Building a Winning Consulting Value Proposition

This article was last updated on 19 February 2025.

Most consulting firms get this wrong – and it’s costing them

“What is your consultancy’s value proposition?” I ask this in almost every introductory call with a consulting firm owner or leader. The answer tells me everything I need to know about the firm’s positioning, maturity, and likelihood of sustained growth.

And here’s what I’ve observed from years of working in the trenches with consulting firms:

• Some launch into a five-minute monologue about their services, years of experience, and methodologies. Translation? They don’t have a client-centric value proposition. They’re selling credentials, not outcomes—leading to lower win rates and price pressure.
  
  
• Others insist their value proposition depends on the prospect’s unique needs (huh?).. These firms try to be everything to everyone. In reality, they are trapped in a race to the bottom, constantly competing on price.
  
  
• Then, there’s the most troubling response: complete silence. The respondents have no idea how to answer the question, which usually signals a deeper issue—a lack of strategic direction and intentional design.
  
  
• Occasionally, I get a crisp, powerful response that, in under a minute, tells me exactly what problems the firm solves, for whom, and what results it delivers. These firms are on the right track—they don’t need reinvention, just fine-tuning.

The vast majority of consultancies fall into the first three categories. And that’s why, again and again, we start our work in the same place: fixing their value proposition.

In this article, I’d like to share a straightforward value proposition design approach that Florian Heinrichs and I co-created and apply in our work with consulting firm clients. 

I aim to explain that value proposition design is a manageable process. It’s about thoroughly–and honestly!–examining what a consulting firm does and how it does it, evaluating how closely the consultancy’s offering matches the prospects' needs, and then crystallising the learnings into an impactful definition.

A strong value proposition drives profitability. A weak one destroys it

Here’s the hard truth: a vague or generic value proposition is not just a marketing problem. It’s a profitability problem.

Firms with weak value propositions experience:

• Lower win rates: They struggle to convince clients why they’re the right choice, leading to constant pitching and long sales cycles.
  
  
• Pricing pressure: Without a clear, differentiated promise, they end up in pricing battles with competitors.
  
  
• High operational complexity: They take on too many different types of projects, creating inefficiencies and lower margins.
  
  
• Growth stagnation: Without clarity on their positioning, these firms plateau, stuck in reactive mode rather than scaling intentionally.

On the flip side, consulting firms that invest in sharpening their value proposition benefit from:

• Stronger client attraction: The right clients recognize the firm as the best fit for their challenges.
  
  
• Premium pricing: Clients pay for perceived expertise and clarity, not just effort.
  
  
• Repeatability and scalability: With a well-defined scope, delivery becomes more efficient and profitable.

If your firm is experiencing pricing struggles, inconsistent sales, or operational chaos, the root cause is likely a vague, diluted, or non-existent value proposition.

Recommended reading: The Biggest Mistakes Consulting Firms Made in 2024

No silver bullet. Value proposition design requires commitment

Most consulting firms skip this step entirely or rush through it with vague, high-level statements. Some founders piece together a value proposition by listing services and generic differentiators, hoping it will be enough. It won’t.

Getting this right isn’t a one-day exercise. It requires stepping back, reviewing past projects, interviewing past clients, and distilling real-world insights into a crisp, compelling narrative. It demands introspection, iteration, and honesty—and many firms resist that level of scrutiny.

But here’s the reality: if you want to win premium clients and scale profitably, there’s no shortcut. A weak, ad-hoc value proposition keeps your firm stuck in reactive, headcount-driven growth. A well-designed one enables repeatability, margin expansion, and authority positioning.

The value proposition canvas – a no-nonsense approach

To cut through the noise, Florian Heinrichs and I developed a Value Proposition Canvas tailored specifically for consulting firms or consulting practices. We use it in our project work because it forces clarity, strips away the fluff, and helps firms articulate their value compellingly and practically.

Here’s how it works:

1. Our best clients come to us because… (The high-level problem you solve.)
2. They typically are… (The industry, company types, and roles you target.)
3. They struggle with… (The specific pain points that make them seek help.)
4. They can expect [X] from us…(The measurable outcomes they can expect.)
5. Here’s how we help… (The structured, high-level approach to solving the problem.)

Once completed, this canvas becomes a strategic tool for the website, pitches, business development, client selection, and operational decision-making. It also informs the consulting firm's thought leadership strategy.

As Florian often says in client engagements, the value proposition isn’t just about messaging—it’s about a consulting firm's entire identity. 

Examples of value propositions designed based on the canvas

To further help consulting firms picture the final destination of the value proposition design process, I’d like to offer a few examples of what this could look like.

Example 1: A data analytics consulting firm (focus: supermarket chains)

1. Our best clients come to us because their sales forecasting process delivers inaccurate results.
   
   
2. They typically are Sales Leaders, COOs, or Chief Supply Chain leaders of multinational supermarket chains, with important stakeholders such as CFO, CIO, Inventory & Warehouse leaders, and Category leaders.
   
