Earlier this year, we had an awkward conversation with a consulting firm that proudly claimed to be experts in Lean Management.
We challenged them: “Who is actually looking for Lean Management?” They hesitated.
The truth is that no one wakes up thinking, “We need more Lean.” Clients do not have a Lean problem; they have a productivity issue, a supply chain bottleneck, or an operational inefficiency. Lean is merely one potential approach to resolving these issues.
But by leading with "We are lean experts (and shouting into the void: "Who needs lean management?"), like almost all other consulting firms, this firm was making a critical mistake: they were selling a capability, not a solution to a specific problem for a well-defined target audience.
In this article, I want to discuss in more depth why consulting firms should rethink and shift their focus from selling expertise to selling solutions to high-stakes problems.
Let us return to our example for a moment. The consulting firm, in our view, asked the wrong question. They were inquiring of prospects: “Who requires Lean?” A more compelling question would have been, “Who needs improved operational efficiency?”
We advised them to focus on:
What would that look like? Something like this: “We help international manufacturing companies reduce supply chain costs by typically between X and Y% using a Lean approach.”
This is just an example from a recent conversation. We encounter this consulting 'illness' (poor value propositions) daily with capabilities-focused terminology front and centre: AI, Agile, Digital, PPM, Autonomous, Sustainability, ESG, and hundreds more.
Recommended reading: The Biggest Mistakes Consulting Firms Made in 2024
We frequently recommend that consulting firms examine their sales strategies in light of their own daily consumer behaviour.
For example, say you have a plumbing issue: a pipe bursts due to cold weather. You turn off the water and call a plumber. Do you ask this person to list all the tools they have at their disposal? No, not really. You don’t care. You want your everyday life back: to be able to do laundry, wash dishes, and take a shower.
Most of us won’t even be able to name more than a handful of tools we expect to see in a plumber’s toolbox. In this instance, you are looking for a specialist with a proven track record (positive reviews from past customers) of fixing broken pipes efficiently and durably. That’s all.
The same logic and natural way of human behaviour apply to the consulting industry. Clients don’t care what skills a consultancy has in its toolbox – not at first. They want a partner who will solve headache-inducing problems and the guarantee that this partner will succeed.
Don’t get us wrong. Consulting expertise is essential. It allows a consulting firm to make bold statements like “We help reduce operational costs by 30% within six months” and back them up with a track record of delivering that value.
However, expertise is a tool. It’s a capability. It means nothing without a real problem (explained in a value proposition)!
Most companies already have CRM, ERP, Cloud, and other solutions or tools. Of course, they all want to maximize the use and ROI of the systems or approaches they have in place.
However, systems that are supposed to facilitate processes and make operations more efficient often act as bottlenecks due to a lack of adoption, incorrect implementation, or other reasons.
Consulting firms could improve their commercial effectiveness by ALSO targeting clients who already have a solution but are not achieving the expected ROI.
However, also here, screaming “We are CRM experts” will not get a consulting firm far enough in these instances. Once again, clients don’t care, and this messaging won’t even register on their radar.
But what if the consulting firm, instead, focuses on the problem that these prospects are facing:
Now, the consulting firm’s value proposition and the resulting messaging have an ‘open door’.
Instead of saying 'We are CRM experts', they now address real trigger points:
The ideal approach for consulting firms is to distinguish between two target audiences:
In both instances, we strongly suggest that consulting firms focus on the problem they promise to solve. Because the trigger points for the two groups are different, consultancies’ value propositions should be different when targeting these two audiences. Very few consulting firms make this difference.
Without a clear distinction, firms risk losing relevance with both groups.
Recommended reading: Building a Winning Consulting Value Proposition
We sometimes hear from consultancies that they want to shift from their current "capability-selling" strategy—where they offer raw expertise and often deliver bespoke engagements—to a more proposition- and outcome-selling stance. But they’re "not sure if they’re ready yet."
That's okay, of course. We never tell them they might be running out of time. It’s not our style, and we don't believe in pressuring people that way.
But honestly? We don't believe the runway for "classical" consulting is getting shorter. And the market? Whether firms feel "ready" or not, it's already moving on.
Software and AI have been tackling the same business challenges that consultancies used to solve for a while now, offering highly specific, outcome-focused solutions at a fraction of the price.
And with a now heightened slowdown in most service markets, firms are feeling the pinch even harder.
Combine these pressures and consider how experts expect consulting growth rates to stay sluggish, and it’s clear: This isn’t the time to cling to old ways and hope things "get better." (see our article: 'Consulting Growth Is Stalling, How Can You Respond?')
In this environment, sticking with capability selling just isn’t cutting it.
Clients aren’t looking to buy expertise anymore; they want outcomes—specific solutions to specific problems with clear, achievable results.
So firms will likely see their troubles worsen if they cannot make a clear, compelling business case for hiring them.
If we ran a "classical" consulting firm today and saw inquiries slowing and utilization dropping, we’d focus our now-free resources on four critical things:
1. Refining value propositions – moving beyond broad capabilities to create sharp, outcome-focused offers that speak to clients' real issues at the firm, service group, and service level.
2. Innovating services – investing in solutions that increase client value and improve delivery (Why not leverage software and AI?).
3. Validating offers – putting new propositions before friends, prospects, and clients to test resonance. We’d even deliver a few services at "trial pricing" to build real-world delivery experience.
4. Systematizing go-to-market and delivery – many firms still have work to do in refining their bizdev and client service processes. Do this work, but do it for the new propositions and services after you've validated them.
And no, this isn’t about tweaks. It’s about structural change - ensuring the firm’s strategy is fit for the current market.
Because if there’s one thing we are sure of, it’s this: the market isn’t going to wait for anyone to be ready... and what made firms successful in the past won’t necessarily carry them forward.
How do they say? The second-best time to revise your strategy is ...
... now.
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