Is Your Consulting Offer a Vitamin or a Painkiller?
One of the biggest challenges in consulting isn’t delivering value—it’s making sure clients see it as essential.
Too many firms struggle to sell work that should be a priority because clients view it as a ‘nice-to-have’ instead of a ‘must-have.’
I recently spoke with a consultant who specializes in workplace culture. She knew her work helped companies attract and retain top talent, reduce turnover, and improve performance. But she kept running into the same roadblock: Startups and fast-growing firms didn’t see culture as an urgent need.
Her offer was being treated like a vitamin—something beneficial, but optional. Meanwhile, clients were only willing to pay top dollar for solutions that felt like a painkiller—something that solved an urgent, immediate problem.
The Difference Between Vitamins and Painkillers
Vitamins are seen as helpful but not critical. They provide long-term benefits but aren’t tied to an immediate crisis. Examples include:
Leadership Training: Great for professional growth but not seen as solving an immediate operational issue.
Team-Building Workshops: Helps with engagement but often seen as something to invest in later.
Brand Strategy: Important for positioning but not always linked to urgent revenue impact.
Process Optimization: Increases efficiency but doesn’t always feel like an immediate business-saving necessity.
Painkillers, on the other hand, solve an urgent and painful problem that a client can’t ignore.
How to Make Your Consulting Offer a Painkiller
The highest-paid consultants don’t just deliver value—they position their work as the only solution to a critical business problem.
Here’s how to make that shift:
1. Tie Your Work to Revenue or Risk
Workplace culture isn’t just about engagement—it directly impacts retention, which affects hiring costs, productivity, and investor confidence.
Marketing strategy isn’t just about visibility—it’s the difference between a company gaining market share or being left behind.
Leadership development isn’t about soft skills—it’s about preventing costly hiring mistakes and execution failures.
2. Use Pain-Based Messaging
Founders don’t wake up worried about ‘team alignment’—they wake up worried about key hires leaving, missed targets, and investor concerns.
Instead of leading with why your work matters, lead with what happens if they don’t fix the problem.
Show them the cost of inaction—missed revenue, stalled growth, operational breakdowns.
3. Back It Up with Real-World Examples
Think about companies that ignored culture until it was too late. Uber’s early toxic culture cost them billions. WeWork’s leadership issues sank their IPO.
Show case studies of firms that invested in your area of expertise early—and how it protected them from costly mistakes later.
Are You Positioning Your Work as Essential?
Are you positioning your work as essential, or as something that’s ‘good to have when there’s time’?
Do your prospects feel the pain of their problem, or are you assuming they’ll just ‘get it’?
Can you reframe your messaging so clients see your work as something they can’t afford not to do?
Your ability to position your work as an urgent, must-have solution will define your success. If clients don’t see immediate consequences of inaction, they will always deprioritize your offer.
What’s one way you position your work as a painkiller instead of a vitamin? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
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