Consulting packages: how to package your expertise.

Most ex-corporate professionals who start consulting make the same first move. They write up everything they can do, put it on a LinkedIn profile and send it to people they know. The result reads like a resume, and the prospect cannot tell what is for sale.

Carla Cherry built Power Offer Consultants around that gap. Her clients are former VPs, directors and senior specialists with 20-plus years of expertise, and her position is direct: "You don't need a new OR better skill. You need a sharper offer."

Power Offer Consultants helps ex-corporate experts package their expertise and sell it to corporate. For pricing, see the consulting rates guide; for getting the package in front of buyers, see how to get consulting clients.

Why does corporate procurement need a packaged offer?

Carla Cherry's diagnosis skips the budget conversation entirely: "You're not getting ghosted over budget. They can't tell what you do." Said another way: "Your price isn't the problem... businesses just can't figure out what you do." A buyer who cannot say in one sentence what is for sale will not risk a signature on it, and procurement is where that risk shows up first.

Procurement's questions turn into a wall from there: what are the deliverables, the timeline, the cost, and who owns each outcome. A consultant whose honest answer is that it depends has disqualified themselves, because an approval chain cannot process ambiguity.

She reviews consulting offers every week and her stated hit rate is brutal: "90% of them are vague promises wrapped in fancy phases." The shape she sees most is the four-stage proposal, discovery then strategy then implementation then optimization, which describes a work pattern and gives a buyer nothing to price.

Her test for whether an offer exists is a ninety-day question. Say what changes for the client between day one and day ninety, without reaching for words like strategy or optimize. If that sentence cannot be written, there is no offer. As she puts it, "The goal is to sell the distance between where the client is stuck and where they desperately want to be".

The second filter is where the work lands on the balance sheet. The engagement has to save money, make money or cut time, because anything else is a nice-to-have, and nice-to-haves do not get corporate budgets approved.

Packaging is also the part she says nobody manages alone, because the expertise is invisible from the inside: "it's very difficult to literally figure out how to bottle up your own expertise".

Do this next:

1. Write what changes for your client between day one and day ninety, without the words strategy or optimize.

2. Name the line on the buyer's P&L your work moves. If you cannot, the offer is a nice-to-have.

3. Delete the phase names from your proposal and see whether anything specific is left underneath.

How do you identify the right problem to package around?

Packaging starts with the problem the package solves, which means working inward from the buyer's loss rather than outward from your skill list.

The Gap Test

Before Carla lets a client build anything, the problem has to pass her Gap Test: the buyer must be losing in at least one of four areas, profit, time, talent, or prospects and new clients. Losing in more than one raises the urgency; it tells you the pain is real.

Separately, she builds every offer from four parts, the four P's: Position, whether you are the obvious choice; Problem, whether anyone wants it fixed; Promise, the result you commit to; Person, whether you are aimed at whoever can actually approve the spend. Miss one and lead generation, pricing and growth all suffer.

The specialist advantage

A specific problem draws a bigger fee than the same expertise offered in general: the bigger the problem, the bigger the paycheck, and the faster the hire.

What Carla Cherry calls "resume mode"

Resume mode is the packaging failure she names most often: a list of everything a consultant has ever done. Strategic planning, change management, leadership development, operational improvement, executive coaching. Faced with a list like that, a buyer gets baffled and cannot pick anything.

Her fix is to strip the list. "Clients don't pay for everything you know. They pay for the ONE result" they cannot afford to delay, and an offer built around a consultant's skillset instead of the buyer's urgent need will not sell. What survives the strip is the one thing that solves the problem and sets you apart from everyone else with the same resume.

She teaches the shift in stages, moving out of resume mode, into solving problems, into expertise, and finally into authority, cutting the fluff at each step rather than repackaging it. It is the same test she runs on messaging generally: lead with what the buyer wants, and let what they need arrive inside the delivery rather than the pitch.

Her published rewrite for a former McKinsey consultant shows the distance. Twelve years of expertise, described in the abstract, produced eight months of nothing. Stated instead as a problem with a deadline, the same expertise read: "I help PE portfolio companies complete system integration in 90 days so you can show growth metrics at your first board meeting." That put her in front of three private equity firms.

