Today’s tumultuous geopolitical environment means that clients are finding it harder to make and implement strategic decisions—tariffs, interest rates, and oil prices (to name but a few of the factors that business leaders would like more confidence about) can flip in the instant it takes to refresh your social media feed.  

This doesn’t mean clients will freeze all big changes or stop buying consulting—Source’s accumulated data since the pandemic shows that clients who most lack confidence in the market are frequently those that are most likely to turn to consultants for help. However, clients in this situation need to be able to trust that the professional services they invest in will be worth what they spend. They need to see value delivered. 

But demonstrating value is where firms tend to struggle. Clients are much more convinced about the high quality of the services firms deliver than they are about the value created by these very same consulting projects. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that clients think firms fail to deliver any value; it’s more that they think the value gained matches the fees charged: They paid for something, and they got what they expected. When we talk about value here, we mean the proportion of clients that believe the value delivered by a firm was more than the amount paid in fees.  

In the chart below, taken from our latest Client Perceptions survey, we classify clients as having a positive perception of this metric if they judge the value delivered by a firm on a project as being twice, five times, or over ten times the amount paid in fees. And, despite a rebound from 2024’s low of 32% to this year’s figure of 49%, the gap between clients’ perceptions of the quality versus the value delivered has remained persistently large. In fact, globally, there is a 30 percentage-point gap between the number of clients that think firms offer high quality versus high value services.  

So, what can firms do to convince clients who are feeling buffeted, bruised, and ofttimes baffled by today’s economic headwinds to trust that they will get real value when they invest in consulting? Business leaders and experts at our recent event shared what they are looking for.

Talk about what really matters to clients

When firms talk about the value that a project will deliver, they need to make sure they are highlighting what really matters to clients. Source’s research has something interesting to say on this: “The two most important reasons why clients go to outside firms to deliver value is that firms can do things faster and better,” explained Fiona Czerniawska, Source’s CEO. We ask respondents to our Client Perceptions survey to rank their reasons for working with a particular firm in order of importance. Better outcomes and faster results than those that the organisation could deliver itself are consistently the top two reasons selected by clients. This year, lower cost was rated the least important of the five factors considered, coming below simplicity and less exposure to risk.

While this should direct firms’ conversations with potential buyers, they also need to spend time talking to clients to understand their specific needs. Karen Whitworth, NED at businesses including Tesco and Rank Group, said that it’s crucial to recognise the situation and needs of the organisation you are working with: “What is their profit margin? Are you being sensible with your fee quote? Because, ultimately, if you are really, really expensive, and you’re in a 2% margin organisation, you’re always going to be expensive no matter what you actually deliver,” she said.

Bring in what clients don’t have

While Source’s research consistently highlights that clients want to work with consultants that have the right expertise, they also want firms to recognise and leverage their own in-house capabilities, too. “When you’re in [a business] the experts are the people that are in it,” Karen, who is also a non-executive director at Nuffield Health and Tritax, said. “The value that the consulting firms bring is they have hopefully done very similar projects with other organisations [and are] able to share best practice, benchmarks, and that value creation.

“What you’re doing for me is synthesising all of those ideas and turning them into something that we can debate properly,” Karen Whitworth, NED and Audit Committee Chair, Tesco

“When we ask for a piece of work, in a lot of instances it will be to tell us how we stack up versus everybody else, or to help us to synthesise all of the insight and knowledge that we have as an organisation that, because we’re doing our day jobs, we don’t have time to put together and turn into something that’s creative or strategic.”

For Karen, consulting is about providing insight that will allow those that are running the business to make the best decisions. “What you’re doing for me is synthesising all of those ideas and turning them into something that we can debate properly [and decide] whether it’s going to create some value,” she said.

Recognise that value creation is a partnership

There was a consensus from all speakers that it is important to spend time defining exactly what will be delivered by a firm upfront. Andrew Brothers, former CIO at Primark, expanded on this, setting out how it’s critical to view and treat the firm and client as a partnership, where the input of both participants is needed to deliver value.

“I think outcome-based contracts or agreements are really important,” Andrew said. “So, when you work with any advisory firm, be very clear about what you’re going to do together. And ‘together’ is the key word.

“It’s really important, as you bring people in to support your business, that you create a tight ecosystem and a tight team, with the same outcomes that you’re all measured against, whether it’s the in-house company or the consulting firm,” Andrew explained. “[You need] regular review points, where you’re assessed as a team. And I mean the whole team delivering, so that you can collectively drive that value.”

Keep the conversation going

While measures and targets are important—particularly with the outcomes-based payment models that clients tell us they want to use more—they cannot be the complete answer. Measurement can be tricky on more strategic projects, particularly those where it is hard to attribute the amount of value delivered by each part of the client-firm partnership.

So, firms need to keep talking to clients about the value they are creating. “Ultimately, it’s more about a firm being clear about the impact that they’ve had, and having conversations with the client about that throughout the process,” Fiona said. She recounted a past Source project where a control group of account managers from a firm were tasked with regularly talking to clients about the value they were creating and how, practically, they were helping that business. Positive views of that firm went up sixfold during the period, because the value of the engagement had been made explicit. “Some of this is not actually about metrics. It’s about the conversation and showing that you are thinking about value,” Fiona explained.

In today’s unreliable market, clients will need to provide a strong business case to convince their own top team to invest in consulting support at a time when margins are being squeezed and uncertainty prevails. Firms can help here—and differentiate themselves from their competitors—by providing a convincing and accurate account of how value will be delivered.

What can firms do ?

If you would like to know more about clients’ perceptions of the value your specific firm offers, or to understand their unmet needs and frustrations in this space, Source’s bespoke client experience studies can give you in-depth and objective feedback direct from your clients and prospects.

You will also find information about how your firm is performing against its competitors when it comes to value in our Client Perceptions Programme series of reports. Please get in touch for more information.