Can you really trust a consultant?

Eliška: Hello, and welcome to the Bon Sauce Podcast, a brand new podcast where we chat about branding and marketing pain points with myself, Eliška, founder of branding outfit Light Sauce Studio, and my pal Elliot, founder of marketing consultancy Bon Creative.

Elliot: Eliška and I work together on multiple projects.

We see a lot of these pain points come up again and again, and we talk about them a ton. So we’ve decided to start sharing those conversations with you. This episode deals with a pain point that a lot of founders deal with, something even Eliška and I deal with in our own businesses as well, which is trusting a consultant or an agency.

And the key question from that, which is how do you know if a consultant or an agency actually understands your business, or if they’re just telling you what you want to hear?

Eliška: Juicy stuff. So, you know, stay tuned until the very end to hear our secret sauce for how we deal with this pain point.

Elliot: It’s worth noting that we’ll say consultant from here on out for ease, but we do mean consultant, agency, or expert.

Eliška: Yeah, just any external person coming into your business and giving you advice really.

Elliot: Yeah. Yeah, and we, we deal with that by bringing in experts to work with us with clients, but also, I guess we are the experts for a lot of clients that we work with. But- Where do you think we’ve dealt with this issue?

Eliška: I feel like this comes up a lot because we talk to our clients about trusting experts whilst we’re trying to convince them to kind of go with us, to, you know, give us the trust and give us their business.

But I have two concrete examples of where this has come up and really stuck in my head. So one is a health tech startup, and they had some consultancy advice on branding, specifically on brand strategy, before I came in. And they got very excited, said a lot of things that were … Just, uh, the stuff that was on their mind, but maybe wasn’t, like, 100% relevant to the branding question.

And I feel like what came out of it then as the brand strategy wasn’t really on the money. I mean, I wasn’t in the sessions, but I feel like they were, like, kind of like novices in the language of branding, and then the subject matter’s quite difficult to understand ‘cause it’s a health tech business. So kind of from both sides, there was a bit of a mismatch in just the understanding.

And then what came out sounded really flashy, but then when we tried to apply it, we were like, “Oh, actually, this does not fit the business at all.” Um, so that’s one side of it. And then the other side that we’ve dealt with quite a lot is we often come in to clients who are already quite frustrated with marketing and branding experts, and they’re like, “Well, you know, they’ve given us this strategy,” or, “They’ve given us this plan and it’s not really working.”

And then you dive into it, and you realize all they’ve done is, like, like, they’ve never really said no to the client. So if the client’s like, “Right, well, I wanna do, um, TikTok videos from now on,” and it’s like, “Well, none of your audience is on TikTok. Don’t do TikTok videos.” But the consultants have just gone in and been like, “Yeah, no, that’s, that’s cool.

Let’s, let’s just do that because that’s what you want.” And I think that leads to a lot of frustration on the client side, and then for us … I mean, it’s great for us because we then come in and we’re like, “No, that was a bad idea. Let’s do it differently.” But it leads to the client then not trusting consultants as a whole, or, like, marketing professionals as a whole, or branding professionals as a whole, which is a shame.

Elliot: And I think that is one of the biggest issues because I, I like how you said that the co-founders before you came on got a little bit overexcited at the idea of a branding project, right? So if you’ve got founders or executives who don’t really have that experience in the marketing and branding space, then they’re probably most likely gonna get overexcited by the prospect of a marketing and branding piece or project, ‘cause it feels like progress.

But a lot of the time, as we’re gonna talk about- It doesn’t actually lead to much progress. So two good examples, and also the fact that I think anyone listening to this, if they’re a founder or an exec, they will have been burned by an agency or a consultant, right? So everything looked good, sounded good at the start.

After 6 to 12 months, nothing had really changed, nothing had noticeably improved, and a lot of the marketing budget had been blown over that 6 to 12 months, and then the relationship ends, right? So a founder and a, or exec at that time might step back and say Why was all that money wasted? Were they just telling me what I wanted to hear?

But I think that there is always a bit of telling you what you want to hear.

Eliška: Mm. Yeah, definitely. Well, uh, is that something that you’ve done? And is it- do we tell clients what they wanna hear?

