Trending
Written by: Derek Little
The harder your value is to inspect before purchase, the more authority you need to build before the sale.
Picture a consulting firm that looks like it’s doing everything right.
Its people have years of experience. They’ve worked with good clients. They post on LinkedIn, speak at events, publish articles, get referrals and have a professional website.
They’re visible.
They’re also genuinely good at what they do.
But when Business Development reaches out, the market doesn’t react the way you’d expect.
Prospects need long explanations. Buyers ask for more proof. Price becomes a bigger issue. Deals stall. Proposals disappear into silence. The BD team gets ghosted.
The firm assumes it has a lead-generation problem. Or a messaging problem. Or maybe a sales problem.
But the real issue may be simpler.
The firm has expertise. It has visibility.
What it doesn’t have is enough recognized authority with the right buyers.
And every time a BD person has to build that missing trust from scratch, the firm pays what I call a Trust Tax.
Why Good Marketing Advice Can Still Be the Wrong Advice
When an expertise-led firm goes looking for marketing advice, it’s easy to end up in a world built around SaaS.
That’s not surprising. There’s a huge online ecosystem around software growth: founders, agencies, tools, playbooks, podcasts, YouTube channels and consultants.
A lot of that advice is excellent.
The problem is that a consulting firm may be trying to solve a very different problem.
A software buyer can often inspect much of the value before buying. They can watch a demo, compare features, test the interface, look at integrations and compare pricing.
A consulting buyer can’t put judgment into a free trial.
They can’t fully test strategic thinking before hiring it. They can’t know exactly how well someone will diagnose a messy problem, handle uncertainty, influence stakeholders or adapt when the plan changes.
They’re being asked to buy before they can fully inspect what they’re buying.
That changes the role trust has to play.
The Trust Burden Spectrum
Think of B2B businesses on a simple spectrum:
PRODUCT-LED → PRODUCT + SERVICE → EXPERTISE-LED
Easier to inspect before purchase → Harder to inspect before purchase
Lower trust burden → Higher trust burden
This doesn’t mean product businesses don’t need trust. Of course they do.
The difference is how much of the buying decision trust has to carry.
At One End: Product-Led
At the product-led end, the buyer has something tangible to inspect.
They can ask:
- What does it do?
- Can I see it working?
- How does it compare with alternatives?
- What are the features?
- What does it cost?
- What results has it produced?
The product itself provides part of the proof.
Product companies have hard problems of their own. They may face R&D costs, copycat competitors, feature wars and commoditization.
But buyers can usually see and compare a meaningful part of what they’re buying.
The marketing job is often to help buyers understand why the product is useful, different or better.
In the Middle: Product + Service
Now move toward the middle.
Imagine a company that sells technology plus implementation, customization, coaching or ongoing management.
The buyer can still inspect the product. But that’s no longer enough.
They also need to know:
- Do these people understand our situation?
- Can they implement this in our environment?
- Will they adapt when things change?
- Can they work well with our team?
The product still carries some of the proof.
But now the people carry more of it.
The trust burden rises.
At the Other End: Expertise-Led
Now think about a consulting or professional-services firm.
The client may get reports, plans, workshops, recommendations or implementation support.
But the real value often comes from judgment.
They’re buying experience, diagnosis, problem-solving, strategic thinking and decision-making when the answer isn’t obvious.
And here’s the problem:
Most of that value can only be fully judged after the buyer has already hired the firm.
So the buyer has to make an important decision without complete evidence.
The question shifts from:
“Does the product work?”
to:
“Do I trust these people to understand our situation and make good decisions?”
That’s a very different marketing problem.
Visibility Is Not Attention
This is where I think a lot of firms get confused.
They’re told to become more visible.
Post more. Publish more. Build an audience. Run webinars. Start a podcast. Send more outreach.
Those things can help.
But visibility isn’t attention.
Visibility means the buyer could see you.
Attention means the right buyer notices something that feels relevant enough to stop, think or engage.
You can appear in someone’s LinkedIn feed ten times and still fail to earn attention.
That’s why the first rung of my Authority Gap Ladder is not Visibility.
It’s Attention.
The question isn’t simply, “Are buyers seeing us?”
It’s, “Are the right buyers noticing something that matters to them?”
That’s a much higher bar.
