If You Can't Answer This Question; Clients Won't Hire You

The definitive way to answer the question which causes plenty of prospective consulting projects to falter.

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Why Prospects Don’t Become Clients

When prospects don’t become clients, it’s for one of three reasons.

1. The prospect has decided not to proceed with the project.

2. The prospect has decided to move forward with the project with another consultant.

3. The prospect has decided to move the project forward themselves.

Let’s zero in on that last one because it’s the most painful.

“Why Can’t We Do This Ourselves?”

Clients might not ask this directly, but they certainly think about it when they engage you in the sales process.

You can spend weeks helping a prospect flesh out a detailed proposal with a clear scope and methodology. Then they suddenly go quiet and never tell you why.

The reason is they’ve often decided to go it alone.

Yup, they’ve taken all the information you’ve provided them and decided to implement it themselves.

And as painful as that is, it’s the logical thing to do if they don’t think your fee shows a clear difference in the outcome.

Whether clients ask the question or not, you always need to specifically and explicitly articulate why the client can’t simply do this themselves.

Your Value = The Difference Between The Results You Provide And The Client Doing It Themselves

Internalising that you’re not selling the project's outcome is critical.

You’re selling the difference in the outcome with you involved.

You’re selling the difference between the client doing the project without you and the client doing the project with you.

If you’re creating a proposal for $40k, you have to explain how your support will deliver many multiples of that value compared to them doing it themselves.

After reviewing a few proposals for an upcoming course, however, it’s clear that many consultants focus on broad platitudes and generalities over explicit ideas.

So, let’s go through a few levels and highlight how to call out the difference maker.

How To Articulate Your Value

You can see a breakdown of how to articulate your value below:

Bad Articulation Of Your Value

The worst thing you can do is to focus on the past and not articulate anything about the future.

Many consultants talk about:

• Their years of experience.

• The brands they’ve worked with.

• Their reputation or industry successes.

For example, a poor articulation will be:

I have over 15 years of expertise in this industry and have worked on similar projects with the likes of [brand 1], [brand 2], and [brand 3]. I can help guide you through the entire process, avoid the common mistakes, and ensure you achieve the best results.

It’s worth highlighting several problems here.

1. It’s focused on you, ‘the consultant’. We know your years of experience are only necessary if you can translate them into specific benefits. You need to highlight the abilities, knowledge, and, specifically, relationships you have that they don’t possess and are worth paying for.

2. It doesn’t specifically highlight how you will help. Having a guide, avoiding mistakes, and achieving the best results sounds excellent - but that’s what the client intends to do anyway. How specifically would that work?

3. It doesn’t prove it. There’s no proof here. Can they share any past stories and the unique value they added to the project that improved the outcomes? Can you make it as tangible as possible?

We can do much better.

Good Articulation Of Your Value

A better articulation of value highlights how the results will be better if they work with you vs. without you.

This is where you might focus on:

• Speed. How will the results be quicker working with you vs. without you? Sometimes, you can position yourself as a catalyst for making things happen. Other times, simply having someone take on the work while staff can focus on their day-to-day roles makes sense.

• Cheaper. How will you save the client money? This one is a little trickier as you need to prove you will save them significantly more money than you will cost. ‘Getting it right first time’ can be one angle. Another might be to negotiate superior deals or avoid costly mistakes.

• Better. How will you help the client achieve better results than if they went alone? This is where you highlight what they’re likely to succeed alone and what they’re likely to accomplish with expert help.

A typical example here might be:

“My external perspective and industry insights enable me to craft tailored solutions that boost efficiency and resilience—benefits that in-house teams often struggle to deliver due to their limited focus. I secure cost savings through strategic partnerships, optimize inventory to avoid excess and shortages, and build risk mitigation frameworks to guard against disruptions.”

This is good. It highlights the unique benefits and is specific enough, but it’s still vague. A prospect might still think, ' Maybe we can do this ourselves?’

Great Articulation Of Your Value

A great articulation will highlight how you will use specific abilities the prospect doesn’t have to achieve the results they can’t get without you.

This is where you need to translate your attributes (what you have gained from all those years of experience) into specific outcomes.

You should be able to answer questions like.

• Abilities. Because of my past experience and expertise, I’m able to do [x], [y], and [z], which those without this experience can’t do.

• Knowledge. During the journey, you’re likely to tackle [x], [y], and [z]; I can show you how similar organisations like yours have tackled them.

• Relationships. I can connect you with [x], [y], and [z], who can do [a], [b], and [c] to help you.

An example of this might be:

“I use my network of vendors to negotiate 10-20% cost savings that in-house teams often miss. I also employ advanced predictive analytics for inventory optimization, reducing holding costs by 30%. Lastly, I design comprehensive risk mitigation plans, building resilience against disruptions through strategies like dual-sourcing and dynamic safety stock adjustments.”

A prospect should read that and think, ‘I can’t see how we could get the same results ourselves’.

It would also be helpful if you could share this list with examples of other organisations the prospect can speak to.

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Thanks for reading

Richard Millington

p.s. Two coaching places available.