Elliot: I think, I think we do, and not to, not to, to blow our own trumpets too much, but I think the best consultants are able to spot the things that the client wants to hear that are actually good for the business.

That’s the most important distinction, right? Mm-hmm. You shouldn’t just be telling a client … If a client comes to you and says, “Well, TikTok seems popular. Let’s do TikTok,” and you go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure, let’s do TikTok,” but you know for a fact, or you haven’t even done the work to figure out if the audience of that business are actually on TikTok, and if it matters to the audience of that business, and you just say yes, well, then you’re telling the client what they want to hear without having done the research and done the fact-finding and the discovery- Yeah

to understand if that’s the right, right decision. So, yes, I have done that. I have told a client what they want to hear. But I’ve done it in a way that aligns with what actually works for the business. So, for example, we’ve got a great client that we absolutely adore, and when we were doing a discovery session with them, they said, “Well, our, our target audience is solicitors,” right?

Legal professionals. We said, “Yes, that is correct,” right? That’s what they wanna hear. What we also needed to tell them, after we built up some trust and understand more of the business, was that actually a big chunk of their target audience isn’t just solicitors, right? A big chunk of their target audience was not just legal professionals, but paralegals.

Eliška: So just to explain that a little bit if you’re not familiar with, like, the legal world. The point is that the, their target audience is law firms, and they were thinking of, you know, legal professionals as we, we know them to be, so lawyers. But what we found was that actually the people who were doing the search for their services were kind of more junior staff in there.

So whilst they were targeting lawyers, you know, partners, and people high up in the law firm, who they really should’ve been speaking to is people who were maybe at the start of their careers or, like, m- way more junior, because those are the people actually doing the footwork and the searches for their services.

Elliot: Yeah, and I think that extended even further. So that client came on originally asking for support with, with LinkedIn content. And understanding the business, with it being, being B2B, that was an immediate yes, is LinkedIn makes sense for you as a business. So again, telling them what they want to hear, but in a way that actually makes sense for the business.

But on the flip side of that was, well, you’ve got a few other issues that we need to actually sort here because just posting three times a week to LinkedIn isn’t gonna move the needle f- to where you want it to be But what I didn’t say, and what we don’t say, I think, as a, as a standard, is that, that everything needs to change.

I think that’s a massive red flag.

Eliška: Yeah. Well, before we move on to red flags, I think the key thing that you’re saying there is actually the most important thing is actually understanding the client’s business. So whether you’re on the service end of that, so whether you’re the person who’s trying to understand a client’s business, or you’re on the receiving end of that, so a consultant is coming in, you have to, like, really understand what it is that they’re selling, where is it that they’re marketing, what is it that they’re trying to achieve.

Is revenue their biggest goal, or is it, like, impact? And only then can you tell people what they want to hear within that, because then you’re picking and choosing the stuff that they wanna hear that’s actually relevant to the best way forward. So I think, yeah, that understanding is, is probably the biggest key to this question.

‘Cause there’s a big difference between an agency or, sorry, a consultant saying exactly what you wanna hear, but understanding the business and therefore kind of in, in an almost inception way getting you to be on board with the right steps forward, versus somebody not engaging at all and being like, “Yeah, sure, whatever.

Let’s just do what you wanted to do.” In which case you don’t need an external consultant at all, because that’s just what you came up with, right?

Elliot: So what you’re saying is there’s an element of very kind, very gentle manipulation.

Eliška: I like to call it inception. It’s like, we had, we recently had, I’m not gonna name the client, but recently had a client come into a workshop, and they basically fed us a new idea, a new, quote-unquote, idea, which was like, “Oh, guys, maybe we should focus on this in the marketing and, like, leverage this particular channel.”

And we were like, “Okay,” not like, “We said that a year ago, and we’ve been trying to, like, pump that in.” But it’s actually such a win. Like- Mm … obviously nobody was like, “I told you so.” But we’re like, “Yes, finally- … they’ve come round.” It’s what you feel like- They understand … you want to say,

Elliot: right? You want to say, “When, mm, told you this 12 months ago.”

