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In consulting, value-based pricing doesn’t fail because firms don’t have the right engagement model... but because they try to price outcomes they cannot control. I’m under the impression firms are trying to shift toward more value-led work by revising their engagement models and pricing: Fixed fees, outcome bonuses, risk sharing. All of this is right and necessary, of course (don’t get me wrong!)... ... but in most cases, it won’t be sufficient. Because a firm’s pricing model is only as helpful as the structure underneath it - and for value-led engagements to really pay off, a firm needs three things besides just a fixed-fee contract: 1) Clarity about which issue it’ll resolve, and to which end 2) Defined and proven structures to get clients to the resolution, and, most crucially, 3) Enough built-in control over process, methods, and progress to deliver. The last part is where most firms hit a wall ... usually because they can’t really nail parts 1 and 2 either. And it’s almost always related to their overall strategic stance and commercial model. 👉 Most consultancies were built to sell primarily capacity - meaning their commercial ways of working are geared towards responding to briefs, reacting to client needs, and then delivering against client expectations through a “billable hours” pricing model. It’s a proven, profitable, and, above all, flexible way of “doing consulting” - but this very flexibility is why it doesn’t lend itself very well to value-led work. If, as a firm, you’re so used to ceding control to clients and doing their every bidding to keep them happy (i.e., if your favorite answer to client questions is “it depends”), then your chances of controlling value to the extent required by value-led consulting are usually pretty slim. And if you simply “layer on” some value-led engagement structures onto these slim chances, then, well... you can get in all sorts of trouble, fast. The better way, therefore, is to ensure you have enough control first, which requires you to get to a position from which you can define and prescribe all key variables of an engagement. If you’ve been reading my posts here, you’ll already know the steps towards such a position: 1️⃣get clear on the issue you solve, 2️⃣specify whom you solve it for 3️⃣clarify the “path to success” you’ll guide your clients along, and 4️⃣design, test, and refine your methods for guiding them. Then: 5️⃣explain, explain, explain and prescribe it all beforehand (so they’ll have already fully understood by the time they finally reach out to you for help). In other words: design and install a value proposition plus proposition-informed ways of going to market and working first. THEN (and only then), build things like fixed-price programs on the back. Your chances of finding success - by helping your clients succeed - will be so much greater (and risks of making people unhappy while driving projects into the red will be greatly reduced). Hope this helps!

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” A quote famously attributed to Einstein…and one I’ve apparently decided to test after 8 years dedicated to Industry 4.0. 😎 Somewhere along the way, I think we made this stuff REALLY complicated. After all, there are so many advancements and changes happening simultaneously that it becomes really easy to fall into the “complicated” rabbit hole. So I tried boiling down eight years of projects, conversations, successes, failures, buzzwords, maturity models, architecture diagrams, and transformation headaches into 8 ridiculously simple truths. Are these perfectly, universally, technically correct? Nope. 😂 Are they directionally true based on what I’ve seen over and over again? Absolutely. Sometimes you have to remove 97% of the explanation to see the 3% that really matters. 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞? https://lnkd.in/eTN3wQh7 Which one is your favorite? 😀 | 88 comments on LinkedIn

I had never worked in corporate. So I made this graphic to better pretend I know what I’m talking about: 👑 CEO: In charge of the whole company 💰 CFO: Keeps track of money that came in 📈 CRO: Makes sure more money comes in 💻 CTO: Makes the product/tech get better ⚙️ COO: Makes the biz actually run 📣 CMO: Builds the brand + creates demand 🛡️ CIO: Makes sure company’s internal tech works Save this to sound smarter with your clients. You’ve got this. | 85 comments on LinkedIn

Everything you need to know about managing people at 37signals.

