David A. Fields Consulting Group Happy New Year!
It’s the first week of the year and a good time to ponder what you and your consulting firm should focus on.
What’s the best thing to do right now, particularly if you want more engagements at higher fees with more clients?
Your consulting prospects are asking a similar question:
What should they do right now? What should their #1, most immediate priority be?
Unfortunately, the top entries on your prospects’ priority lists may include challenges your consulting firm doesn’t solve—using AI to reduce the use of persimmons in manufacturing, convincing Mural and Miro to use the same controls, or ensuring next year’s virtual holiday party is even more engaging.
Where does that leave your consulting firm?
Without an engagement.
Your prospects’ investment decisions don’t only occur the first week of the year, of course.
Those decisions are made every week. Every day. And many consulting prospects prioritize their resources and attention based on the WIN question:
What’s Important Now?
In fact, there’s an entire management philosophy built around the idea of “What’s Important Now?”
The WIN approach can be great, especially for consultants and consulting firms that are feeling overwhelmed or are struggling to prioritize.
But clearly there’s a disconnect between your consulting firm and your prospects.
Because, if the problem you’re solving is important to your prospects and they recognize the tremendous value your firm could create for them, then why are they still not awarding you a consulting engagement?
Because in answering What’s Important Now? you’re focused on Important and your consulting prospect is obsessed with Now.
People—consultants and clients alike—rank urgency above importance.
Immediacy trumps long-term impact.
Hence, minor crises are claiming the resources, and your consulting project that could deliver extraordinary wins in the longer term is left on the back burner.
Prospects will respond to dozens of fire drills without ever investing in your long-term, conflagration-prevention consulting.
What’s the solution?
If time pressure is constantly over-weighted, how can you win consulting projects that feature long-term benefits?
By ensuring every consulting project and every one of your proposals contains a VIP:
Valuable, Immediate Progress
What’s the VIP for your consulting project? For your consulting offering?
If your consulting work delivers soft, long term benefits, the VIP may not be obvious.
Even if you’re addressing something as tangible and concrete as top-line revenue, the impact of your intervention may not show up for many months.
And “many months” does not feel immediate to your prospects.
You need VIP that creates points on the board now.
Let’s say you’re working on a culture issue or a leadership question or organization design. How do you create immediate value or solve an urgent issue as part of your work?
Fortunately, the value your consulting firm delivers in the short term needn’t be huge.
Quick and measurable results, even if they are modest, will elevate your consulting proposal to the top of the priority list.
Three Questions to Identify Your VIP
- How can your consulting project demonstrate a measurable change for your client within the next 30 days?
- How can you tie your work to a burning fire—something that may not be overly important, but is urgent to the client?
- What small thorns can you remove for your client in the short term, on your way to delivering the larger win later?
Have you been able to create immediate progress in your consulting projects?
Text and images are © 2025 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
Wondering how often any change is perceptible in a company within 30 days?
I know it isn’t a one-size fits all answer but some engagements can have a 40day impact. In one project just because of my knowledge of the tools they were using I was able to have them change their package with that vendor and save several thousand dollars. I also think that at the end of 30days giving them a tangible plan of what you will do for the rest of the engagement could be another useful deliverable like some sort of playbook on the thing you are helping to fix. I’m still a rookie but I see how this can help with my current prospects.
Excellent example, Aaron!
Interesting question, Douglas. Probably depends a bit on the size of the company and how decentralized it is. I’ve definitely seen changes made within 30 days that instantly alter a company.
However, for the purposes of creating Valuable, Immediate Progress, you don’t have to make changes that are perceived company-wide. Selling a project to turn the ship around in 12 months may not meet the buyer’s urgency threshold. However, if the project will immediately calm some of the infighting over whether or not to turn the ship, that may be an immediate win for the buyer, and make the sale more likely.
Thank you for raising that insightful drill down into the topic, Douglas!
I think the 30 day impact is analogous to the classic pricing question. “what would my product have to offer if I want to charge 10X the price”. It drives creative thinking. Maybe it ends up being 60 days but the result is real and timely and that gets attention.
You’re right, Chuck. Both questions push you to think about your offering and how you can make it fit better with your clients’ needs. Thank you for offering that additional route to offering development!
Provocative question Douglas.
You (and David) have given me a new angle to use on a current prospect….
I have a “stuck client” who cannot focus on my 12-month proposal to help them with their new product development “million dollar gamechanger” because the CEO is distracted by an emergency that I cannot help with.
Tomorrow I am going to pitch that he might consider “letting me manage some important low-hanging-fruit-wins on the new product in the next month, without needing his commitment to my larger proposal.” Doing so will take the worry off of his mind about this new product development project, so he can focus on the emergency.
Then after the emergency, he can sign the bigger contract.
Please wish me luck!
Definitely let us know how your conversation goes, Ken. Creating or diverting urgency is a difficult challenge and I’m interested in hearing how you fare.
Happy new year! This is terrific and gives me something to dig into. I ensure in my SOWs that there are very tangible outcomes, and that we are driving to those within a quarter at the very longest but this is really helpful for the top of the funnel thinking. TY!
Tangible outcomes and quarterly progress are good standards for your projects, Colette. Impressive! And yes, more immediate outcomes can draw additional prospects into your pipeline.
I’m glad you shared your SOW practice here, Colette. Very valuable.
Inspirational as always David–Happy New Year!
You’re very kind Doc. All the best to you and yours for the coming year.
I will update my proposal template and context document. I’ve been asking for 90day commitments because clients were wanting overnight outcomes. However, I think if I can find something tangible to give them within the first 30days it will help them see the value in an engagement.
Asking for 90 days commitments is fine, Aaron. It depends on what you’re working on. Some of our engagements start at a one-year minimum, and we work with firms who will only take on multi-year work. As you’ve noted, though, it’s very helpful to be able to produce outcomes quickly and to be able to highlight those.
Thank you for joining the discussion, Aaron, and let me know how the changes to your BD process work for you.
Thank you David.
The challenge always seems to be helping differentiate between urgent and important. I routinely use the Eisenhower Matrix in all aspects of my consulting practice. If it’s good enough for Ike ………
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
You’re right that the Eisenhower Matrix is extremely useful, Grant. Alas, even when the distinction is made clear, most clients live in the world of paying to solve urgent problems before paying to solve important ones.
I appreciate your adding the matrix tool to the conversation, Grant!