Do this next:

1. Write your problem as a loss in one of the four Gap Test areas. No loss named, no pass.

2. Run the four P's on it: position, problem, promise, person. Fix the weakest first.

3. Cut your capability list to the most expensive problem you solve and rewrite your headline around it.

What goes into a consulting package?

Carla's own structure for a package that sells, published as a $10k-to-$100k offer framework, is four parts: three tiers, a Big Promise, phases instead of deliverables, and a price set down from the outcome rather than up from cost. The six pieces below break that structure into what a procurement reviewer checks line by line, from the named problem to the proof. Not all six exist on day one, but all six exist before procurement approves anything.

1. The named problem

A specific, quantifiable loss, stated as Carla states a Big Promise: the action you take, the outcome with a number in it, the timeline, the mechanism. Her published example runs "Uncover how to increase high net worth conversion rates by 20-40% in 90 days by rewriting messaging into a psychologically precise playbook." A promise without a number is a mission statement.

2. The target buyer

The person who feels the loss and can move budget, not a department. Carla qualifies on budget, urgency and authority, and adds a filter most consultants skip: her preference is a target pool over 10,000 buyers, with the exception that a smaller, hyper-specialized pool can work too. The buyer persona underneath it is pulled from the consultant's own experience, not a template: what you already remember about the people you served, walked back step by step.

3. The solution stack

Everything the buyer receives, built around the core problem and the problems next to it. This is her Power Solution Wheel, and Carla ties it to the size of the problem and the messaging in a single test. Miss the stack and the offer reads one-dimensional, easy to lose to a competitor who shows more. Miss the messaging and no one understands what is being sold, so there is no sale.

Miss the size of the problem and the pitch gets back-burnered with excuses. Get all three right and a buyer gets on the phone.

4. The scope and timeline

Build phases rather than deliverables, because enterprise buyers do not buy three months of consulting, they buy a named sequence. Her wording is blunt: "Name each phase something a CMO hasn't heard 400 times." Research and discovery loses; a phase named for its outcome wins. Each phase gets a before state and an after state with a number in the after, so procurement can track it.

5. The price and terms

Her structure is three tiers: an audit or roadmap around $10k whose findings pitch the larger engagement, core implementation from $30k up to $75k, and an enterprise tier at $100k and above, built only once two or three case studies exist below it. "Stop trying to sell one offer at one price point." Price down from what the problem costs the buyer, and reveal the number last. The consulting rates guide has the sequence.

6. The proof

Carla's position is that having worked in the industry is not enough; the market has to see you produce this specific result.

Ron N., founder of IRON Personal Services and Consulting, packaged 20-plus years at the Long Island Railroad in reliability and fleet maintenance into an offer and closed about $425,000 in contracts within two months. Much of her early work is getting a client to stop shrinking the corporate record every case study is built from.

Do this next:

1. Write your Big Promise with all four elements: action, outcome with a number, timeline, mechanism.

2. Rename every phase after the outcome it produces, then give each a before state and an after state.

3. Draft the $10k version before the $100k version, and treat its findings as the pitch into the larger one.

How do you build the solution stack that closes the deal?

The solution stack separates describing what you could do from showing what the buyer gets, and answers what a procurement reviewer asks about the invoice.

The Power Solution Wheel

The structure is simple to draw, but it is not a desk exercise. "You have the proper solution stack, that by the way, we get from the market research," a step she also calls "the side door of research."

The client's core problem goes in the center, the main solution attaches to it, then every secondary and future problem they will hit is mapped around it with a solution of its own. Carla works outward because "one problem never exists alone," and fixing the spokes as well as the core is what she says makes a consultant indispensable.

The reaction she engineers for is specific. A prospect who sees the whole wheel feels they have to get on the phone, and her line for that moment is the prospect's own: "I would feel silly not to."

Dominique S. of The Ninette Company is the worked example. High-end publishers had no time to hand-hold authors through a successful book launch. Carla packaged Dominique around that gap. A publisher offered her a job, and she said no. She went back and negotiated a $120,000 consulting contract instead, the first time she had ever pitched the offer.

Building your stack without overwhelming the buyer

There is a ceiling. Her rule is that the template stays simple enough to pivot inside a live conversation, because more information loses the person writing the check. An overstuffed stack makes the buyer glaze over.