Eliška: Exactly. But we’re all

Elliot: good. We’re all good. We get there eventually. But sometimes

Eliška: you just need to, you know, you need to tell the client what they hear enough times so that they come to the conclusion themselves. Because everyone thinks that their own ideas are the best ideas, so if they think that they’ve come up with the idea, perfect, because that’s the thing that’s actually going to hit those KPIs, right?

Elliot: Exactly. Exactly. And I think those are the, are the things at the start that they don’t want to hear, right? And so by sometimes saying the things they do want to hear, over time it builds that room for trust and credibility so that 12 months down the line when that idea comes back around, everyone’s on the same page, which is a win for everyone, even if- In the back of our minds, we are wondering why it took 12 months to get there.

Mm.

Eliška: It’s basically exposure therapy, isn’t it? Like, we just mention it as a side note every meeting and then 12 months in, they’re like- Yeah … “Oh, have you ever thought of this?” And we’re like- … “No. Never.”

Elliot: No, we’ve never thought, nev- never thought of that. No. Well, let, let’s move on to red flags, shall we? Because I do think that everything needs to change is a big red flag, because no business owner, you know, along the same lines of what we’ve just been saying, no business owner wants to be told that everything i- is awful, nothing is right, everything needs to change.

I think that’s a sign of a bad consultant for, for multiple reasons, because no matter how bad things are, you have to prioritize. You can’t fix everything all at once, and I think any consultant that leads with everything is broken just hasn’t done the hard work to figure out what actually matters to the client-

Eliška: Mm

Elliot: and hasn’t even understood the fact that- People, not, we’re not just talking about clients and business owners, people just do not do well under the weight of everything is broken.

Eliška: Yeah. Completely agree. And the… I guess the other thing from a much more like, I guess, pragmatic point. So firstly, what you’re saying is you’re gonna be chucked out the room and, like, offend people if you’re like, “Everything is broken.”

But secondly, nobody has the budget to change everything, right? Like, I mean, we’re not working, you know, with the world’s biggest organizations, and yes, maybe like the Googles of the world could come in and be like, “Right, we’re just changing everything. We’ve got the budget to do that.” But, you know, your average SME has a set marketing budget, and it’s not going to cover changing absolutely everything.

That is also part of understanding the business, right? Like, what can you do, what levers can you pull that will have the biggest impact and give the highest return on investment, essentially?

Elliot: Yeah. It’s, it’s the consultant’s job to guide the actions of marketing or branding or anything else, and motivate the executives, the founders, whoever it is that is the point of contact, and then understand the business enough to create priorities and allow all that to happen.

So, I mean, another example is a client who has found some really unexpected success with, uh, recruitment through SEO, and my point has been, well, if we’ve found this level of success through a bit of an unexpected avenue, we didn’t really expect the changes we made to result in such a, a spike in, in applications for recruitment.

Well, think about what that could do for your actual customer base. But that is a level of investment that they’re not prepared to make right now because it would take a lot longer. It’s a bit more difficult to, to improve the, the SEO on that side of things and, and get the leads coming in. But it is something that I can take away and just make some small incremental improvements and show them the small improvements over 6 to 12 months so that when budgets return this time next year, I can say, “Well, look at the improvement that’s been made based on not really spending any money.”

So we can maybe extrapolate that out and say, “Well, if we spend a little bit of money here over the next 12 months, we could ultimately get this.” So again, it’s going back to prioritizing, understanding the business, and not jumping in, I guess, two feet first and saying, “Yep, all this needs to happen immediately or everything’s gonna go down the pan.”

Eliška: I do wanna ask you about one thing, though, ‘cause we have come in to a few clients’ projects where they’ve come in and said, “We want social media marketing.” And we have kind of said, “Well, everything needs to change.” Yeah. But not in that many words, but basically, we’ve then dug in and done workshops, tried to understand what they’re trying to do, all of that, and figured out that they’ve not really got a brand strategy.

There’s nothing to apply. There’s no messaging or not solid enough messaging that actually does the job that’s there as a foundation. How would you say is the best way of approaching that? Because that is essentially saying everything needs to change. Thoughts.

Elliot: Good question. I mean, it is something that I’ve dealt with quite a bit because, I mean, Bon Creative has been going almost four years now, and for the first few years it was a social media agency.

