Why Consulting Value Propositions Must Include a Client Success Journey

I always advocate for 70% of a consultancy’s revenue to come from existing clients.

Winning new clients is essential, but true financial stability is powered by efficiency and predictability – something that recurring revenue from existing clients offers to consulting firms.

I am a big proponent of programmatic client development – a structured approach to expanding relationships with incoming clints and increasing long-term impact. I believe that to successfully retain clients – not just occasionally but as a matter of business strategy – consulting firms should create a mechanism that enables this expansion of work. It’s about documenting processes and optimising them over time.

One of the best ways to achieve this?

Designing a client success journey – that’s the advice I give to the consultancies we work with.

Instead of delivering one-off projects, a consulting firm guides clients through a progressive transformation, ensuring continuous value creation. 

A client success journey: What it is

It amazes me how many consultancies overlook the importance of proper service and client journey design. They put together a list of services they offer, determine the fees, and call it a day.

Then, when the going gets tough, these consulting firms just expand their service range, hoping this service diversification will allow them to cast a wider client and revenue net. Unfortunately, most come to the dreadful realisation that this strategy devalues the expertise and trust while adding complexity.

In my experience, profitable growth doesn’t come from piling on new services. It comes from deepening relationships with existing clients (preferably at the C-level).

When consultancies focus on strategically developing and retaining their clients, they unlock a cycle of trust, repeat business, and long-term client retention. We’ve seen this proven repeatedly across high-performing consultancies.

A client success journey is a roadmap that consulting firms can (and, in my opinion, absolutely should) develop that in a clear manner displays what milestones the firm can help its clients achieve and what problems it can address through long-term relationships. At the foundation of this roadmap is the clear vision of what value will be continuously delivered to clients.

With a client success roadmap, clients are more motivated to continue the partnership, knowing there is a journey designed for their success rather than just a series of ad-hoc check-ins.

By providing tailored growth programs, setting strategic milestones, and ensuring regular high-value interventions, consultancies can transform one-off projects into sustained partnerships.

Recommended reading: The Consulting Value Proposition Quadrant

Implementing a client success journey: A case study

Here’s a real-life example of how our former client, a supply chain consulting firm, designed its client success journey for a global manufacturing client.

Step 1: Establishing a strong foundation – supply chain risk strategy

• Challenge: A global manufacturer lacks a clear supply chain strategy, leading to inefficiencies and reactive decision-making.
• Solution: The consulting firm helps define a strategic roadmap, aligning supply chain models, risk tolerance, and cost structures with business objectives.
• Client success milestone: The company shifts from reactive problem-solving to a proactive, structured supply chain strategy that drives efficiency and resilience.

Step 2: Optimising operations – supply risk management

• Challenge: Volatile raw material prices and supplier dependency create instability.
• Solution: Alternative sourcing strategies, risk-sharing agreements, and predictive analytics.
• Client success milestone: Reduced exposure to supply fluctuations and more stable costs.

Step 3: Strengthening supplier relationships – supplier risk management

• Challenge: Quality inconsistencies from a key supplier threaten production.
• Solution: On-site risk assessments, process improvements, and performance monitoring.
• Client success milestone: Stronger, more reliable supplier relationships, reducing defects and delays.

Step 4: Safeguarding business interests – supply contract risk management

• Challenge: A supplier raises prices unexpectedly due to material shortages.
• Solution: Renegotiated contracts with risk-adjusted pricing, performance incentives, and penalties.
• Client success milestone: A legal framework that ensures long-term stability and supply continuity.

This example shows how consulting firms can go beyond solving isolated problems to design a structured, end-to-end client success journey. A client success journey is all about designing a path where each step builds towards lasting impact.

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

Why building client success journeys delivers results

Consulting firms focusing only on acquiring new clients leave money on the table. Without 70% revenue from existing clients, every year starts from zero.

A client success journey creates a structured path for growth, ensuring client retention and client progress step by step towards a more resilient business.

This is the essence of programmatic client development: clients don’t just buy one service. They stay, deepen engagement, and generate the majority of the revenue.

We call it: progressive client transformation.

High-performing consulting firms excel at this. They sign up new clients by demonstrating from the outset specific outcomes clients can achieve through a strategically designed client success journey and specific services linked to the success milestones in that journey.

So start by thinking about a typical client success journey or a change adoption roadmap beyond the initial engagement, and you will quickly discover this is an excellent starting point.

There are endless possibilities to extend high-value collaborations (see a few examples in the comments), but above all, consultancy client development and relationship building happen at the senior/executive level.

Poor senior/executive relationships likely mean more difficult client development, which likely means poor existential health in the long run.

Interested in receiving all our learnings to build a better consulting firm?
Subscribe to our newsletter.