Expertise Is Not Authority
There’s a second distinction that matters even more.
Expertise isn’t authority.
Expertise means you know what you’re doing.
Authority means the buyer recognizes that expertise, sees it as relevant to their problem and trusts it enough to let it influence a decision.
A consulting firm can have outstanding expertise and still have low authority in the market.
That’s not unusual.
In fact, it’s one of the reasons expertise firms can find marketing so frustrating.
They know they’re good.
Their clients know they’re good.
But a buyer who hasn’t worked with them yet can’t see inside their heads.
The market doesn’t award authority automatically because you’ve earned expertise.
You have to make that expertise easier to understand, evaluate and trust.
“Expertise is what you have. Authority is what buyers can recognize.”
— Read The Authority Gap, Introduction — The Authority Gap, p. 8
That’s Where the Trust Tax Appears
When that authority hasn’t been built before the sales conversation, the burden gets handed to Business Development.
The BD person becomes the entire trust department.
And in many consulting firms, there isn’t even a dedicated BD person. It may be the founder, CEO or partner carrying the whole function.
They have to explain the problem, show why the firm is relevant, prove credibility, handle skepticism, defend the price, answer objections and reassure stakeholders.
Sometimes they’re trying to do all of that in one meeting.
That missing confidence creates friction.
The Trust Tax can show up as:
- longer sales cycles
- more objections
- pressure on price
- repeated requests for proof
- stalled decisions
- more stakeholder scrutiny
- prospects disappearing after good meetings
- capable BD people getting blamed for opportunities that were never ready
The firm may think it has a sales problem.
But the buyer may simply be carrying too much uncertainty into the conversation.
Expertise Firms Need a Different Big Picture
This is why I’d be careful about borrowing marketing tactics without asking what kind of business they were designed for.
SaaS marketing advice isn’t wrong.
It may just be solving a different problem.
A software company may be trying to create demand, demonstrate a product, drive trials, compare features or convert a large pipeline more efficiently.
An expertise-led firm has another job layered on top of demand generation:
It has to make invisible expertise easier to evaluate.
That means helping buyers answer questions like:
- Do these people understand our problem?
- Do they see something important that others miss?
- How do they think?
- What evidence supports their point of view?
- Have they handled situations like ours before?
- Would I feel safe recommending them to the other people involved in this decision?
Thought leadership, case evidence, clear points of view, diagnostics and client stories aren’t just “content.”
Done well, they’re evidence.
They give buyers a way to inspect something that would otherwise stay invisible until after the engagement starts.
Trust Should Be Built Before the BD Conversation
That matters even more in consulting firms, because many don't have separate marketing and sales teams.
Often, the founder, CEO, partner or one BD person is handling the whole Business Development function.
They’re expected to earn attention, explain the problem, show why the firm is relevant, prove the expertise, create opportunities, run the sales conversation and follow up.
So the issue isn’t whether Marketing hands better leads to Sales. It’s whether the firm has built enough authority before that person sits down with a buyer.
For an expertise-led firm, the business development system should help buyers move through a series of mental checkpoints before a high-trust conversation begins.
That’s the logic behind the Authority Gap Ladder:
Attention → Understanding → Confidence → Commitment → Conversation
First, the right buyer has to notice something relevant.
Then they need to understand the problem and why it matters.
Then they need enough evidence to trust the firm’s judgment.
Then they need a useful reason to take a meaningful next step.
And that creates the kind of conversation BD actually wants to have. The goal isn’t to remove the human relationship from Business Development.
It’s to stop asking the BD person to manufacture all the trust from scratch.
The Further Right You Move, the More Authority Matters
A product can demonstrate a lot of its value.
A consultant can’t.
That’s the basic difference.
As a business moves from selling something tangible toward selling judgment, buyers can inspect less before they buy.
So trust has to carry more of the decision.
And that means expertise-led firms need to think differently about the whole Business Development function.
The big question isn’t simply:
“How do we get more visibility?”
It isn’t even:
“How do we get more attention?”
The bigger question is:
“What needs to be true for the right buyer to recognize and trust our expertise before they ever sit down with Business Development?”
Because the harder your value is to evaluate before purchase, the more authority you need to build before the sale.
Related: If You Offer Comprehensive Advice, Can You Prove It?