Many consulting firms are trying to grow on foundations that cannot support growth. What Florian and I observe: they invest in marketing, sales, new services, new audiences & markets, partnerships & AI. Their activities increase, but commercial performance often doesn’t. The problem usually sits further upstream. A consulting firm cannot sustainably improve commercial performance when it hasn’t made clear, deliberate choices about where it creates value, for whom, around which problems, and how that value is repeatedly delivered and evidenced. That is why we keep coming back to the same hierarchy: ‼️ FOUNDATIONS COME FIRST ▪️ A consulting value proposition built around important client problems, business stakes and outcomes. ▪️ A tightly defined audience with enough commonality in problems and context to build deep expertise. ▪️ A repeatable problem-resolution approach that turns individual experience into institutional expertise and IP. ▪️ A client success journey that makes the path from problem to outcome visible and increasingly repeatable. ▪️ Evidence and measurement that show what changes for clients and strengthen the firm’s proof over time. ▪️ Audience education that builds authority around the problems the firm wants to become known for solving. These foundations shape what gets sold, how confidently it gets priced, how efficiently it gets delivered, what expertise accumulates, what proof gets created and how strongly one engagement compounds into the next. ‼️ THEN COME THE GROWTH FACTORS Once the foundations are strong, marketing and sales can amplify it in a much more coherent way: - Expertise becomes easier to communicate. - Proof becomes reusable. - Buyer risk decreases. - Qualification improves. - Pricing becomes more defensible. - Delivery becomes more repeatable. That is where growth starts becoming economically better growth. ‼️ AND THEN THERE ARE THE DISTRACTIONS When foundations are weak, firms often try to compensate with activity that looks like growth but actually increases complexity: ▪️ Adding services because the market seems interested, rather than because they reinforce a clear value proposition. ▪️ Chasing opportunities outside the firm’s strongest problem space, diluting expertise and positioning. ▪️ Entering new markets before the existing proposition performs consistently and predictably. ▪️ Confusing increased commercial activity with improved commercial performance. These are often symptoms of unclear foundations. And the more they accumulate, the harder it becomes to build a coherent growth engine. 👉 THE TAKEAWAY Growth exposes weak foundations. It rarely fixes them. Consulting firms with strong foundations can compound expertise, proof, reputation and commercial performance as they grow. Those without them often compound complexity instead. Before asking, “How do we grow faster?”, there is a more important question: Is the consulting firm designed to turn growth into better economics?

Consulting proposition design is a process... and a difficult one you can’t outsource, at that (at least not if you expect it to work).👇 Someone sent me a DM asking why they couldn’t just “design our value proposition with the help of AI.” It made me pause (briefly) - and then I wrote something very similar to the below (yes, this is me recycling an e-mail as a LinkedIn post 🙂‍↕️): A written-down proposition - canvas, statement, one-pager, whichever - is a useful output. It’s helpful for rollout, for alignment, for giving the team something to point at. But it’s only a part of the process. And it’s not where the value lives. The value lives in what happens to a senior leadership group over the course of getting there. Which is often a drawn-out, iterative, and at times genuinely difficult effort. The kind that includes hard discussions, revisited decisions, and the occasional moment where the room goes quiet because someone has just said the thing nobody wanted to say out loud. So it’s not a project you can delegate to marketing. Not a writing job for whoever volunteers. And - I’m sorry - not a prompt to an LLM that returns five options before lunch. I mean, I get it: We all want the quick output, and prefer to get it easily and cheaply. But the output isn’t the point. Designing a consulting proposition properly means getting the people who will have to live it -and be held to it - to sit together, repeatedly, and work through genuinely hard questions. What do we actually stand for? What are we willing to give up? What does this mean for how we price, what we say yes to, what we decline? Where do we disagree, and what does that disagreement reveal about unresolved strategic choices we’ve been avoiding? Those conversations don’t resolve in a day. They rarely resolve cleanly at all. The first answer a leadership group gives to “what’s our proposition?” is almost never the right one. It’s the answer that feels safe. The real answer emerges later - after the group has stress-tested it, pushed back on it, and sat with the discomfort of what committing to it actually means. That’s the process. And it can’t be shortcut, outsourced, or generated - because what it’s actually producing, underneath the canvas and the story, is shared ownership. A collective promise the firm’s senior people made together, argued over together, and will therefore hold each other to. You can’t buy that off the shelf... You have to build it. (But, hey, sure: after you’ve built it, you can ask ChatGPT to put it in some punchy paragraphs for you - do try it, and see if you like the results!) Hope this helps!