And so I still get leads now that are just asking for social media, which we don’t just do social media now. So if we can get a client to think a bit broader and a bit bigger, then that’s a real benefit for them, because you and I can then work together to look at the issues within the business from a broader perspective and start to address those issues, rather than just being like, “Yep.

Okay, we’ll post three times a week to Instagram, two times a week to LinkedIn,” blah, blah, blah. But I think helping them take a step back is just a really key and powerful way that a consultant can actually support a client and a business. Because if some of those leads that have come in, they’d said to me, “Elliot, can you help us with our social media marketing?”

And I’d, and I’d gone, “Yep, sure. What do you need me to do?” Well, I’m just taking a brief then, aren’t I? I’m not really thinking about the business. I’m not really caring about the business, ultimately. All I really care about in that scenario is how much they’re gonna pay me every month- Mm … because I’ll just keep doing the work while they keep pa- paying me.

What I think we’re really good at is saying, “Well, if you wanna work with someone who’s gonna deliver social media content for you, we’ve got a great recommendation. But what we think is that you should take a step back and look at the broader business and how we can improve parts of the marketing and branding strategy that’s actually gonna move you forward.

We can also do social media content at the same time, but it’s not the most important thing, and it’s not a sticking plaster, or it is just a sticking plaster on a lot of issues that aren’t gonna be solved by just posting on social media.” Is

Eliška: that why you call it a sticking plaster?

Elliot: A, a sticking plaster.

Eliška: If someone trip, if you, someone trips over you, you’re like, “Do you want a sticking plaster for that?”

Elliot: I, I, I do, I do know that you struggle with the British idioms a lot. Well,

Eliška: I’m just wondering c- if it’s, you’re just trying to distinguish between a plaster and plasterers, or if- … if you genuinely call it a sticking plaster.

Elliot: A sticking pla- you put a s- you put a sticking plaster on-

Eliška: It’s a plaster … you’ve

Elliot: seen that meme where it’s, like, a big tank and it’s leaking, and then someone just puts a plaster on it. Y-

Eliška: yes, I have seen that. Yeah, yeah. That’s-

Elliot: That’s funny … putting a sticking plaster on- That’s fine … on a broken leg.

Whatever you wanna call it. I don’t know.

Eliška: Fine.

Elliot: Um- So did that answer the question?

Eliška: I don’t know. I lost track, to be honest, of what you were saying ‘cause I was so focused on the plaster point. Um, but I think, I think, again, it just goes back to the point of, like, understanding the business, right? Well, and I also think that, like, that softens the way you deliver the information to the client as well because if they feel like you genuinely understand the business, then they’re more likely to listen to what you have to say, so which is why we always start with workshops.

We never go in and say, “This is your solution.” We’re kind of solution agnostic when we go into a business. We’re not trying to sell them a specific, like, package of, “You’re gonna be on a retainer for millions of years and pay this many thousands of pounds.” We say, “Let’s look at your business. Let’s do a proper workshop.

Let’s understand your audience. Let’s understand your goals and then come out with recommendations.” And, you know, if that’s, like, a, the recommendation is then a retainer of 1,000 years or at, you know, £500 a minute, then that’s fine. But it has to be right for the business.

Elliot: Well, I think, I think one of the, going back to one of our favorite clients that we adore is- We don’t

Eliška: have favorite clients, Elliot.

We love them all. No, we can’t

Elliot: have… One of, one of our favorite client, we, all of our clients are one of our favorite clients, yes. But we adore this one. Um- We adore them all. Um, but we started with workshops where we were just planning to deliver the brand and marketing strategy, obviously in the most effective way possible.

But ultimately, through those workshops, we essentially redesigned their messaging, and by the end of it realized that a new website was needed, which at the start of those two days of workshops wasn’t the original plan.

Eliška: I think we even said- … “We’re not trying to redesign your website,

Elliot: but-“ But we are going to redesign your website.

Eliška: And then the client came and was like- No, we didn’t say that, no … oh, no, we, we didn’t even suggest it. They then came back, and they were like- … “Mm, I think we need to redesign the website.” And we’re like, “Okay.”

