The Impact of Selling Your Consultancy Solutions – Not Your Consultancy Services

The Impact of Selling Your Consultancy Solutions – Not Your Consultancy Services

In the world of consulting, especially in the B2B space, there's a significant tendency to focus on services and products when explaining what companies offer. However, the reality is that clients aren't buying services; they're buying solutions to their problems. Focusing on marketing your services is a big mistake.

To have greater impact with your marketing and selling your consultancy services, it’s essential to shift the conversation from what you do to what problems you solve. If you truly understand the problem you're solving, everything else—your marketing, your ability to attract premium clients, and your sales—will follow.

Why Clients Don't Care About Your Title

Customers aren’t interested in whether you call yourself a coach or a consultant. They care about transformation—how you can take them from a challenging space to a better one. The most successful consultants are those who understand this concept and can articulate the specific problem they solve for their clients.

A key reason consulting firms struggle with this is because they’re trained to focus on delivering services, such as HR processes, compliance systems, or management training. But clients don’t want those services for the sake of having them—they want the outcomes those services produce.

The real value lies in understanding the gap between where your client is now and where they want to be. Only when this gap is clearly established can you effectively market your services. Without it, all your talk about processes, methodologies, and services might fall flat because clients aren’t connecting those services to their needs.

Shifting Your Focus from Your Service to Their Problem

Many consulting firms build their marketing strategies around themselves—who they are, what they do, and the services they offer. But that doesn't engage clients. To attract premium clients, you need to focus on them first; the outcomes they’re seeking - not the services you provide. And to do that, you need to really understand their problems.

When you ask yourself, “What problem do I solve?” it shifts your perspective. Instead of thinking like a consultant, you start thinking from the client’s perspective, which is key to building a more effective marketing and sales strategy.

It’s not about the expertise and programs you offer. What matters is how your programs and services make the client feel once their problem is solved—satisfied, relieved, and confident.

Identifying Your Premium Clients

A fundamental part of understanding the problem you solve is knowing your premium clients. These are the clients you enjoy working with, who value your services, and who can afford to pay for them. Often, consulting firms serve multiple industries or customer types, which can dilute their focus.

For example, a client I recently worked with identified 12 different customer personas. Their marketing was attempting to capture as many opportunities as they could get.  But it wasn’t working.

Narrowing down this broad range of potential clients to focus on the best fits—the ones that offer long-term relationships and high-value engagements—helped clarify the real problems they could solve, which meant their messaging was much more targeted and attractive to their best clientele.

Going Deeper: Understanding the Layers of Problems

Understanding the problem your client has is not as simple as asking, “What’s your biggest challenge?” Often, the initial problem a client presents is just a symptom of a deeper issue. To offer real value, consultants need to dive deeper.

Take, for example, a consulting firm working with clients in the property construction space. Initially, the problem presented might be a lack of growth or talent shortages. But after deeper exploration, you might find that the real issue is a lack of strategic planning or leadership, something the client wasn’t even fully aware of.

By digging into the impact of these problems—asking questions like “What happens if this isn’t solved?” or “Why is this a problem in the first place?”—you’ll uncover the root cause. Once you understand this, you can design a more effective solution and test it in the market.

Three Types of Problems Clients Face

There are three types of problems clients can have:

1. Known Problems: These are the issues clients are aware of and comfortable discussing. For example, a lack of leads or poor cash flow.
2. Known But Unspoken Problems: Clients know these problems exist, but they might not feel comfortable discussing them. This could be deeper financial instability or inconsistent cash flow that they’re not ready to publicly admit.
3. Unknown Problems: These are the problems the client is unaware of but are often the root cause of the issues they are experiencing. For instance, the impact of digital transformation on sales processes might be an unknown problem for a traditional consulting firm relying on face-to-face sales.

Understanding these different layers allows you to frame your marketing and sales messaging in a way that resonates deeply with your clients, showing them you know what they’re going through—sometimes better than they do.

The Changing Landscape: Adapting Your Sales Process

The landscape for buying and selling in the consulting world is evolving. More sales are happening digitally. According to Gartner, by 2025, 80% of sales interactions will happen through digital channels. This is a wake-up call for consulting firms still relying on old sales methods.

To adapt, consultants need to embrace a new approach—using digital channels to build trust and relationships with potential clients. Whether it’s through online webinars, downloadable guides, or interactive platforms, there are numerous ways to pre-sell your services before you even get to a sales meeting.

The goal is to have clients come to you already convinced that you understand their problem and have the best solution. By the time you sit down for a sales conversation, it’s less about selling and more about taking their order.

Conclusion: The Key to Better Marketing and Sales

The key takeaway here is that understanding the problem you solve, and being able to articulate that clearly to your clients, is the foundation of successful marketing and sales. Shift your focus from the services you offer to the outcomes your clients are seeking. Understand their problems—both the known and the unknown—and tailor your solutions to meet those needs. When you do this, you’ll attract more premium clients and build longer-lasting relationships.

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