Here is the reason why many agencies/consultants are allergic to 6 figure deals : (should be behind a paywall) The problem isn’t your offer, it’s your fundamental misunderstanding of how corporate money actually moves When you position yourself as an "optional marketing expense," you're already drowning Top-tier agencies and consultants NEVER sell themselves this way Instead, they position their service as a MANDATORY MARKET PROTECTION strategy Let me cook The psychological shift is MASSIVE When you say "We'll improve your marketing," clients ask themselves "Do I need this?" which ALWAYS results in a no But when you say "Your biggest competitor just restructured their positioning and is capturing 80% of deals in your space" The conversation shifts from “Do I need this ?” to “How much am I ALREADY losing ?” And decision makers don’t like to feel behind They don’t need “better marketing” They need competitive insurance Here’s what 99% of agencies & consultants fail to understand : EVERY company has multiple budget pools with millions sitting there They just haven't allocated it to YOU yet because you haven't framed your offer correctly The growth budgets alone can be $2M in most medium-sized businesses The compliance & risk mitigation reserves often remain untapped These are GOLDMINES, while everyone and their mum fights over the scraps in oversaturated marketing budgets Your prospects don't have a money problem, they have a PRIORITY problem Fix that and watch budgets magically appear And keep in mind that most business owners and CEOs don’t think logically about budgets They allocate money based on : - perceived urgency (fire drills always get funded first) - power struggles (whichever department makes the most noise wins) - boardroom politics (whoever has the CEO’s ear controls cashflow) But when you show an executive how their current strategy is booty cheeks and that they NEED work on budget allocation, they don't "find new money" - they REALLOCATE from lower priorities and underperforming initiatives Stop selling your solution and start selling better allocation of EXISTING resources : 1 - Find an underperforming spend (ex : outdated ad spend, underutilized tech, inefficient labor costs etc) 2 - Expose the financial leakage (ex : your team spends $500k/year on outbound prospecting, but 78% of those leads never convert because of poor nurturing systems) 3 - Redirect that money to you (ex : If we just reallocate 15% of that, we can turn it into $2M net profit within 6 months) Now the company sees ZERO new spending, just a smarter budget move Executives love this because it makes them look like financial geniuses (they’re not) Most consultants sell a single benefit but you gotta sell CHAIN REACTIONS inside the company BUDGET MOVES LIKE DOMINOES So if you can prove that spending money in one area will create multiple financial gains across departments, the company has NO CHOICE but to approve your deal $$$

How to rebuild a broken agency offer into a $1MM/yr consulting business We got on a call a few weeks ago with the founder of an advisory board company that already had clients, referrals and enough traction to prove demand existed, yet the economics of the business felt completely disconnected from the value being created The company sold advisory board engagements for $100K spread across three years Once you break down the numbers, the engagement generated roughly $2,777 per month, placing a strategic advisory relationship in the same pricing range as outsourced talent and mid-level execution support That pricing decision shaped the entire sales conversation A service sitting at the center of high-stakes strategic decisions had been packaged and priced like operational support The founder's goal for the following year was to land sixteen new engagements At $100K per engagement, that's roughly $1.6M in contract value The more we looked at the business, the less the pricing made sense An eight-figure founder isn't dealing with the same problems as somebody trying to get their first few clients The stakes are completely different when a hiring decision can cost six figures, an expansion mistake can wipe out years of profit and a poorly executed acquisition can destroy millions in enterprise value The further a company grows, the more expensive judgment errors become Yet the company helping founders navigate those decisions had packaged itself like an outsourced support function Every engagement was priced around $100K when the value being delivered justified something much closer to $200K Across sixteen clients, that gap alone represents another $1.6M in contract value Before even factoring in recurring retainers and longer client lifecycles, the business was leaving seven figures on the table As we dug deeper into the business, another issue became obvious The company's marketing revolved around advisory boards, while clients were actually paying for access to experienced operators capable of challenging assumptions, exposing blind spots, pressure-testing major decisions and applying pattern recognition gathered from situations the founder had never encountered before The positioning focused on the existence of the advisory board, encouraging buyers to place the engagement inside an administrative category even though the economic value sat much closer to governance, capital allocation and enterprise value protection The positioning was rebuilt around that reality Instead of presenting the service as a way to build and manage advisory boards, we recommended reframing the offer around formalizing decision-making before growth, complexity and capital commitments made judgment errors increasingly expensive That framing naturally shifts the discussion toward governance, risk management, expansion decisions, stakeholder management and capital preservation because those are the outcomes buyers ultimately care about Pricing followed the same logic The company had spent years adjusting fees incrementally, searching for the point where resistance appeared We suggested working backwards from the economic value attached to the decisions being influenced instead When an engagement affects decisions tied to $10M, $20M or $50M of enterprise value, charging a few thousand dollars per month creates a disconnect between the commercial model and the outcome being protected So his pricing needed to upgrade from a $100K spread over 3 years to: - $40K-$50K upfront installation - $10K-$20K/mo ongoing decision infrastructure retainer - Removal of the 3-year cap The acquisition strategy required the same level of adjustment Historically, the company attracted founders looking for perspective, accountability and occasional guidance We suggested focusing more heavily on situations where the financial consequences attached to decision quality become larger and easier to quantify: capital raises, acquisitions, exits, geographic expansion, succession planning and investor oversight Liquidity events, capital raises, acquisitions and geographic expansion create environments where the cost of poor judgment becomes easier to quantify, making strategic decision infrastructure significantly easier to justify Rather than opening conversations around advisory boards, we recommended leading with the business event creating the pressure in the first place A founder preparing for a sale, entering PE conversations or deploying freshly raised capital already understands the consequences attached to a handful of major decisions The conversation starts from economic exposure rather than the mechanics of the advisory board itself Consulting businesses spend years redesigning deliverables, introducing new services, changing acquisition channels and adding layers of complexity to offers that already create meaningful value Meanwhile, the market interprets the offer through one lens while the founder evaluates it through another That gap affects pricing, acquisition, positioning and buyer quality long before it shows up in revenue Buyers ultimately respond to the economic story surrounding an offer Change the story, and the economics attached to the offer often change with it If you want us to work with you 1:1 on your offer, identify where you're leaving money on the table and rebuild it around buyers with actual budgets DM "SOVEREIGN"