The operator’s test for any consultant: will they run it?
Recommendations are cheap. The question to ask anyone who wants to advise you is whether they will stay for the negotiation.
We have hired consultants, been consultants, and worked alongside the large firms on client sites. Most of the people doing this work are smart. Most of it is competent. And most of it stops exactly where the hard part begins.
The deck says: renegotiate the agency contract, consolidate the software stack, restructure the cloud commitment, rebuild the forecast process. Correct, usually. Then the engagement ends and the client is left to do it, with the same team, the same bandwidth, and the same vendors who now know a change is coming and have had weeks to prepare for it.
The test
Ask whoever wants to advise you a direct question. Will you sit in the negotiation. Will you run the RFP. Will you build the reporting. Will you still be here in month four, when the vendor pushes back hard and the internal owner who was supposed to carry this has gone quiet under the weight of their day job.
If the answer is some version of "we advise, you implement," you are buying a document. Sometimes a document is genuinely what you need: a second opinion, a framework to organize your own thinking, cover for a decision you'd already made. Usually it is not. Usually what's missing isn't more analysis. It's someone who will still be in the room when the analysis meets an actual counterparty who doesn't want to give anything up.
There's a simple way to spot the difference before you've signed anything. Look at how the proposal is structured. If the fee covers only the diagnostic phase, with implementation "scoped separately once we know more," that isn't automatically a red flag, but it's worth pressing on. Ask what share of engagements actually convert into delivery, and whether delivery gets staffed by the same people who did the diagnostic or handed off to whoever's available.
Why it matters more now
Execution is where the value sits, and it has gotten harder to do well. Vendors are more sophisticated than they were five years ago. Contracts are more complex, with more protection built in for the seller. AI has changed the underlying cost base of agencies and software faster than most existing contracts have adapted to reflect it, which means there is real money sitting in agreements that were fair when they were signed and aren't anymore.
Doing something about that requires people who have run this exact play before, against these kinds of counterparties, recently enough that the playbook hasn't gone stale. That is a different skill from producing a sharp analysis. It looks a lot less impressive in a proposal. It is the only part of the work that ever shows up on the P&L.
Recommendations that don't get executed erode fast. A renegotiation strategy that was sound in January is stale by the time procurement finally schedules the call in September, because the vendor's own cost base, competitive position, and willingness to move have all shifted in the meantime. Speed from insight to execution isn't a nice-to-have. It's most of where the value actually lives.
What we chose
We built this firm around delivery rather than advice alone. We take the mandate through to the result, not just to the recommendation, and where it fits the engagement, we tie part of our fee to the savings we actually help produce. It keeps us honest about what's achievable, and it keeps us in the room long after the interesting part of the analysis is finished.
Ask anyone who wants to advise you the same question we'd want asked of us. The answer tells you exactly what you're buying, before you've spent a dollar finding out the hard way.
It's worth saying plainly: not every problem needs an outside party sitting in the room for months. Plenty of good work is genuinely diagnostic, a sharp outside view, a benchmark you couldn't get internally, a second set of eyes on a decision that's already largely made. The test isn't whether a firm stays for the whole ride. It's whether the proposal is honest, up front, about which one you're buying, so you're not expecting delivery and receiving a deck.
How do you tell if a consultant will actually deliver results and not just a report?
Ask directly whether they'll sit in the negotiation, run the RFP, build the reporting, and still be involved months later when a vendor pushes back hard. If the answer is some version of "we advise, you implement," you're buying a document, not a result.
Why does consulting advice so often fail to get executed?
Most engagements end when the deck is delivered, leaving the client to execute with the same team, the same bandwidth, and vendors who now know a change is coming. Recommendations also go stale fast: a negotiation strategy that was sound in January can be outdated by the time procurement finally schedules the call, because the vendor's own position has shifted in the meantime.
Is it ever reasonable to hire a consultant just for advice rather than execution?
Yes. Purely diagnostic work, a sharp outside view, an independent benchmark, a second opinion on a decision that's already largely made, is genuinely useful in plenty of cases. The real problem isn't advisory work itself; it's a proposal that isn't honest upfront about which one you're buying, so you end up expecting delivery and getting a deck.
If you have a recommendation and no one to run it, that is often where we start.
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