How to Run a Discovery Call When the Client Already Hates Consultants
Richard made the introduction three weeks ago. Laura agreed to 30 minutes — "and not a minute more." You spent a week researching her company: the warehouse throughput decline, the headcount creep, the $400K she spent on McKnight & Associates for a report her ops team called "textbook theory with zero practical value." Now she's on the line. Her voice is flat, efficient, already tired of you. "Richard speaks highly of you, but I'll be honest — I've been burned before. So tell me why this would be different." This isn't a discovery call. It's an audition. And the first consultant who gave a polished answer to this question is the reason she's asking it.
Why This Conversation Goes Wrong
You lead with your methodology. "At our firm, we use a proprietary diagnostic framework that..." — she stopped listening at "proprietary." The last firm had a proprietary framework too. It produced 200 pages of theory. Your methodology is not your differentiator. Your understanding of her warehouse floor is.
You badmouth the previous consultant. The temptation is enormous: "That firm takes a cookie-cutter approach." But attacking McKnight makes you look petty, not different. She hired them. Criticizing her past decision is criticizing her judgment.
You pitch solutions before asking questions. "Based on what I've seen, I think the issue is your WMS system." You've known her company for four minutes and you already have the answer? That's exactly what McKnight did — arrived with conclusions dressed up as discovery.
You ask generic discovery questions. "What keeps you up at night?" is the consulting equivalent of "How are you today?" on a cold call. She's heard it from every firm that walked through her door. Generic questions get generic answers and zero trust.
The Earned Second
You don't deserve a second conversation. You earn it. The Earned Second framework is built on one insight: skeptical clients don't need reassurance that you're different. They need evidence. Every question you ask, every observation you make, either proves you understand their world or proves you don't. There is no neutral ground.
Name the scar directly
"Before anything else — you spent real money and real time on a firm that didn't deliver. I'd be skeptical too." Don't dance around the bad experience. Don't pretend it didn't happen. Naming it directly — without asking her to relive the details — shows you did your homework and you respect her intelligence enough not to pretend this is a fresh start.
Ask one industry-specific question
"Your throughput has been declining while headcount grew — are you seeing the bottleneck at the pick-and-pack stage or further upstream at receiving?" This is not a question you can ask if you didn't research the company. The specificity signals domain knowledge. If it lands, she stops evaluating a consultant and starts talking to someone who might actually help.
Admit what you don't know
"I don't know your shift structure or what WMS you're running. I'd need to spend time on your floor before I could tell you anything useful." Admitting ignorance is the highest-trust move in consulting. The last firm walked in with answers. You're walking in with questions. She will notice the difference.
Propose working alongside, not delivering to
"If we did work together, I'd want to embed with your shift supervisors for two weeks before recommending anything." This is the sentence that separates you from McKnight. They delivered a report from the outside. You're offering to learn from the inside. The word "alongside" does more work than any slide deck.
Earn the next step, don't assume it
"Based on what you've told me, I think a half-day on-site visit would tell us both whether this makes sense. No pitch, no proposal. Just a walk-through." A concrete, low-risk next step that she can say yes to without feeling committed. She's not buying a $250K engagement. She's agreeing to a morning.
The moment that changes everything
She already knows the problem. She needs someone who can fix it alongside her team.
Laura doesn't need a diagnosis. She has a good hypothesis — the warehouse management system is outdated and her shift supervisors lack data literacy. What she actually needs is someone who can execute the fix alongside her people, not hand her another report and walk away. The firms that lose this engagement make it about their intelligence. The one that wins makes it about her team's capability. When you say "I'd want to embed with your shift supervisors," something shifts. You're not selling expertise — you're offering partnership. And partnership is the one thing the last $400K couldn't buy.
What to Say (and What Not To)
Instead of
"At our firm, we use a proprietary diagnostic methodology..."
Try this
"You spent serious money on a firm that didn't deliver. I'd be skeptical too."
Instead of
"What keeps you up at night?"
Try this
"Is the throughput bottleneck at pick-and-pack or further upstream?"
Instead of
"We've solved similar problems at other logistics companies."
Try this
"I don't know your shift structure yet. I'd need to see your floor before saying anything useful."
Instead of
"Let me walk you through our engagement model."
Try this
"If we worked together, I'd want to embed with your supervisors before recommending anything."
Instead of
"Can we schedule a follow-up to discuss a proposal?"
Try this
"Would a half-day on-site walk-through make sense? No pitch — just a look around."
The Bigger Picture
A 2024 Hinge Research Institute study found that 68% of clients who terminated a consulting engagement cited "lack of practical implementation support" as the primary reason, not quality of analysis. The consulting industry's dirty secret is that brilliant recommendations are worthless without execution partnership. Firms that embed with client teams have a 3.2x higher engagement renewal rate than those that operate at arm's length.
The skeptical client is actually the best client. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that clients who push back during discovery calls are 40% more likely to become long-term partners — because their skepticism filters out weak consultants and rewards genuine ones. Laura's "tell me why you're different" isn't a wall. It's a gate. And the key is specificity.
The $400K that Laura spent on McKnight isn't just a sunk cost — it's a training set. She now has a highly refined filter for distinguishing real expertise from polished presentation. Every consultant who walks in with a deck and methodology is sorted into the "McKnight" bucket. The ones who walk in with questions about her receiving dock are sorted into a different category entirely — one she didn't know existed until now.
Practice This Conversation
8 minutes · AI voice roleplay with Laura Meier
Reading about this is step one. Practicing it changes everything. Sonitura lets you rehearse this exact conversation with Laura Meier, a realistic AI coo of a mid-market logistics company who reacts to your words in real time. It takes 8 minutes. The next discovery call with a skeptical client won't feel like an audition — because you'll already know how to earn the second conversation.
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