If I asked you "Is your firm a risky bet for your ideal clients?" what would you say?

Would you tell me "no because our people have incredibly deep expertise, we have a great process to deliver the work and our results speak for themselves"?

Many say exactly that. I used to as well. I would talk about my background and expertise in both business and marketing. I woudl talk about how we only hire senior marketers. I would talk about the process we developed, and the results we have driven for clients. And I would close some business. But I would also lose plenty of deals that I thought I would win.

And the biggest problem? I couldn't understand why I was losing these deals. I would consistently get objections around price and timing, but those usually felt like cop-outs. Then finally, with one lost deal it clicked.

My champion, a member of the executive team who was pushing to work with us, told me that the CEO had decided to go in a different direction. After getting the opportunity to get some feedback about what happened, it became clear. There wasn't enough trust or credibility built up with my firm, compared to another that was in the running. That firm was more well known, and one of their referrals had a direct connection to the CEO.

Even though this CEO's trusted internal influencer, a part of their executive team wanted to work with us, that wasn't enough for him. And our champion wasn't going to risk their job in an effort to push the decision to go in our favor. The problem was risk. They were evaluating the purchase decision on a risk adjusted basis. This experience led me on a path to better understand how purchase decisions get made for consulting services, so that as much as possible, I could avoid this type of experience in the future. It led me to better understand the interplay between differentiation and risk, and how they should be used to position my firm as the low-risk choice for my ideal clients.

The Risk Perception Matrix

If our ideal clients are making risk-adjusted buying decisions, then our sole objective needs to be de-risking. Even though your gut tells you that your firm isn't a risky bet, I urge you to reconsider.

There are two dimensions to risk perception: risk impact, and mental state.

Risk impact is either personal or organizational. And while we may aspirationally think that people make decisions primarily based on organizational risk, that simply isn't the case. Personal risk is felt much more acutely - "am I going to look stupid in front of my peers?" or "am I going to get fired if I get this wrong?"

Mental state is either internal (happening inside your prospect's head" or external (your prospect is openly discussing their skepticism with their peers).

We need to position our firms to effectively adress these four questions:

1. Do I trust they will deliver for ME? This is the most important one, and often the one that's missed. Is your firm positioned in a way that allows you to effectively build trust and credibility with your various stakeholders? If your champion doesn't trust you enough, they will never fight for you in the face of internal challenges, and there will be plenty of those. Deals simply don't get done without internal champions.
2. Do I have the context to answer my team's questions about selecting them? Are you providing enough context for your champion and other stakeholders to have the appropriate internal conversations without you in the room?
3. Do they have the reputation for delivering for organizations like mine? This seems simple, just have enough case studies, right? But it isn't. What topics do you need to talk about and what language do you need to use, to really show relevant expertise context?
4. Do I have the context to prove they can best solve our problems? This also seems like case studies and testimonials would do the trick, but it's not that simple. Are you talking about the right problems? Do your frameworks, methodologies, and service offerings resonate as a way to solve these problems? And, only then do things like case studies come into play.

How do you want to be seen?

If choosing a new consulting partner is risky, and your objective is to be seen as the low-risk choice for your ideal customers, then everything you do needs to support that. Everything. Your marketing, delivery process, service offering, recruiting strategy, contracts, marketing, sales process, account management, etc.

Everything you do, needs to create this low-risk perception.

But low-risk doesn't mean boring and vanilla. On the contrary, it can mean being very innovative, but that innovation and differentiation needs to be paired with contextual relevancy, trust building, and credibility. And that needs to happen continuously throughout the client lifecycle.