   
3. They usually lack internal expertise on what data points must be considered and which advanced models can be made operational and provide the most reliable outcomes.
   
   
4. They can expect us to design a more accurate sales forecasting system that, on average, reduces costs by 5-10% and delivers forecasts with >90% accuracy.
   
   
5. Our client work usually involves a feasibility study - a comprehensive assessment of existing forecasting processes, available data sources, and technology infrastructure - followed by a 4-6 months engagement encompassing data cleaning & integration, model selection, testing/piloting, and implementation/operationalization.

Example 2: A digital marketing consultancy (focus: international e-commerce)

1. Our best clients come to us because their digital advertising ROI is low.
   
   
2. They are typically senior marketing officers of large international e-commerce brands with sizable advertising budgets.
   
   
3. They usually struggle with the lack of knowledge of the latest digital advertising best practices and optimisation strategies.
   
   
4. We help our clients develop internal capabilities to set up cost-effective digital advertising campaigns that increase ROI by 30-50% on average.
   
   
5. Our work with clients typically starts with an audit of their current digital advertising strategies and performance, leading to developing a customised, effective digital advertising strategy. We then facilitate the hands-on implementation of this strategy, including campaign setup, content development, performance monitoring, and real-time optimisation. We also provide comprehensive training to the client's marketing teams, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to manage and refine their campaigns independently in the future. The engagement concludes with a detailed review of results and recommendations for ongoing improvements, ensuring we boost their immediate ROI and build their capacity to sustain these gains over time.

Example 3: A strategy consulting firm (focus: regional publishers)

1. Clients come to us because they want to diversify their publishing revenue streams.
   
   
2. These are typically chief revenue officers at regional news publications and online platforms.
   
   
3. They typically struggle with their lack of expertise in setting up paywall-based and advertising-based revenue strategies, and their past experiences with trying to set them up on their own have resulted in significant drops in user engagement.
   
   
4. They expect us to identify the bottlenecks of their unsuccessful attempts to diversify their revenue streams and create internal stakeholder alignment around a roadmap that enables them to launch and successfully grow the new streams within 6-12 months.
   
   
5. Our client engagements start with an audit identifying bottlenecks in prior revenue diversification efforts. We then co-develop a data-driven roadmap for revenue diversification tailored to each client's unique context. Our roadmap integrates paywall and advertising strategies while considering user engagement. We drive internal alignment through workshops, and with our continuous support, we empower clients to successfully grow their new revenue streams within 6-12 months.

Example 4: A sales consultancy (focus: enterprise software)

1. Clients come to us because of their poor sales closing rate.
   
   
2. They are typically national and regional sales leaders of large enterprise software vendors.
   
   
3. They find themselves investing increasingly more resources into the sales process just to maintain the same level of sales revenue.
   
   
4. We help our clients diagnose the root of the problem and modernise their sales process, consistently resulting in a 20-40% cost reduction in sales and typically a 10-20% increase in sales revenue in Year 1.
   
   
5. We typically start by analyzing their current sales processes and performance metrics in depth. We identify the underlying issues contributing to low closing rates and high sales costs. Leveraging our extensive enterprise sales expertise, we design and implement a modernised, efficient sales process tailored to their needs. This includes streamlining sales operations, enhancing training, and integrating advanced sales tools. With our ongoing support and monitoring, clients can reduce sales costs by 20-40% and increase sales revenue by 10-20% in the first year.

All of these examples are relatively easy to process. They deliver the most valuable information to a prospect in under a minute. They explain who, why, what, and how. This is where owners and leaders of consulting firms should aim to end upon completing their value proposition design process.

Every statement in the value propositions above requires careful consideration and analysis, gathering information, interviewing past clients and prospects, comparing the financial outcomes of past projects, looking at cost optimisation opportunities, and so on. 

These value proposition statements do not come together out of thin air.

Recommended reading: Consulting Growth Is Stalling – How Can You Respond?

Final thought: stop improvising. Start designing

If you’re running a consulting firm without a defined, intentional value proposition, you’re leaving money on the table. Worse, you’re making it harder than it needs to be: harder to sell, harder to price well, harder to scale.

High-performing firms don’t just react to opportunities. They design their success. They:

• Define a differentiated, outcome-specific value proposition. (They solve a well-defined business issue with precision.)
  
  
• Narrow their targeting. (They attract the right clients, reducing complexity and increasing efficiency.)
  
  
• Standardise & refine their processes. (They lower costs and improve quality.)
  
  
• Scale strategically. (Growth is repeatable and efficient, not headcount-driven.)

If your consulting firm is stuck in capability selling, pricing pressure, or inconsistent sales cycles, the issue isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a design problem. And the solution starts with getting your value proposition right.

There are two ways to run a consulting firm: Improvisation or Intention. The choice is yours.

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