How consulting firms can improve their go-to-market: with an issue-led consulting proposition. The consulting industry is still growing, but winning new clients has become more complex. The inferior go-to-market in the context of that growing GTM complexity? - Selling capabilities: “We are data & analytics experts” (one of the 1,000s others saying exactly the same thing). - Selling services: “We are data & analytics experts and these are our services: A, B, C, D, and E” (same services as all the others). - Selling industries: “We work for (the same) industries (as all the others ): X, Y, and Z” (the big, ugly sameness - > zero differentiation). So, why is this an inferior approach and what’s the alternative/better GTM to compete in the brutal consulting market? We’ve explained it in detail in our article. Enjoy reading! cc: Florian Heinrichs https://lnkd.in/e4GyWH9T

“Start with Why” is bad advice! You probably remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: 1) physiological 2) safety 3) love and belonging needs 4) esteem 5) self-actualization The idea was that if you don’t have the lower levels, you won’t (or can’t) care about the higher levels. The same concept is true in how you market your product. Despite the marketing “wisdom” that you should always lead with “benefits” rather than “features,” this is only true if your potential customer ALREADY knows… → What type of product you are → What type of problem you’re trying to solve → How you solve it (capabilities + features) (And in startup-land, this is usually NOT the case). Only once these more “basic” messaging needs are met can you start to talk about “benefits” (i.e. “increase revenue,” “save time,” “save money,” etc.) If you try to message at the benefit level without addressing the more basic needs, you will: ㄨ Obfuscate what your product actually does ㄨ Make your customer journey longer & have increased friction ㄨ Sound like you’re bullshitting Here’s an example using Wispr Flow (read from the bottom up). | 76 comments on LinkedIn

Consultancies: Buyers 👏 don't 👏 care 👏 about your internal structure! 👏 Sorry for the extra claps here, but... this has been a pet peeve of mine for longer than I care to admit. The internal org chart of a consulting firm is designed to do one thing: manage talent and coordinate delivery. It groups people by skill, seniority, or service line ... whatever makes the operational machinery run. This doesn't mean it should also structure the firm's go-to-market strategy... which it really, really shouldn't. Your service groups or practice lines were never designed to tell clients how the firm will help them solve their challenge - and yet, in most consulting firms, that's exactly what it ends up doing. The service lines become the go-to-market. The practice structure becomes the story. Every unit has its own plan, its own campaigns, its own thought leadership stories (some - and I remember this vividly - even have their own business cards... which lead to a very funny conversation with an industry analyst from Forrester once, who somewhat-confidentially told me clients had expressed their confusion about seeing “four different logo versions” of the same firm, in the same bid...). The downsides of this are obvious: It's confusing to clients; it's creating lots of overhead. And it often makes collaboration and cross-selling harder, while increasing the firm's risk of being “pigeonholed” in just one or two of its expertise areas. There is a better way of doing this, and I've written a piece about it over on thevisibleauthority.com - Link in the comments if you're interested, and thanks to Luk Smeyers for his thinking around consultancies which don't have a matrix organization, just yet. As always: Hope this helps!

