Let’s say your consulting firm wants to lasso a few new clients.
You wrangle up two strategies:
- Scour the landscape for companies whose number one, burning priority is to address the problem your consulting firm solves.
- Survey your current contacts to determine their number one burning priority, and steer your consulting firm to address that issue.
Those two approaches will give your consulting firm the highest chance of success, right?
Probably not.
Both strategies focus on prospects’ highest priority issue, and that’s less fertile pasture than you’d imagine.
For instance, let’s say you’re targeting the Fortune 500 newcomer KneuralKnot, Inc. to enrich your portfolio of clients.
Intuitively, you know you’ll maximize your odds of winning a project at KneuralKnot by:
- Nurturing a relationship with Tim “Don’t Call me Red” Scarlett, the CEO;
- Solving Tim’s most pressing issue: how to scale thread count while avoiding recursive loops.
Alas, your intuition is leading you astray.
Tim’s subordinates are more likely to be decision-makers on consulting projects than he is and, in fact, their subordinates may be even more likely customers for your consulting offering.
When you’re chasing very large companies, aim for the middle. (See page 37 in this book.)
Further, in all likelihood, Tim is already riding herd on the thread counts problem.
In most cases, prospective clients are already in motion on their hottest issues.
Yes, prospective clients who call you out of the blue may be motivated by their most pressing need. That’s true for your current clients too.
But when you’re focused on rustling up new clients, look for companies whose Second Circle priorities are the problem you solve.
Your proposition to Tim sounds something like, “Since we’re experts at weaving teams together, we can resolve the human-vs.-agentic engineering tangle you mentioned. That allows you to focus more on the scaling thread count.”
In other words, “Tim, if you let us work on the Second Circle, you’re more likely to hit the Bullseye.”
Of course, as you chat with prospects, you have to discover whether your consulting firm’s specialty fits in their Second Circle. Your question for prospects is:
“What are the high priority issues and challenges that you haven’t been able to tackle yet?”
Or, when inquiring about what’s going on in your prospects’ worlds, you can employ two of the most powerful words in a consultant’s vocabulary: “What else?”
If you tend to find yourself submitting proposals that never get signed, you may be chasing projects in the outer circles. Combat that time-sucking issue by asking prospects,
“In the grand scheme of things, how important is this project to you?”
Invest limited (or no) time and energy pursuing low-priority projects.
Historically, which type of project has been easier for you to win—Second Circle or Bullseye projects?
Text and images are © 2026 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
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