Strategy for the mid-market
When we enter an industry, we change it.
Strategists, deal architects and system builders for the mid-market. We see around corners, then build what we see.
Tall Poppy Advisory works with the regional operators, installers, distributors and service businesses that the large consultancies rarely serve. We take one industry at a time, find the weakness its firms have learned to live with, and design and build the AI-native operating model that removes it.
The evidence
AI is widening the gap between large firms and everyone else. It does not have to.
Our point of view
The next decade of disruption happens in the middle of the market.
Five beliefs shape every engagement.
The AI gap is now a size gap.
Large firms have the people to redesign their work around AI. Most mid-market firms do not. The gap is in capability, not in ambition, and capability can be brought in.
Value comes from redesigning work, not adding tools.
The firms that report real returns from AI are the ones that rebuilt a workflow around it. A chatbot bolted onto an old process changes very little.
Every industry has a leak it has learned to live with.
A quote that takes two weeks. A lead nobody answers on Saturday. A customer told they need something, who buys it elsewhere. We find the leak in public evidence, not in a workshop.
The buyer now meets you through an answer.
More buyers ask an AI before they ask a firm. The firms named in the answer get the call, so visibility in AI answers is now part of the operating model.
Strategy should ship.
We build and test the working system alongside the recommendation, so the case is proven in your numbers rather than argued on a slide.
Services
Four services, one aim: a measurable change in how the firm wins work.
Research programme
One method. Any sector. One industry at a time.
We publish what we find. Each teardown is built from public evidence and names no client.
Insights
Latest thinking
Redesign the work: why the mid-market's AI gap is an operating-model problem
Large firms are pulling ahead on AI. The evidence says the advantage comes from redesigning work, not from size, and that is a gap a mid-market firm can close.
The 14-day quote: where home-heating firms lose their replacements
The firm that diagnoses the boiler has every advantage. Public reviews show how often it loses the sale anyway, in the days between “you need a new one” and a written price.
Answer first: how AI is reshaping how buyers choose a tradesperson
The first contact between a buyer and a tradesperson is becoming a paragraph written by an AI. The firms named in it get the call.
Standards
What you can hold us to.
- Every claim is sourced. Figures link to where they came from, and assumptions are labelled as assumptions.
- No borrowed credibility. We will never show a client name, logo or result without written permission.
- Fixed scope, fixed fee, per phase. You know what you will get and what it costs before each phase starts.
- You own the work. Evidence, specifications and software are yours, and you can stop after any phase.
- We say no. If the numbers do not support a change, we will tell you before you spend money on it.