Een klant zat muurvast. De offerte om het op te lossen? 250k. We stelden iets heel anders voor - iets wat je nog niet met AI kan. +50 verkopers die allemaal hun eigen ding deden, systemen die niet met elkaar praatten, jaren aan gegroeide complexiteit. Iedereen daar wist dat het beter kon. Maar niemand kreeg het in beweging. Als je naar het hele plaatje kijkt, is het gigantisch. Alle processen herzien, alle tools op elkaar afstemmen, iedereen mee krijgen. Zo’n project duurt een jaar en kost een vermogen. Alleen al bij de gedachte haakt een organisatie af. Dus stelden we voor om klein te beginnen. Eén afgebakend stuk waar we snel resultaat konden laten zien. Een paar weken werk in plaats van een jaar, voor 15% van het budget. Want een organisatie komt pas in beweging als ze voelt dat het werkt. Als management, sales en marketing na een paar maanden zien dat er echt iets verandert, dan ontstaat er vertrouwen. En vanuit dat vertrouwen kun je de volgende stap zetten, en de stap daarna. Iedereen roept dat je in kleine stapjes moet werken. Agile, iteratief, je kent de woorden. Maar in de praktijk maken bedrijven het zichzelf zelden makkelijk. Ze willen alles tegelijk oplossen, en daar lopen ze op vast. Voelt als te weinig, dat klein beginnen. Werkt soms wel, soms niet 😉 De kunst is om juist te kiezen. Gevoel, expertise, taste, ervaring... Noem het wat je wil.. Probeer dat maar eens met AI te vervangen 😉

Every week I see another consulting firm claiming to “sell outcomes.” Most don’t. They sell activities with a few outcome words sprinkled on top. Or they confuse outcome-selling with outcome-based pricing. Others promise business results they simply don’t control. The result is more consulting jargon around a topic that should bring clarity. Florian wrote this article because the conversation has drifted far away from what outcome-selling actually means for consulting firms. If outcome-selling matters to a consulting firm, it is worth understanding the difference. Read Florian’s great article below. Enjoy reading! https://lnkd.in/eJc4ssyv

Where your revenue comes from is more important than the revenue itself. Founders with good connections and a high ACV product can hit strong revenue numbers relatively quick... But are these deals REPEATABLE? Founders that want _scalable_ growth should evaluate every deal through this lens: → Can I find 10-100 more customers with precisely the same problem? If the answer is no... then it may not be worth taking that customer on. Unless of course you want to operate your software business like a consultancy, where every customer is custom-scoped and custom-supported. When you take on customers with custom problems, they’ll want the product to be adjusted to support their specific use case. And when you have LOTS of customers with different custom problems, then your product will start getting pulled in 100 different directions. Additionally, every different segment requires its own GTM motion. It’s own problem framing, it’s own differentiation against its own set of competitors, it’s own proof points/customer case studies/testimonials, etc. Different outbound sales emails, different ads, different pieces of content, etc. Scalable comes from being able to use the SAME marketing and sales and product decisions/actions to reach the SAME types of customers. | 41 comments on LinkedIn

[Blueprint] The ABM process from ICP to closed deals 👇 A lot of GTM teams struggle with ABM because they skip the fundamentals. Running campaigns without the strategic foundation makes everything harder. Here’s what the full process looks like when done right: 1️⃣ ICP criteria segmented into tiers Tiers are directly related to the annual contract value you can achieve with each account. Traditionally ABM starts at 50K ACV, preferably 100K+. With AI making teams more lean, you can now consider it from 25-50K onwards. The sweet spot? Accounts that fit your ICP and are already in market. 2️⃣ Map the full buying committee Then translate the most relevant roles into buyer personas. Multiple people in the buying committee with long sales cycles means you need clarity on who matters and why. This becomes the foundation for everything that follows. 3️⃣ Apply SPICED from Revenue Architecture ⤵️ Take the pain and impact, convert it into a messaging house based on the job to be done. The flow: a goal they need to achieve → a challenge to overcome → creates an informational need. You tailor your messaging to that specific need while preempting objections before they surface. This messaging house becomes the foundation for all content. 📌 Watch other SPICED content pinned in the comments! 4️⃣ Content brainstorm aligned to messaging Typically focused on education and awareness phases. Content gets mapped out in a campaign blueprint with clear phases. Example: webinar campaign with full invitation phase, then later sales comes in with direct mail playbooks. The blueprint shows exactly how marketing and sales coordinate their efforts. 5️⃣ Three phases of execution Phase 1: Strategic and tech setup Phase 2: Full warmup campaign Phase 3: Sales follow-up Capture all execution steps in a task sheet so nothing falls through the cracks. Your tech stack depends on the specific motion you develop in the blueprint. The result? A coordinated effort between marketing and sales to identify target companies and build lasting relationships through personalized campaigns. One important note on campaign levels: Start with 1:few rather than 1:1. Going too narrow too early means zero ROI if you miss. Once you prove the model, investment and ROI both go up as you narrow focus. For 1:1 or 1:several campaigns, make sure you have full account maps and plans mapped out for the entire account. ABM works when you have the fundamentals in place. ICP → Buying Committee → Personas → Messaging House → Content → Blueprint → Execution. Want the ABM worksheet? Come find me in DM or the comments 👇 Ps: Save this post for later implementation! #ABM #GTM #SaaS

