</p> <p>We are going to use the **Constraint-Driven Service Filter** to rebuild STP for consulting. It focuses on the hard boundaries of clients, not the soft descriptions.</p> <p>Scroll to the STP Service Builder section if short on time.</p> <h2>Stp consulting: segment clients by structural constraints, not vanity metrics</h2> <p>Conventional segmentation asks, "Who is the customer?" The Constraint-Driven Filter asks, "What specific friction prevents this client from solving the problem internally?"</p> <p>If you are selling a service—time, expertise, and guidance—you are selling the removal of friction. But friction is not the same as a problem. A problem is low revenue. Friction is the broken internal process that causes low revenue.</p> <p>You can ignore the conventional advice that tells you to target industries. Industries are too broad. A fintech startup with 10 employees has entirely different constraints than a bank with 10,000. You need to focus on the constraint.</p> <p><h3>The Constraint Test: Who is structurally ready to buy?</h3></p> <p>Your ideal client is defined by three non-negotiable constraints. If they fail any one of them, they are a bad fit, no matter how much money they have.</p> <p>For example, if you offer fractional CTO services, a typical segment might be "B2B SaaS companies, $1M to $5M ARR." Too soft. A constraint segment is: "B2B SaaS companies, $1M to $5M ARR, where the CEO is still writing code, and the development team lacks a standardized deployment pipeline."</p> <p>The constraint is the CEO's time sink and the lack of process. This is specific. It is solvable. It is urgent. You can act on this information right now. Before you write another pitch, define the friction you remove. (<a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-define-your-target-audience">Learn how to define your target audience with signal/noise.</a>)</p> <p>Action: Take your current ideal client segment and rewrite it as a 20-word statement defining the <em>process failure</em> they are experiencing right now.</p> <h2>Targeting: identify the decision-maker who owns the constraint</h2> <p>In service selling, the "Targeting" step is not about market size. It’s about organizational ownership. The target is the person who feels the maximum pain from the constraint you just identified and has the authority to pay you to fix it.</p> <p>When you consult, you are often selling a hard truth: their internal system is broken. You need a buyer who is psychologically resilient enough to accept that truth and drive the change. This is often not the person with the biggest budget; it's the person with the most risk.</p> <p><h3>The Ownership Rule: Pain, Authority, and Budget</h3></p> <p>You need all three: Pain, Authority, Budget. Most failed sales cycles miss Authority or Pain.</p> <p>If you offer high-end <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/positioning-strategy-for-founders">positioning strategy for founders</a>, your client might be a CEO. Pain: Their sales team can't explain what they do. Authority: They can approve the budget. Budget: They have the cash. If the CMO has the budget but not the authority to enforce the new positioning across the company, your engagement will fail. Your job is to find the owner.</p> <p>Permission to ignore conventional advice: Stop chasing clients who "need" your service. Chase clients who are actively suffering from a specific, measurable internal breakdown, and whose budget owner is already looking for an external fix.</p> <p>Action: Write down the title of the person who will be most embarrassed if the constraint you identified in the previous step is not solved within 90 days. That is your target.</p> <h2>Positioning: sell the necessary friction, not the easy outcome</h2> <p>This is where consulting STP breaks down most often. Standard positioning focuses on the positive outcome: "We help you grow." Builders don't trust this. They want to know the mechanism.</p> <p>The Constraint-Driven Filter demands you position yourself by naming the painful, necessary step you force the client to take. You don't sell clarity; you sell the process of admitting your messaging is garbage and committing to a <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/value-proposition-examples">better value proposition</a>. You don't sell efficiency; you sell the ruthless simplification of their codebase.</p> <p><h3>The Translation Filter: From Pain to Process</h3></p> <p>Consulting requires friction. You are asking people to change how they work. Your positioning must communicate that you are the specific tool required to get through that friction.</p> <p>A vague position: "Strategic marketing partner for venture-backed startups."</p> <p>A Constraint-Driven position: "We are the internal truth serum. We restructure your go-to-market strategy in 6 weeks by forcing a brutal review of your first 100 customer conversations. If you are not ready to kill sacred cows, do not hire us."</p> <p>This position repels clients who want quick wins and attracts those who are ready for real work. It is an honest promise. It is the core of effective consulting <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-build-a-marketing-strategy">marketing strategy</a>.</p> <p>A small win you can achieve today: Look at your current service description and replace the softest, most aspirational word (e.g., "growth," "excellence," "seamless") with a concrete, uncomfortable verb (e.g., "enforce," "delete," "refactor").</p> <h2>The STP Service Builder</h2> <p>The goal of this process is a marketing artifact: a positioning statement so specific it acts as its own filter.