Why Consulting Value Propositions Must Include a Client Success Journey

I always advocate for 70% of a consultancy’s revenue to come from existing clients.

Winning new clients is essential, but true financial stability is driven by efficiency and predictability – qualities that recurring revenue from existing clients provides to consulting firms.

I am a strong advocate of 'programmatic client development' – a structured approach to expanding relationships with new clients and enhancing long-term impact.

I believe that to successfully retain clients, not just occasionally but as a matter of business strategy, consulting firms should create a mechanism that enables this expansion of work. It’s about documenting processes and optimising them over time.

Designing a client success journey is one of the best ways to achieve this. That’s the advice I give to the consultancies we work with.

Instead of delivering one-off projects, a consulting firm guides clients through a progressive transformation, ensuring continuous value creation. 

A client success journey: What it is

It amazes me how many consultancies overlook the importance of proper service and client journey design. They put together a list of services they offer, determine the fees, and call it a day.

Okay, I'm exaggerating to make the point. 

Then, when the going gets tough, these consulting firms expand their service range, hoping this diversification will allow them to cast a wider client and revenue net. Unfortunately, most come to the dreadful realisation that this strategy devalues the expertise and trust while adding complexity.

In my experience, profitable growth doesn’t come from piling on new services. It comes from deepening relationships with existing clients (preferably at the C-level).

When consultancies focus on strategically developing and retaining their clients, they unlock a cycle of trust, repeat business, and long-term client retention. We’ve seen this proven repeatedly across high-performing consultancies.

A client success journey is a roadmap that consulting firms can (and, in my opinion, absolutely should) develop that clearly displays what milestones the firm can help its clients achieve and what problems it can address through long-term relationships.

At the foundation of this roadmap is a clear vision of the value that will be continuously delivered to clients.

With a client success roadmap, clients are more motivated to continue the partnership, knowing a journey is designed for their success rather than just a series of ad-hoc check-ins.

Consultancies can transform one-off projects into sustained partnerships by providing tailored growth programs, setting strategic milestones, and ensuring regular high-value interventions.

Recommended reading: The Consulting Value Proposition Quadrant

Implementing a client success journey: case study #1

Here’s a real-life example of how our former client, a supply chain consulting firm, designed its 4-step client success journey for a global manufacturing client.

Step 1: Establishing a strong foundation – supply chain risk strategy

• Challenge: A global manufacturer lacks a clear supply chain strategy, leading to inefficiencies and reactive decision-making.
• Solution: The consulting firm helps define a strategic roadmap that aligns supply chain models, risk tolerance, and cost structures with business objectives.
• Client success milestone: The company shifts from reactive problem-solving to a proactive, structured supply chain strategy that drives efficiency and resilience.

Step 2: Optimising operations – supply risk management

• Challenge: Volatile raw material prices and supplier dependency create instability.
• Solution: Alternative sourcing strategies, risk-sharing agreements, and predictive analytics.
• Client success milestone: Reduced exposure to supply fluctuations and more stable costs.

Step 3: Strengthening supplier relationships – supplier risk management

• Challenge: Quality inconsistencies from a key supplier pose a threat to production.
• Solution: On-site risk assessments, process improvements, and performance monitoring.
• Client success milestone: Stronger, more reliable supplier relationships, resulting in reduced defects and delays.

Step 4: Safeguarding business interests – supply contract risk management

• Challenge: A supplier raises prices unexpectedly due to material shortages.
• Solution: Renegotiated contracts with risk-adjusted pricing, performance incentives, and penalties.
• Client success milestone: A legal framework that ensures long-term stability and supply continuity.

This example shows how consulting firms can go beyond solving isolated problems to design a structured, end-to-end client success journey. A client success journey is all about designing a path where each step builds towards lasting impact.

Recommended reading: Consulting Growth Is Stalling – How Can You Respond?

