What would change if potential clients already understood what you did and trusted how you think before you ever spoke with them?

In this episode, Michelle explains why attracting consulting clients starts with becoming strongly associated with a specific problem. When buyers can recognize their own situation in your messaging, experience your thinking through your content, and see a clear next step, the conversation begins very differently.

Rather than trying to explain your expertise one conversation at a time, you can build a pull-based system that helps the right buyers discover you, understand what you solve, and begin trusting you before the first meeting.

Get started with Opportunity Engine Intensive: https://boutiqueos.com/opportunity-engine-intensive

Or schedule a conversation: https://nicheconsultinggrowth.com/call

Think about the last time something was wrong with your knee.

And if you haven't ever had anything wrong with your knee,

just give it time. You didn't search for a doctor who's good with bodies.

You searched for knee pain or what to do for knee pain.

And you ended up in the waiting room of someone who treats knees.

That specialist never called you.

She didn't follow up.

She didn't send an email asking if you'd thought about your knee more.

You went to her because the moment you had the problem,

you already knew who solved it.

Because she had been talking precisely about knee pain.

She had positioned herself as a knee pain expert.

How do you get clients to come to you?

Clients come to the firm they already connect to the specific problem they have.

So you stop chasing by becoming the obvious answer to one problem

in the places your buyers look before they contact anyone.

Chasing doesn't require better sales,

it actually requires a better description.

Now, look at how most

Boutique firms describe themselves.

They might say something like,

We help organizations improve strategy,

operations, and people. Every word of that is true.

And nobody with a problem at 10 o'clock at night is going to go type that into

a search bar. And they're certainly not going to say that to a colleague over lunch.

A buyer can't come to you for a problem they can't connect you to.

So you chase.

It's the only thing left to explain who you are and what you do

one conversation at a time. That's what chasing really is.

It's explaining yourself to people who haven't asked yet.

And as Chris will say,

it's beggar energy. Not because you're actually desperately begging,

but because of the position it puts you in.

Here's the short version of that idea.

Beggar Energy asks for business.

Doctor Energy diagnoses the problem.

And that second one is where we would rather you be.

Now, I know the objection.

That works for firms with a simple offer.

Or ours is different. We can do a lot of different things.

There's so much we can do. I hear this nearly a hundred percent

of the time in conversations with clients.

And I'm sure it's the same for Chris.

Almost all of them.

say some form of this. And it's true.

And that's a really good thing.

It's a reasonable objection But,

you know, your work, while it may be different and every engagement is shaped

to the client, that's custom discernment that actually wins against bigger firms,

it's a strength when someone is a client of yours.

But it's a problem that can keep them from becoming a client in the first place.

And, you know, maybe for a long time that customization didn't cost

you anything. When your work came from people who'd already worked with

you or knew of you, the description was already in their heads,

not on your website. They knew what you did because they'd watched you do it.

You know, someone referred them to you.

Nobody needed cleaner, more precise messaging.

That was true when you were at a smaller size,

maybe, or it was true until referrals started running thin.

It isn't true now, because the people you need next have never watched you work.

So here's the line that I want you to burn into your brain.

Your expertise is different.

The way buyers find you isn't.

Buyers don't search for capabilities.

They search for the problem they have in their own words.

They ask a colleague, they ask an AI tool,

or they read something that describes their situation better than they could.

and a 2025 report showed that industry expertise

now outranks price as the top factor in choosing a firm.

So the custom work is valuable.

It just can't be the thing you lead with because the buyer can't recognize their

problem in it necessarily.

So what actually makes a client come to you?

Here's the key piece I think everything else hangs on.

A push model chases opportunities.

A pull model attracts them. Pushing involves pushing a rope,

as Chris says. The futility of chasing uninterested prospects who have no urgency.

Pulling

However, uses a structured system to bring the right buyers to you,

already pre-sold on your thinking and point of view.

That last part, already pre-sold on your thinking and point of view.

That's crucial. Because pull isn't just a nicer word

for waiting. It means the buyer did the work of deciding about you before

you ever spoke. on their own time,

from evidence you left.

where they were looking. And what produces that is an opportunity engine.

An opportunity engine is a deliberate,

repeatable system that aligns your business development with

how clients naturally make buying decisions.

It takes the right buyers through a structured path.

First, they discover your expertise.

Second, they understand the specific problem that you solve.

Third, they experience how you think before they've ever hired you.

Fourth, trust builds before the first meeting happens.

And fifth, they enter a diagnostic conversation because they're ready.

When you're chasing

You're trying to do all five of those inside a single conversation with someone

who didn't ask for it. That's why it's exhausting.

And it's why it takes a whole lot of work to get it to work.

For a client to come to you,

three things have to already be in place.

The first is a problem they'd recognize in their own words.

