THE QUESTION MOST FRACTIONAL LEADERS AVOID
By Katherine Danesi, Business Strategist & Advisor | Decision Architect | Growth Mechanic
Every Thursday, THE BOARD brings you industry insights from our Members to your inbox.
YOU’VE ANSWERED THIS FOR EVERY CLIENT. HAVE YOU ANSWERED IT FOR YOURSELF?
If you're fractional, you already know the questions you’ll ask when a brand signs on with you. Within the first few conversations you're untangling their pricing, their offerings, their positioning. You see the gaps immediately. You always do.
The question is do you do the same thing for yourself? When was the last time you asked yourself the same thing you likely ask every client you work with.
"What do you actually deliver?"
Not the list of things you know how to do or the services you deliver. But the change you're responsible for creating.
Most fractional leaders can answer this for a client and yet are challenged when asked it in terms of their own businesses. We describe our own work the way we tell clients not to describe theirs: as a set of functions. Strategy. Operations. Brand. Finance. The teams we've led, the initiatives we've run, the industries we've touched.
That’s “the how.” Clients don't hire us for the how. They hire us because they believe something will be fundamentally different once we're in the room. That we’ll create a solution for whatever challenge they’re faced with in a way they can’t do on their own. That belief is the business we're in.
YOUR OUTCOME, YOUR INCOME.
Knowing the real problem you solve doesn’t just help you win the business, it meaningfully impacts your revenue. There's a story I heard years ago, probably embellished with retelling, but it's stuck with me. There are a few versions of it dating back to the early 1900s. One tells how mathematical genius Charles Steinmetz was brought in by industrialist Henry Ford when a crucial generator failed at his River Rouge plant and no local engineers could fix the problem. Another how an elderly man was brought in to bring a ship engine back to life.
In both cases, these experts spent some time identifying the underlying problem and then less than five minutes implementing the solution. Both submitted an invoice for $10,000. Both clients demanded an itemized breakdown. In Steinmetz’s case, he replied: making the chalk mark: $1; knowing where to put it: $9,999.
A recent survey of nearly 1,000 consultants across 75+ countries, run by Consulting Success, found specialists were far more likely to clear $10,000 a month than generalists were to clear $5,000.
Define “specialist” and “generalist” however you choose (there are a number of ways to do so). The gap here spoke directly to whether the consultant could name the specific problem they were known for solving. The people who know exactly what they deliver get paid for delivering it. The people who describe what they do often undercharge and they get negotiated with.
MOST OF US INHERITED A SERVICES MINDSET WITHOUT NOTICING.
We got good at explaining our capabilities. Our responsibilities. Track record. Deliverables.
With this as our foundation, business development conversations become centered on scope and hours and cost. Prospective clients evaluate us based on the story we tell them. If the story is a list of skills, the negotiation is about the price of skills. If the story is an outcome, the negotiation is about the value of that outcome. Those are two different conversations entirely.
WHEN YOU DON'T OWN YOUR OUTCOME, YOU CREATE ADAPTATIONS IN YOUR BUSINESS.
And do it In ways you might not clock as symptoms of the same root problem:
You create another offer
Another proposal gets customized from scratch
Another pricing exception gets made
You say yes to work that doesn't quite fit, because you can't clearly say what does
You’re compensating. You’re trying to solve the wrong problem. Some of the most capable operators I know are stuck exactly here, delivering enormous value for clients while making their own businesses harder to run, for less money, than they need to be.
DEFINE THE OUTCOME AND EVERYTHING ELSE GETS SIMPLER.
Once you know what changes because you're in the room, your offers organize around a destination instead of a list of services and deliverables. Your proposals stop getting reinvented every time, because you're solving the same core problem in different environments. Your pricing stops being an itemized accounting of your hours and starts reflecting the result your judgment makes possible.
Your positioning gets sharper too, because people understand why you're in the room, not just what you'll do once you're there.
The best fractional operators I know all share this. They know exactly what changes because they're involved. Everything else, how they price, how they structure offers, how they talk to prospects, is downstream of that one answer.
You already do this work for every client you've ever had. The only open question is whether you've done it for yourself.
Katherine Danesi is a business strategist and advisor who helps founders of service businesses make better decisions and build the structure needed for profitable, sustainable growth. As a member of The Board, she serves as a Fractional Chief Strategy & Operations Officer and strategic advisor to founder-led companies. Learn more at katherinedanesi.com.
Access to this expertise starts here: www.wearetheboard.co
THE BOARD sits at the intersection of Brand, Business, and Culture—offering fractional leadership, project-based experts, and curated teams to help you move faster, smarter, and with far less risk. info@theboard.community