Implementing a client success journey: case study #2

The Company and Context

This case focuses on a data and analytics consulting firm that had grown steadily but found itself stuck in a generic market position. Despite delivering technically solid projects across various industries, the firm struggled to differentiate itself and was hitting the project wall (smaller, short-term, one-off projects and a high volume of costly new client acquisition).

Working with us, they made the strategic decision to specialise in solving complex operational challenges for supermarket chains. This shift required a sharper value proposition and a redesign of their entire client engagement model, built around a clearly structured client success journey.

One of the most critical elements in making a value proposition commercially successful is translating it into a clear, actionable client success journey.

It’s not enough to define what the firm stands for; it must also demonstrate to clients how it helps them progress—step by step—toward meaningful outcomes.

I can't disclose all the details of their new value proposition (they have now shifted from selling generic data and analytics services to a specific proposition for supermarkets).

However, downstream from that new value proposition, we quickly decided together to build a typical client success journey, as they believed in showing clients how success unfolds over time. They had already achieved initial success with some of the early steps and sought a structured approach to guide clients from initial feasibility to long-term transformation.

We defined the client journey into four sequential milestones—each building logically on the previous one. This structure reflects a deliberate, progressive transformation: from foundational data work to advanced operational and customer strategy.

Specific signature methodologies enable each milestone, and each stage sets the groundwork for the next.

Milestone 1: Build the data foundations

Goal: Ensure the client’s data landscape is fit for purpose to support advanced analytics and decision-making.

This stage establishes the feasibility of the journey ahead. It focuses on uncovering the actual condition of internal data and systems, which are often fragmented, inconsistent, or poorly integrated. Without this foundation, no transformation is possible.

Techniques and methodologies (standardised to minimise variance and complexity):

• Data audit and quality review
• Source system diagnostics
• Data cleaning, enrichment, and transformation
• Integration planning across POS, inventory, supply, and promotions data
• Readiness scoring and feasibility mapping
• Problem-to-resolution path development (serves as proposal backbone)

Milestone 2: Forecasting and inventory optimisation

Goal: Convert data integrity into planning accuracy and inventory performance.

With foundational data now in place, forecasting models and inventory planning systems can be built and deployed with confidence. This stage delivers the first visible operational improvements.

How it builds on Milestone 1:
Reliable forecasting and inventory insights depend entirely on structured and integrated data. Data gaps, inconsistencies, or lags—if unresolved—undermine all subsequent recommendations. Milestone 1 eliminates those barriers.

Techniques and methodologies (standardised to minimise variance and complexity):

• Baseline sales forecasting model development (statistical + ML hybrid)
• Inventory diagnostics linked to forecasted demand
• Forecast scenario planning
• Inventory optimisation modelling
• Business case development for stock reduction or reallocation

Milestone 3: Customer-centric strategy development

Goal: Use product movement data and forecasting outputs to inform customer-facing strategy.

Now that inventory and forecasting are stable, the focus can shift to understanding how different customer groups interact with the business. This stage delivers insight into customer behaviour and pricing opportunities.

How it builds on Milestone 2:
Customer segmentation and pricing decisions rely on clean, high-quality sales and product-level data. Without accurate forecasting and inventory alignment, it’s impossible to draw trustworthy shopper insights or test pricing hypotheses.

Techniques and methodologies (standardised to minimise variance and complexity):

• Shopper segmentation model development
• Customer behaviour and loyalty analytics
• Price elasticity and sensitivity modelling
• Promotional response analysis
• Margin impact forecasting by segment and scenario
• Segmentation-based decision frameworks

Milestone 4: Store performance and risk control

Goal: Optimise physical environments and mitigate revenue leakage.

With customer-level strategies in place, the consultancy can now address in-store performance and risk mitigation. This stage connects all prior insight into tangible, operational execution.

How it builds on Milestone 3:
Store layout and fraud detection analytics rely on understanding both product movement and shopper behaviour. These insights only become possible when customer and inventory systems are aligned and trustworthy.

