Insights · Field note · Method and principles
How we qualify a growth client
A growth engagement fails for predictable reasons. We check for them before we start, and we decline when they are present.
A growth engagement succeeds when four things are true: the organization has experts who know their field and will give the time to be captured and to sign; its buyers research and ask questions before they buy, so that being cited matters; a decision-maker owns the program and will act on evidence, including evidence to cut paid spend; and the organization can wait for the citation lag rather than needing inquiries next week. We check each before proposing. Where one is missing we say so, and where two are missing we decline, because the engagement would fail and we would both have paid for it.
In detail
What the evidence shows.
Experts who will sign
Authority content is built from real knowledge and published under real names. An organization whose experts cannot or will not participate has nothing for us to capture, and ghostwriting under their names is something we do not do. The capture schedule is agreed before the engagement, not hoped for after it.
Buyers who ask
Some purchases are made on proximity, price or habit, with no research. For those, being cited matters less and paid governance alone may be the right engagement. The baseline audit shows whether the organization’s buyers ask engines, and what they ask.
A decision-maker
The program produces evidence and recommendations, including recommendations to reduce spend, retire pages and change what the organization publishes. Someone has to be able to act on them. A program reporting into a committee that cannot decide produces reports.
Patience and honesty
Citations build over months. An organization in urgent need of inquiries should run paid search under governance first and build authority alongside, which we say plainly. See the citation lag, what we decline and the baseline audit.
Sources
Primary references.
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days