If you’re an early-stage startup, position for the next 6 months... not the next 6 years... More specifically, position for your next meaningful revenue target rather than your venture-scale, unicorn-size happy ending. Unicorns are not built overnight. And positioning yourself as a $100m ARR company (when you’re doing 500k ARR) is just not going to work. You can’t execute complex go-to-market strategies like unicorns can. You can’t build for multiple use cases at once like unicorns can. You can’t dominate multiple markets all at once like unicorns can. Be realistic about the current size of your company and ask, “What would it take for us to get to $____m ARR?” (whatever that number is for you). You’ll be smarter, leaner, and ultimately more successful. | 45 comments on LinkedIn

A personal bookmark library organized for easy reference.

📘 I Read a Book on Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next - Setup & User Guide - Summer ‘26 Edition As someone who spends much of my time exploring Marketing Cloud Next and Data 360, I was interested to see how this guide approached the platform. The book covers the end-to-end journey of a Marketing Cloud Next implementation, from initial setup to day-to-day operations. Some of the topics include: ✅ Marketing Cloud Next architecture ✅ Data 360 fundamentals (Data Streams, DMO, Identity Resolution, Calculated Insights) ✅ Marketing Cloud Next configuration ✅ Domains, DKIM, and consent management ✅ Campaigns, Flows, Segments, and Content ✅ Analytics ✅ Agentforce for marketers ✅ Troubleshooting and migration from Marketing Cloud Engagement What I appreciated most is its practical, step-by-step approach. Each chapter follows a consistent structure, covering: - What you’ll achieve - Prerequisites - Step-by-step configuration - Screenshots - Verification - Common issues - Summary Rather than simply explaining features, the book guides readers through the implementation process, making it easy to follow along in a real Salesforce environment. My impression 🙂 If you’re new to Marketing Cloud Next, I believe this is an excellent resource to build a solid foundation. It introduces Data 360 and Marketing Cloud Next in a logical order, helping readers understand how the two work together before moving on to campaigns and automation. Overall, I think it’s a valuable guide for anyone getting started with Marketing Cloud Next. Many thanks to the author Jose de la Torre Casas for sharing such a practical resource. I’m looking forward to future editions as Marketing Cloud Next continues to evolve.If you’re interested, you can read a free preview on Amazon. https://lnkd.in/gWHy_s3H 👀 P.S. One more thing I’d like to mention: the proceeds from this book will be donated to support children in Nepal. I truly appreciate the author’s commitment to such a meaningful initiative. 🫶 - Nobuyuki Watanabe 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gkeKyShH #Salesforce #AgentforceMarketing #Agentforce #Data360 #DataCloud #MarketingCloudNext #MomentMarketer #MarketingChampion #MarketingChampions | 13 comments on LinkedIn

Wish this book existed when I was still trying to survive corporate change projects 🫣 Great work on making the human factor in change tangible by Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth ! cc IT Revolution