Elliot: So that essentially and eventually led to the redesign of a website, but the results they got from their old website were so low that really what we’ve achieved- Mm

since then can’t really be put into percentages because it would just look ridiculous. But it has allowed the business to grow- Mm-hmm … ahead of planned budget this year, which is obviously great for us to- Amazing … to be aware of from, from a agency consultant point of view, but also is just great for the business and great for the people in the business, um, which wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t have done those workshops first.

Eliška: Correct. And I think part of understanding the business is, like, you become really invested as well. So, like, when you learn about, um, all of the graft that has gone into getting them to where they are, and then you’re, you’re genuinely trying to help these people as people rather than a service, a company or whatever, you become really invested, and that’s when you deliver your best work.

And that’s what w- I think we really pride ourselves on. I mean, I think often we care a bit too much. We’re like, “Oh, we should do this,” and all that. And then you- … you remember that you’re supposed to make a living out of it as well, but, but I’d rather be that way where, you know, wh- what we’re delivering to our clients is what we would deliver to ourselves, like- Yeah

if it was owned by us- Yeah, we, we- … and, like,

Elliot: yeah … the whole point of the work that we do is to, to do the best job possible, right? And I think the best consultants, again, not blowing our own trumpet or saying we are the best consultants, but I think the most effective consultants are the ones that actually care about their clients’ businesses as if they were their own, to a degree.

And I think one thing worth noting is that the most effective consultants understand that departments of a business shouldn’t work in silos. So they shouldn’t be separated out and not ever talking to each other because issues in one area will ult- ultimately impact marketing or sales or the perception of the brand operations.

The best and most efficient and effective consultants cannot help but take a step back and look at the bigger picture And I think that’s really important for clients, founders to know and remember, because otherwise you are just gonna hire a brief-taker. And as a founder, you should not be making the briefs for marketing.

You should be working with someone who makes them for you and brings their best knowledge to the table to help move your business forward.

Eliška: Yeah. Exactly. And I think it’s like a, a roundabout summary of that point, but marketing is what you communicate externally, right? It’s what you communicate to your clients, your audience, to your competitors, to, like, the general world out there.

But it starts with what happens internally, and you can’t deliver consistent, honest messaging if that’s not true for what’s actually happening inside your business. And that’s why, like, as branding and marketing consultants, and same with brand, obviously, brand is just the way your service or product is understood by other people, and then marketing is the way you sell that to them, right?

That work starts internally, which is why things can’t happen in silos. Because if, you know, your sales department isn’t on board with the messaging that we are saying that you should have, well, then there’s no point of having it, because your company isn’t living by that messaging, and then it’s all confusing.

And what’s actually coming out in the comms is, or, like, in the bigger overall picture, doesn’t add up, which doesn’t lead to trust, and then means that the whole thing is pointless. Not to be, you know, to catastrophize. But yeah, ultimately, like, if the me- messages are canceling each other out, then it’s not effective, which is why that understanding has to be there, right?

From the consultant’s perspective.

Elliot: Absolutely. And going back to your original example about founders getting a little bit overexcited is it’s worth mentioning directly to founders and clients, do not make it difficult for a consultant to move beyond their scope and understand your wider business.

Because if you make it difficult from the start and basically just signal that you want validation for your ideas and decisions, that’s probably what you’re going to get. Right? So if you bring in an agency and say, “These are all my great ideas,” well, then that agency is gonna say, “Yeah, okay, we’re gonna deliver all that.

Great. Give us the money.” If you bring in a consultant or an agency- And say, “I’ve got some problems, like I really just need to work through these with someone who understands branding, marketing,” anything really within a business. Well, then you can actually start to have a conversation and bring that expert’s knowledge out- Mm

that can then be applied in the business. But do not make it difficult from the start, ‘cause it is a two-way street, it is a two-way relationship. If you just want validation, you can pay for that quite easily.

Eliška: Mm. Yeah, and it, it is really like you have to think about, like when you’re going out to look for somebody, right, for an expert or whoever, the question is, do you want advice or do you want a second pair of hands, right?