Techniques and methodologies (standardised to minimise variance and complexity):

• Footfall pattern and dwell time analytics
• In-store conversion and layout efficiency modelling
• Fraud and shrinkage anomaly detection using sales deviation
• Store performance benchmarking
• Risk scoring frameworks tied to supplier and transaction behaviour
• Operational loss root cause analysis

Results and impact

This four-milestone journey is not a list of disconnected services. It’s a cumulative progression—each step unlocking new value and insight, grounded in data and reinforced by repeatable methodologies.

It allows the client to move from possibility to performance through a well-defined, structured transformation path.

Over nearly three years, the consultancy transitioned from a generic data and analytics provider to a highly specialised firm with a sharp, differentiating value proposition built around a structured client success journey. The focus on supermarkets allowed them to:

• Significantly increase their average deal size.
• Create multi-year contracts and long-term client relationships.
• Reduce client acquisition costs by focusing on upselling and deeper client relationships.
• Move from headcount-dependent growth to knowledge-based scalability.

Lessons learned

From capability to proposition selling:

The consultancy’s journey highlights the value of intentionally designing a differentiating consulting value proposition over opportunistically growing with data and analytics services.

Narrow focus and progressive client transformation: 

It demonstrated the power of deeply understanding a specific client segment (supermarkets) and building a structured client success journey, aligning services to each of the four strategic milestones, which provided a clear path for delivering measurable client value. 

Tool for business development:

Crucially, the client success journey became a practical tool in business development. It is now introduced in every new client conversation—not to sell the entire journey from the outset, but to illustrate how other clients achieved success step by step.

This approach builds trust in the firm's expertise and inspires confidence by making the path tangible: "Here’s what other clients have achieved," and "Here’s how others have monetised their existing data infrastructure."

Building collective sales capability:

By designing and operationalising the entire journey, the consultancy also strengthened its collective sales capability. Explaining the offer became easier for the entire team. Outcomes became more demonstrable. And conversations shifted from selling services to guiding transformation, one milestone at a time.

From improvisation to intentional design:

It was the end of the awkward post-project call: "Is there anything else we can do for you?" Pure improvisation. 

There's one more thing...

I am frequently asked whether designing a client success journey is an attempt to make the client reliant on us as a consulting firm. This is a common misconception, and the answer is a resounding no!

The ultimate goal of such a client success journey is to empower the client to achieve self-sufficiency.

It is about equipping them with the tools, knowledge, and strategies they need to thrive independently. The consulting firm's role is crucial in this process, as we focus on building and enhancing the internal expertise within the client's organisation.

This aspect of our work is often overlooked, yet it is absolutely foundational to the client's long-term success.

By fostering this internal growth, we ensure that the client is not just dependent on our services but is capable of sustaining and advancing their own operations effectively.

(Note: the supermarkets in case #2 get the choice between running the services on their own premises or on the consulting firm's systems on a subscription basis)

Why building client success journeys delivers results

Consulting firms that focus solely on acquiring new clients and delivering one-off projects leave money on the table. Without 70% revenue from existing clients, every year starts from zero.

A client success journey creates a structured path for growth, ensuring client retention and client progress step by step towards a more resilient business.

This is the essence of programmatic client development: clients don’t just buy one service. They stay, deepen engagement, and generate the majority of the revenue.

We call it: progressive client transformation.

High-performing consulting firms excel at this. They sign up new clients by demonstrating, from the outset, specific outcomes that clients can achieve through a strategically designed client success journey and specific services linked to the success milestones in that journey.

So, start by thinking about a typical client success journey or a change adoption roadmap beyond the initial engagement, and you will quickly discover that this is an excellent starting point.

There are endless possibilities to extend high-value, long-term collaborations. Still, above all, I've learned that the best client development and relationship building occur at the senior and/or executive levels.

Poor senior/executive relationships likely mean more difficult client development, which in turn may lead to poor long-term existential health of the consulting firm.

Interested in receiving all our learnings to build a better consulting firm?
Subscribe to our newsletter.