That's stage two, it's where most firms are a little muddy.

Name the problem, not your service,

not we provide leadership development.

Instead, name the situation that your buyer is actually in.

Your best managers are quitting within a year of being promoted.

That's the situation.

One describes what you sell, whereas the other describes what keeps them

up at night.

And here's how you test it. Could a buyer repeat your sentence to

a colleague who has the same problem that you solve?

And could that colleague identify with it immediately?

If the answer is no, nobody is going to mention your name in a room that you're

not in because it's too hard to retrieve.

It's not relevant to them.

But this doesn't mean you only do one thing.

It means you're found through one thing.

The sentence is the front door,

it's not the whole building.

the second is evidence of how you think.

They need to experience that before they ever have a conversation with you.

That's stage three. And it's the difference between being known and being trusted.

Once a buyer recognizes their problem in what you say,

they want to know whether you actually understand it.

So show them. Write about it, talk about it,

record it.

Not a list of your services, again,

not your credentials, your diagnosis through real situations.

What's usually causing the problem?

What most businesses try first,

and why it doesn't work.

As Chris says, that's doctor energy.

It's doctor energy in public. You're doing the diagnostic thinking before

the meeting. So the buyer arrives having already experienced that.

And when someone has read, let's say,

three things you wrote about the exact problem they're facing,

you're no longer one of several firms they might call.

You're the one who already explained their situation to them.

Yet there's still another piece that's often missing and it's stage five.

A buyer who trusts you still needs to know what to do next.

If the only path is to, let's say,

get in touch, most people won't because that sounds like the start

of a sales process, or it's just rather,

you know, get in touch when you want,

right? So give them a specific invitation.

Something that's logical, a diagnostic conversation,

an assessment, a defined first step with a clear outcome.

If they've just read a few pieces of material that you've written about their

specific problem,

It's very logical that they then do something about it,

right? They take an action step.

Whatever makes the most sense.

And you know, in all the conversations that I've had and continue to have,

when I ask, what kind of content are you putting out there?

And I get back wonderful answers,

you know, I have a podcast, I have a blog,

I have a newsletter, I have posts,

I have this, I have that, and I ask what is the call to action?

I would say about eight times out of ten,

the answer I get is there isn't one.

So everything you write or record or post should have a call to action.

And it doesn't mean that you're selling something necessarily with every piece

of content. It can simply be hit reply and let me know which one of these is you,

right? It can be really simple.

But you still want an action to be taken every time.

Because if you're not telling them what to do next,

they're doing nothing. And then you're back to chasing the people

who were already halfway to you.

All right, let me wrap this up so that you can get on with your day.

So what do you do with the hour that you used to spend chasing?

None of this means stopping today.

I want to be very clear on that.

outreach, all of that still works,

and you need to keep doing whatever is currently paying the bills.

But take the time you'd normally spend following up with people

who haven't raised their hand and move it to

Writing that one sentence, publishing that one piece that diagnoses the problem,

somewhere your buyers will actually look and see it,

and do that every week. Start building an archive that people can binge.

Clients don't come to the best firm,

they come to the firm who gets them.

I'll say that again. They're not choosing the best.

They're choosing the one who they feel gets them.

Let me show you what that looks like with niche consulting growth.

Chris ran NCG for years with his opportunity engine in place.

It's what produced a million dollars in revenue every single year without

a single referral.

So he wasn't chasing anyone. But he wondered if he could bump that up even more

and increase the pull. Not more activity or doing,

but more of the right people arriving already sure about NCG.

So I partnered with him to begin writing that one sentence in more places,

the one a buyer recognizes their own problem in.

We started sharing his frameworks more frequently.

The way he actually thinks through a client's problem instead of saving

it until the meeting. And we built an archive that people could binge,

enough content that someone could spend an evening with it if they wanted to.

The results have been astonishing.

Nearly every day we have a conversation with a potential client or client who says,

I've been listening to your podcast,

or I've been reading your stuff.

Notice what that opening line replaces.

They're not asking, so what do you do exactly?

And Chris isn't explaining who he is.

They've already decided that we understand their situation.

So the conversation starts at the diagnosis instead of the introduction.

And it proved something to me.

If you show them that you get them,

share your way of thinking, and give them plenty of ways to bend your content.

They'll use that to make a decision about you before you ever speak.

That lets buyers verify you,

understand you, and begin to trust you in ways that cold outreach never touches.

That's the specialist's waiting room.

Nobody in it was chased.

And that's an opportunity engine in a higher gear.

So if you'd like to put an opportunity engine in place,

I recommend you start with the Opportunity Engine Intensive.

In just two weeks, I'll walk you through nailing down your positioning,

framework, diagnostic, and wedge.

The link is in the notes. And if you want that higher gear,

ask me about building a custom content OS.

Till next time.