So if you want advice, allow them to advise you. If you just want a second pair of hands, that’s fine too. Like, if you think you’ve got all… you understand what needs to be done and you’ve got a good plan for it, but then hire a second pair of hands. So that’s almost like a freelancer who’s then a team member basically, rather than a consultant or an agency or a fre- freelancer, whatever.

Let’s not get stuck on the labels, but someone who’s coming in to do the strategy and advise you on like the best way forward and to, um, yeah, diagnose a problem and be another brain working on that problem. And it’s just two different approaches, and I think the best value that we can add is on that problem-solving part or the problem-solving side.

Whereas if you want a second pair of hands, it should be advertised as a second pair of hands, right?

Elliot: Yeah. Agreed. And so I think let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far, ‘cause we’ve, we’ve covered quite a lot of ground. So-

Eliška: Sticking plasters

Elliot: This is quite a broad topic, and it’s a topic that Probably resonates with quite a lot of people because they’ve been burned before or they find challenges within this topic quite regularly, especially if you want to outSauce to a second pair of hands. That’s an entirely different kettle of fish, uh, employing versus…

Sorry, was that another… Is that idiom all good?

Eliška: No, no, I’m g- listen. You know I love my idioms. I don’t always get them right as a, English as a second language speaker- Yes … but I’m quite proud of the ones that I do come up with. You’re, right. We’ll get onto that in a different episode. I’m

Elliot: sure we’ll dive into that quite a lot.

Um, so hiring another second pair of hands, that’s a whole, a whole different, different ball game really. But to loop back, I think let’s make it clear that there is always a bit of telling you what you want to hear from the most effective and efficient consultants. Saying, as a consultant, if they come in and say that everything needs to change, that is a massive red flag.

But then what genuine understanding looks like is that the consultant will come in and naturally go beyond their scope to understand your business. If they do that, that’s the sign of a good consultant, someone that you can begin to trust and begin to start implementing their expertise. And then another thing worth recapping and revisiting is that direct point to founders and clients is do not make it difficult for a consultant to go beyond their scope and understand your business.

Because if you can trust them and they can trust you, you’re gonna have a great relationship, and it is gonna benefit you and the business.

Eliška: I would say when you say going beyond, uh, their scope, we’re not saying allow the budgets to blow up, right? What we’re saying is don’t just answer questions that you think are marketing or branding questions or whatever the consultant is, you know, doing, saying.

We will frequently ask in our workshops questions like, “Who did you have conversations with?” Like, “What events did you attend last month?” Or whatever, um, something along those lines which you might not necessarily think is connected to what we’re trying to do, but there’s a reason we’re asking those questions, and it feels like it might be out of scope, and we’re always very happy to explain why we’re asking certain questions.

And, like, we can be quite nosy with numbers, for example, where we’re like, “Okay, where exactly are these projects coming from?” Or how much money is being promised to the business versus how much is actually coming in and stuff like that. And then, you know, we, we just see where we can help out and how what we’re doing can pull those levers that might help you achieve the goals that you’re trying to achieve.

We’re not saying allow them to go beyond their scope and, you know, 10X the budget, right?

Elliot: Correct.

Eliška: Obviously. Correct.

Elliot: So I think to go back to the key question, which was how do I know if a consultant or agency actually understands my business, I think that is the wrong question. You shouldn’t be asking a consultant, “Do you understand my industry?

Do you understand my business?” Because odds are they won’t as well as you regardless- But the question to ask, and I think the most effective consultants will get there before you do anyway, is what have you noticed about the business or industry that I didn’t ask about? And that answer or non-answer is gonna tell you everything.

Eliška: Okay. I think that’s a good place for us to finish. So yeah, thank you for listening. If you are still listening, then well done. You have stuck it out. And if you enjoyed this podcast, then please subscribe and come back for more. This is our very first episode that we’ve ever recorded, but this is generally what we’re gonna discuss, so problems within branding and marketing, mainly from a client perspective, but also from the consultancy agency perspective, and we enjoy talking about that stuff.

So if you enjoy listening to that stuff, then please come back for more, ‘cause we’ve got lots to say. Hopefully see you in the next one. No, hopefully speak to you in the next one? Hmm. We’ll work on that outro.