Thank you! Gaining the right to be trusted as a consultant is hugely rewarding for us. It’s so essential that we understand the client’s business inside and out so that our strategy is well informed, avoids prior pitfalls, and aligns with broader corporate values.

Thanks for commenting! Having an estimate of cost per lead is a great way to estimate the resources you’ll need to provide value to the customer. The budget question tends to flow naturally from that conversation as well.

I absolutely agree! Ask as many probing questions as possible during the intake process to understand all aspects of their marketing strategy. Clients may not realize that an off-line campaign could positively/negatively affect your online marketing strategy. It’s a two-way education process.

But also, I like the sentiment of addressing fallacies or doings of prior ‘experts’ as well as standing your consultant ground – because the client wants to flourish using roads you’ve traveled often, being in the industry. They need to listen to your insight, and in this case, defer to their consultant:
“In a vendor-based relationship where the goal is simply to build links, the audience might not matter as long as the target number of links are built each month. In a consulting relationship, we want everything we do, including building links, to be tied to conversions.”