</p> <p>The STP Service Builder is a focused prompt designed to instantly generate a three-part positioning framework based on your expertise and the client's constraint.</p> <p>Prompt: You are a ruthless marketing strategist applying the Constraint-Driven Service Filter to a consulting practice. I offer [YOUR CONSULTING SERVICE] to [YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER]. My service solves the high-friction constraint that [THE SPECIFIC INTERNAL PROCESS FAILURE OR STRUCTURAL IMBALANCE]. My ideal client has [THREE NON-NEGOTIABLE CLIENT CHARACTERISTICS/CONSTRAINTS].</p> <p>Generate three outputs:</p> <p>1. The Constraint-Segment Definition (A single, hyper-specific client type).</p> <p>2. The Repulsive Positioning Statement (A 25-word statement naming the painful step and the outcome, designed to repel bad fits).</p> <p>3. A Cold Outreach Hook (One sentence that names the constraint and promises a deterministic system for removal).</p> <p>Example Output:</p> <p>1. Constraint-Segment Definition: B2B SaaS companies, $2-5M ARR, whose core feature set is described differently by the CEO, Sales, and Product teams, causing sales cycle bloat.</p> <p>2. Repulsive Positioning Statement: We enforce alignment by forcing you to choose one core belief, eliminating 80% of your current messaging, or we walk away.</p> <p>3. Cold Outreach Hook: We fix the organizational schizophrenia that is costing your sales team $100k a month by installing a single source of messaging truth in 30 days.</p> <p>This builder is just one of countless interconnected prompts designed to give builders immediate momentum.</p> <h2>FAQ</h2> <h2>FAQ</h2> <h3>Q: How is this different from regular STP for B2B marketing?</h3> <p>A: Regular STP focuses on external market sizing. STP consulting, especially when selling to small teams, must focus on internal psychology and structural readiness. A $10 million firm that is completely risk-averse is a worse target than a $1 million firm where the founder is desperate for a deterministic system and ready to embrace friction. We are prioritizing capacity for change over market size. (<a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/frameworks/stp-b2b-marketing">See the B2B Marketing STP framework for product companies.</a>)</p> <h3>Q: What if I have multiple services for different segments?</h3> <p>A: Then you have multiple, small STP frameworks. You must not merge them. If you offer both implementation and high-level strategy, treat them as two separate products with two distinct constraint-driven filters. Marketing a consulting practice is a matter of ruthless focus. Start small. (<a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-build-a-marketing-strategy">Focus leads to momentum.</a>)</p> <h3>Q: I think everyone is my target. How do I narrow down the constraint?</h3> <p>A: When you think everyone is your target, you are confusing a problem (e.g., "They need more customers") with a constraint (e.g., "The founder has no time to write case studies"). The constraint must be specific enough that you could look at a client's internal dashboard or staff roster and confirm its existence within 5 minutes. If you can't, the constraint is too soft. (<a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/competitive-analysis-framework">Use competitive analysis to define your differentiation.</a>)</p> <hr> <h2>Start running operator-grade marketing in under an hour.</h2> <p>LiftKit is the only strategy-first AI marketing system built for founders. It distills the same Fortune-500 frameworks used at Apple, Stripe, and McKinsey into a simple, actionable playbook you can run in under an hour.</p> <p>Stop tinkering with tactics. Start operating with strategy.</p> <p><strong><a href="https://getliftkit.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Get LiftKit</a></strong></p> <h2>Keep learning</h2> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/frameworks" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Frameworks</strong></a>: Learn proven mental models to diagnose, prioritise, and scale marketing outcomes.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/channels" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Channels</strong></a>: Understand which acquisition paths actually work and how to deploy them strategically.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/messaging" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Messaging</strong></a>: Build positioning, angle, and copy that converts without guesswork.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/strategy" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Strategy</strong></a>: Make smarter decisions using operator-grade prompts and structured thinking.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/tools" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Tools</strong></a>: Use AI, automation, and practical templates to move faster.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/research" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Research</strong></a>: Tap into market insights, psychology, and patterns that drive effective marketing.</p> <script type='application/ld+json'> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Stp consulting: the constraint-driven service filter", "description": "Stp consulting: segment clients by structural constraints, not vanity metrics", "articleSection": "frameworks", "keywords": "stp consulting, stp,consulting,marketing strategy", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "LiftKit" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "LiftKit" }, "url": "https://learn.getliftkit.com/frameworks/stp-consulting", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://learn.getliftkit.com/frameworks/stp-consulting" } </script>