Reken even mee wat marketing een IT-bedrijf kost. €3.000 tot €10.000 per maand aan uitvoering. Plus €3.000 tot €8.000 om het te laten managen, of dat nou een eigen marketeer is of een bureau. Dat is €70.000 tot €200.000 per jaar. En dan komt de vraag: wat heeft het opgeleverd? Meestal wijst iemand naar leads of bereik. Bijna nooit naar gesprekken, opportunities of een bedrag in de pipeline. Terwijl er echt wel veel ontstaat vanuit je marketing. Bedrijven komen op je site, bekijken je prijzen, kijken op je profiel. Een marketingverantwoordelijke bij een IT-distributeur zei het zo: “Je krijgt een bak met data. Hoe ga je die flow dan inrichten? Wanneer doe je wat?” Omdat dit niet in de marketing/sales strategie is bepaald, blijft er te veel liggen. Niet uit luiheid, maar omdat niemand heeft besloten wat de moeite waard is. Wanneer er niet vooraf duidelijk is afgesproken om X actie te doen als een interessant bedrijf Y signaal vertoont, blijft het vaak hangen op waardeloze leads of impressies. Dat is precies het verschil tussen marketing die gesprekken, opportunities en pipeline oplevert vs een marketeer die rapporteert op 50 leads en 100.000 impressies. Test het bij jezelf. Schrijf op wat er gebeurt als een bedrijf uit je doelgroep twee keer op je site komt. Wie doet wat, wanneer, en wat als er geen reactie komt. Krijg je dat niet in één zin op papier, dan is je marketing niet je probleem.

98% of consulting firms compete in the ‘Sameness Zone’. Every consulting firm wants to stand out. Yet most describe themselves in almost exactly the same way. They offer strategy, transformation, AI, technology, operations, leadership, or industry expertise, and then wonder why buyers struggle to see meaningful differences. They compete in the ugly Sameness Zone. The problem is not a lack of expertise. The problem is a lack of commercial choices. Without a deliberate consulting proposition, firms keep adding capabilities, accepting more project variation, and broadening their message until they become increasingly difficult to distinguish. Commercial strength starts when a consulting firm becomes commercially distinctive. That requires making deliberate choices about: * the business problems worth solving repeatedly * the client context where expertise creates the most value * the outcomes the consulting firm wants to become known for * the expertise that should compound over time * the work that no longer belongs in the proposition 👉 THE TAKEAWAY In our experience, only around 2-3% of consulting firms have proposition foundations that consistently support those choices. That leaves an extraordinary opportunity for the remaining firms. The goal is to leave the Sameness Zone by becoming commercially distinctive through a credible consulting proposition.

We’ve helped 600+ startups with their positioning and noticed something very interesting. 🧠 Positioning processes differ based on the mindset of the founding team. (especially early-stage startups) In other words, different founders naturally solve for their positioning in different ways to figure out: Target Market, Competitive Alternatives, and Product Differentiation. What exactly are the archetypes, and how should each founder approach positioning? We’ve identified 3 archetypes: 1️⃣ Customer-Focused These founders are dead set on trying to help a specific group of people. (often in a specific industry) They’ve usually been in the role of their customers and have deep insight into the struggles these customers face. How should they approach positioning? 📍 Start with a specific target audience… …to then solve for who to compete with and how to differentiate. 2️⃣ Technology-Focused These founders are dead set on applying the latest technology breakthrough. (did someone say “AI”?) Unlike customer-focused founders, this group doesn’t have a strong conviction on who the target market should be. They see endless market applications for what they’ve built and often envision that everyone will eventually use their product. To be clear, it’s not that these founders don’t care about their customers. It’s just that their main focus is on pushing the technology as far as it will go. How should they approach positioning? 📍 Start with their unique product capabilities… …to solve for who to target with and what to compete with. 3️⃣ Competition-Focused These founders are dead set on disrupting a specific market category. They’ve usually had direct experience with the products in the category and have specific knowledge of their limitations. This group is similar to customer-focused but lacks specific industry domain expertise. How should they approach positioning? 📍 Start with what they are replacing (competition)… …to then solve for who to target with and how to differentiate. - - - We believe the customer-focused positioning process generally leads to the strongest positioning. *But it only works if the founders deeply understand their target customers. #positioning #b2bmarketing #startups | 16 comments on LinkedIn