Her fix is to hold most of it in reserve. The core problem and the main solution stay on the page, and the template stays simple enough to pivot to what one buyer names on the call, with the rest of the wheel ready if they ask.

She also keeps the entry small and the path obvious. Assessment first, roadmap second, implementation third. Her argument is arithmetic: "No one's writing a $400K check to a stranger." That structure took Ron from quoting $150 an hour to a paid assessment that opened the rest of the work.

She also has clients map the steps around the deliverable. Brittany W.'s research found that the manufacturers she sold to would not do anything themselves, no self-service sign-ups and no check-ins at a computer, so Carla had her build those steps in, and the company later adopted them. A stack built this way is repeatable, which lets a consultant take more clients without improvising each delivery.

Do this next:

1. Draw the wheel. Core problem in the center, main solution attached, then every problem your client hits next with a solution beside it.

2. Cut whatever cannot be explained in one sentence on a call. Keep the rest as depth the buyer can ask for.

3. Design a paid first step a stranger can say yes to, and make its output the pitch for the engagement.

How do you package when you can do six things credibly?

This is the hardest packaging question for a 40-to-60-year-old ex-corporate professional, because the problem is too much expertise: strategic planning, operations, change management, executive coaching, speaking, training. Her answer is to build three and let the market decide which one moves.

Target down, not niche down

Carla draws the distinction carefully. Niching down means confining yourself to one person and one problem, permanently. Targeting down means picking a specific person with a specific problem at a specific point on their timeline and building the first package around it, with room to target down again when the market moves. Every piece of collateral, from case studies to the proposal, gets remade for that one person, not left generic.

Three targets, three offers, at least one the client knows well and one further out where the market gets to vote. If the safe bet does not move, two more are already built.

The proof

One of her published rewrites shows how small the pivot can be. A client selling broad branding services had, buried in his case studies, taken two companies public while doing their branding.

That one fact became the offer: he now brands companies preparing for an IPO, aimed at private-equity and venture-backed firms at Series A and beyond, where a six-figure fee is expected because the work speaks to shareholders. Her summary is "Same guy and same skills, completely different offer."

She calls that buried fact the secret sauce, and finding it is most of what her first calls do. Bonnie K. of Video Magic Productions had a forty-year video career and an acting career that included a James Bond film, and she was hiding the acting. Once her pitch named her as "a professional actress and a creative director... a video marketing coach and a video producer," the response changed.

Nickquolette B. of iRock Resumes, now iRock Executive Talent Partners, had one-off courses scattered across career development, resume writing and coaching, which meant selling the next one every time. A 1:1 restructure turned them into one staged academy, so a client enters once and stays.

One habit Carla has kept since one of her first clients: name the package. Watching a client adopt a name she had given it was a joy she still passes on, so her clients name theirs. Whether yours is sold as consulting or as coaching is a decision that comes before the name.

Do this next:

1. List three targets, not one, and make one further out than feels comfortable.

2. Read back through your case studies and find the fact you leave out. Build the offer on that.

3. Name the package and use the name until buyers repeat it back.

Consulting package examples

Two of Carla's clients show the two shapes a package usually takes: structures to copy, not rate cards.

A tiered ladder. Cam B. of The Frequent Speaker sells a do-it-yourself, do-it-with-you and done-for-you model, from about $4,000 at the low end to $15,000 at the high end, with one core strategy piece running through all three. The buyer picks the risk level; the strategy underneath stays the same. Carla's own three tiers, under The price and terms above, are the same idea in a higher price band.

A staged path. Ron, of IRON Personal Services and Consulting, sells in three stages: a paid assessment, then a roadmap, then implementation. The offer is aimed at infrastructure companies managing eight-figure equipment budgets and tied to their budget cycles and compliance deadlines.

The assessment is the way in: "No one's writing a $400K check to a stranger. But they'll pay $25K to see if you know what you're talking about." He closed about $425,000 in contracts within two months.

Do this next:

1. Pick the shape that fits your buyer: tiers when buyers differ in how much help they want, stages when one buyer needs proof before the large contract.

2. Write the entry step first and price it so a stranger can say yes.

What mistakes do experienced professionals make when packaging?

