Love them or hate them, the low-budget 30-second daytime TV ad got at least one thing right.

Whether it started as:

• “Have you been hurt in a car accident?”
• “Is your heating bill out of control?
• or “Are you struggling with clogged gutters?”

…these ads began with a hook rooted in acute pain.

That hook wasn’t just a cheap ploy to attract your attention.

It also established empathy, invited you to hear more, and built a tight frame for their solution.

Often times as consultants, we can get ahead of ourselves...

Leading with our solution and leaving our prospects to connect the dots between their problem and our fix.

I see this often when consultants lead with, “I’m a fractional CxO.” — sure, that’s the packaging and delivery mechanism of your expertise...

But you’re leaving potential clients on the hook to get themselves from their problem to your solution.

That’s like the gutter guard ad starting with - “We’re an all-in-one leaf-guarding rain gutter”.

No empathy. No framing. No path from problem to solution.

Now, I’m not saying you should create a low-budget daytime TV ad with an obnoxious hook…

But remember that consulting at its core is simply building trust that you can resolve a client’s problem, and then delivering.

And the most effective way to build trust is to first speak confidently and intimately about their pain. (Visual analogies can help.)

Once they trust that you really know what they're experiencing, only then talk about your unique path to solution.

💡

-Wes