What makes something a Painkiller instead of a vitamin?
A Painkiller solves a pain your client already has, and a vitamin improves something they agree is worth improving one day. Everyone knows they should take vitamins. If you forget them at the store, you think you'll get them next time. When you have a pain, you go and get the thing that solves it.
Your clients behave the same way with consulting work.
| The vitamin version | The Painkiller version |
|---|
| I do corporate social responsibility consulting | I turn your corporate responsibility program into your greatest word of mouth tool |
| We help companies market better | I help companies look better, sound better, and sell more online |
| I'm a conversion copywriter | I help e-commerce businesses uncover hidden revenue in their email list |
None of those consultants changed what they sell. The left column describes the service; the right column names something the client already wants and can feel.
The hard version of this rule: if it isn't clear how their business is different or better as a result of working with you, your work reads as a vitamin, whatever it really delivers.
What if my work genuinely is a nice-to-have?
Treat "my work is a nice-to-have" as a description of the framing and not of the work, because your job is to connect what you do to your client's most critical problem. I hear this often, and the belief underneath it does more damage than the messaging does.
Almost no professional service is critical on its own. Training isn't urgent until turnover is costing a department its year. Brand work isn't urgent until a sales team is losing deals it should win. Your work becomes critical when it's attached to something already on fire.
How to find the attachment point
- List every pain your ideal client has, exhaustively, without editing.
- Mark the ones they say out loud in real conversations, in their own words.
- Pick the one you want to solve, meaning the one you're best at and would take again.
- Write your description against that one pain and nothing else.
Step three is the one people skip. There will be pains you could address and don't want to, and choosing is allowed. When I built my own first program, what women said they needed was help finding clients who had money, help putting themselves out there, and help rebranding. I'm not a designer, so rebranding was never mine to solve, and the one I wanted was the first one. That's how I landed on helping women land higher-paying consulting clients.
Which problem do I name first, the client's or the one I can see?
Name the problem your client can already articulate, and solve the deeper one once you're hired. In medicine this is called the presenting problem: the symptom that brings somebody into the office in the first place. A chart reads "patient presents with knee pain," and the treatment plan may involve six other things.
The principle I teach alongside it is sell them what they want, give them what they need.
Think about the knee. A doctor might know you need to stretch after exercise, sit less, take more calcium, rehab an old injury, and wear better shoes. None of those is what you came in for. You came in because your knee hurts, and a doctor who opens with your footwear loses you.
The same split runs through my own business:
| What a client says she needs | What I know she needs |
|---|
| To find clients who have money | A real sales process she can run on purpose |
| To put herself out there | Value-based messaging that names one client |
| To rebrand | The willingness to take up space and name a price |
I lead with the left column, every time, and the right column gets taught once she's in the room.
The mistake is leading with your diagnosis, because it asks a client to accept your framing before they've decided you're credible. Their words first, your framework second, which is why the questions you ask on a first call matter more than the explanation you prepared.
How do I create urgency without being pushy or overpromising?
Describe the problem accurately and let the client feel their own urgency, which is the opposite of manufacturing it. Real urgency already exists in their business. Your job is to name it clearly enough that they recognize it, and then to be honest about what your work does and doesn't control.
What that sounds like in practice:
- Name the cost of the problem continuing, in their terms, without a deadline you invented.
- Show the promise and not only the pain. People want the pain gone and they need to see what replaces it.
- Say what you can and can't promise. In a proposal I say I can't promise any single outcome, and that I can make sure a client has the tools to capitalize on every opportunity.
That last one counts for anyone whose results depend on a market. A copywriter can't guarantee a conversion rate. What you can say is that your work puts a client in the best possible position, and that sentence is honest and persuasive at the same time.
What I'd avoid: countdowns, invented scarcity, and any suggestion that the problem will get catastrophically worse by a date you chose. Those tactics work on consumers buying small things, and they read as manipulation to a director with a budget, and the value of the outcome to their business is the honest version of the same argument. When a problem really is urgent, it also tends to have money attached.
Leah's take
The sentence I hear most often on this topic is some version of "but my thing isn't critical." And I understand it, because from inside your business you can see every project that got deferred, every budget that went elsewhere, and every client who said this was important and then went quiet for five months.
Here's what I tell women who say that, and I'll say it to you. That becomes your job. Positioning your work as the thing that solves their most critical problem is the work, and it belongs to you, not to the client.
But I want to back up, because there's a step before the messaging. You have to believe the thing you do is a must-have. If you privately think it's a nice-to-have, that will come through in how you write your description, how you talk on a call, and how quickly you offer to reduce the scope when somebody hesitates. The first sale is to yourself.
And I mean that practically. Go and look at what your last few clients got. Not what you delivered, what changed. If you can't find anything critical in there, that's worth knowing. Most of the time it's sitting right in front of you and you've stopped seeing it, because it's just what you do.