None of the mistakes below are a sign you are bad at this. If a pitch has been landing wrong, in Carla's words, "it's not your fault." Pitching is rarely taught, and in her words the industry has zero guidance on it.

Pricing before packaging

Setting a rate before defining scope, deliverables and outcome is backwards, and the anchor most ex-corporate consultants reach for makes it worse. Charging $150 an hour, as if the last twenty years did not happen, prices your past self. Carla's correction: "Price what your expertise is actually worth to a Fortune 500 buyer. It's not the same number."

What follows a low anchor is usually a discount, which she treats as the expensive mistake, because cutting the number once teaches the market to wait for it. A price objection sends her back to the messaging, which is usually still a resume.

Building a website before building an offer

The deeper version of this mistake is building anything before a real buyer has seen it. Carla's rule is "Validate the offer before you build the whole thing." The failure she names is the consultant who builds three offers in a vacuum, falls in love with all three, and has nothing to show four months later.

The website is one instance: not useless, just not the first spend. She has clients who closed large corporate contracts without one.

Taking small retainers to feel safe

The safe-looking move that quietly kills the practice is retainers at $3,000 to $5,000 a month. Carla runs the arithmetic out loud: replacing a $300k salary at that rate takes eight to ten clients to break even, twelve to fifteen once overhead and taxes are in, and each behaves like an owner of your calendar. She pushes clients toward two to four engagements at $50k to $150k, the same revenue with a fraction of the client management.

None of this requires a finished package before it earns. Her own version of building the plane while you fly it: get clients while you still refine the offer, adjust it from live feedback, and let real sales conversations finish what the desk work started. For when a retainer is right and how to price one against a project, see the become a fractional executive guide.

Do this next:

1. Price the outcome rather than your old hourly equivalent, and hold the number instead of discounting it.

2. Take your best offer to actual buyers before you build the delivery, the deck or the site.

3. Run the replacement math on your retainers and count what your target income actually needs.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to package a consulting offer?

She tells prospects to expect their first result within one to two calls: what they are selling, who they are selling it to and how stop being vague. The second result she promises, closing at least one or two warm leads, comes within four to five weeks. Past that she does not publish a fixed calendar for the build, because she does not treat a package as finished until it survives contact with a real buyer.

Kendra B. earned $6,000 in her first week with her first paid speaking gig, and Elle R. had four calls set up in the first 36 hours of her launch, both before either offer had a track record.

Do I need to package differently for corporate versus small business buyers?

Yes. A corporate buyer usually wants defined deliverables and a timeline before it approves an unfamiliar vendor. What Carla adds is who inside that process to aim at and how big a first ask to make.

In the Power Offer method, she qualifies every target on whether they can actually approve the spend, not just screen it, and on budget and urgency before anything gets built. Her answer to the size of the first ask is the tiered entry: a paid assessment or roadmap first, implementation after, so nobody approves a large unfamiliar spend in one move.

Can I change my package after I start selling it?

Yes, and expect to. The first version is a hypothesis, and Carla's stated rhythm is "You start with your first client, refine with your second, and perfect with your third." Research interviews and early sales conversations show what lands, what confuses buyers and what was mispriced.

Ashley R. pivoted her target market to wealth advisors during validation and saw about 9 of 10 interview calls turn into interested follow-ups.

What if my expertise spans multiple industries?

Carla does not make clients pick one industry. Targets can sit inside one industry or across several. What decides them is targeting down: a specific person, a specific problem, a specific point on their timeline, built into three offers so the market decides.

Ron built his around infrastructure companies managing eight-figure equipment budgets, tied to their budget cycles and compliance deadlines, and closed about $425,000 in contracts within two months.

How do I know if my package is priced correctly?

When the problem is high stakes, price is rarely the real problem. Carla's diagnosis: "pricing isn't the issue - clarity is." A low price attracts buyers who shop around, compare, stall and ask for discounts rather than commit, so undercharging is not the safer bet it looks like.

Her test points at the diagnosis rather than the fee: "If $100k actually feels high to your buyer, you haven't quantified the problem yet." Brittany closed $86,000 in a single weekend after her packaging and pitch were rebuilt.