--- name: consulting-client-presentation version: 1.0.0 description: | AUTO-TRIGGER: Apply this skill when the user is preparing to present findings, recommendations, or results to a consulting client. Trigger phrases include: "presenting to my client," "client readout," "how do I present what I found," "delivering findings," "presenting my recommendations," "the client meeting is this week," "I need to show what I discovered in their HubSpot," "presenting my audit results," or any situation where the user is preparing to communicate findings or recommendations to someone who is paying them for consulting work. Also trigger when the user is preparing for a status update with a consulting client, or when they need to deliver bad news about what they found during an engagement. Do NOT trigger for internal presentations to leadership at a full-time employer (use marketing-budget-defense or managing-up for those), or for general presentation design. This skill is specifically for the independent consultant presenting findings or recommendations to an external client. allowed-tools: - Read - Write - Edit --- # Consulting Client Presentation: Delivering Findings That Move the Engagement Forward This skill prepares an independent consulting practitioner to present findings and recommendations to a client in a way that maintains the relationship, creates clarity about next steps, and protects the scope of the engagement. The consulting client presentation is structurally different from an internal presentation for two reasons. First, the consultant is an outsider who has limited political capital with the people in the room. Second, the presentation is often the moment the client decides whether to extend the engagement or end it. What you say and how you say it determines both. Most first-time consultants make the same three mistakes. They present everything they found rather than what matters most. They present recommendations without first establishing that the problem is real and agreed upon. And they close without a clear next step, which leaves the client to decide on their own timeline. --- ## HOW TO SET UP THIS SKILL Provide: - What type of presentation this is: initial findings readout, mid-engagement update, final recommendations, or results review - What you found during the engagement: the key issues, gaps, or opportunities - What you are recommending: the specific actions you want the client to take - Who will be in the room: just the primary contact, or additional stakeholders including leadership - Whether there is bad news: findings that the client may not expect or may not want to hear - Whether you want to extend the engagement and how --- ## The Structure of a Consulting Findings Presentation --- ### Part 1: Frame the problem before presenting findings The most common structural mistake is opening with findings before the client has re-confirmed the problem. A week or two has passed since your initial scoping conversation. The client has been focused on other things. Starting with "here is what I found in your HubSpot" before reestablishing why they brought you in creates a context mismatch. Open with one slide or one paragraph that restates: The goal they came to you with. In their words if you have them. "You brought me in to understand why marketing pipeline is not converting and to identify what needs to change in HubSpot to give you better visibility." The scope of what you examined. "In the past three weeks, I audited the CRM configuration, interviewed four members of the sales and marketing team, and reviewed six months of pipeline data." The one-sentence summary of what you found. Not all of it. One sentence that orients them before you go into detail. "What I found is that the pipeline visibility problem is real and has three specific causes, all of which are fixable." This framing takes two minutes. It reestablishes shared context and sets the tone for everything that follows. --- ### Part 2: Separate findings from recommendations Findings are what you observed. Recommendations are what you think should be done about them. These are different conversations and they should happen in a deliberate sequence. Present findings first and confirm the client agrees they are real before moving to recommendations. If you present findings and recommendations together, the client starts evaluating the recommendations before they have absorbed the findings. They push back on the solution before they have agreed on the problem. After presenting findings, pause and ask: "Before I get into recommendations, does this match what you are experiencing? Is there anything here that surprises you or that you see differently?" This question does two things. It confirms shared understanding, which prevents you from building recommendations on a misread. And it surfaces any disagreement about the findings in a moment where you can address it before the recommendations are on the table. --- ### Part 3: Prioritizing findings Present three to five findings, not everything you discovered. More than five makes the engagement feel overwhelming and diffuses focus from the most important things. For each finding, state: What you observed, specifically. Not "the workflows are messy" but "there are 47 active workflows in HubSpot, 23 of which have not fired in the past 90 days and appear to be running checks that conflict with each other." The business impact. Not "this is a problem" but "this is causing leads to be routed incorrectly in approximately 30 percent of cases, which means the sales team is receiving hot leads after they have already gone cold." The root cause. One sentence. This shows that you understand not just what is broken but why, which is what the client is paying for. Rank the findings by impact, not by the order you discovered them. The highest-impact finding comes first even if it was the last thing you found. --- ### Part 4: Delivering bad news If your findings include something the client did not expect and may not want to hear, deliver it directly, without softening it to the point of obscuring it. Bad news that is softened so heavily that the client misses its significance does not protect the relationship. It creates a situation where the client later says you did not make the severity clear. That is a worse outcome than a difficult conversation. The structure for delivering bad news in a consulting context: State what you found directly. "What I found is that the attribution model your team has been using for the past 18 months has been double-counting revenue from specific channels. The actual marketing pipeline contribution is lower than what has been reported." Acknowledge what this means for the client. "I know this is difficult to hear, especially given how this has been communicated to leadership." Move immediately to what can be done. "The good news is this is correctable. Here is how I would recommend we fix it and what we tell leadership about the historical numbers." Do not apologize for finding the problem. You are being paid to find it. Apologizing signals that you feel responsible for the finding, which is the wrong frame. --- ### Part 5: Structuring recommendations For each major finding, present one primary recommendation. Not a list of options unless the client specifically benefits from choosing. Clients hire consultants for judgment. Presenting five options when you know which one is right is not giving them what they paid for. Structure each recommendation: The action: what specifically you recommend they do. The rationale: why this is the right action given the finding and the business context. The effort: how long this will take and what resources it requires from the client's side. Be honest. If it requires two weeks of their team's time, say so before they agree to it. The outcome: what will be measurably different when this is done. If the recommendation requires continuing or extending your engagement, say so explicitly in the recommendation, not as an afterthought at the end of the meeting. "This recommendation requires continued configuration work that is outside the current engagement scope. I can do this as a follow-on engagement if that would be useful." --- ### Part 6: Closing with a clear next step Every consulting presentation must end with a specific next step with a specific owner and a specific timeline. Not: "Let me know how you would like to proceed." Not: "We can discuss next steps after you have had time to think about this." A specific close: "Based on what we have discussed, I would recommend we start with the workflow cleanup and attribution rebuild. I can have a scope and timeline for that work to you by [date]. Does that make sense, or is there a different starting point you would prefer?" This close does two things. It demonstrates that you know what should happen next, which is consultant value. And it gives the client a specific choice rather than an open-ended decision, which is easier to respond to and more likely to produce a yes. --- ## Handling Pushback in the Room When a client pushes back on a finding or a recommendation during the presentation, the right response is almost always to ask a question rather than to defend your position. "That is helpful context. Can you help me understand what you are seeing differently? I want to make sure my recommendation accounts for what you know about the situation." This does two things. It opens the door for information you may not have had. And it signals that you are confident enough in your work to be genuinely curious about their pushback rather than defensive. If the pushback is about the finding being wrong, and you believe it is correct, you can hold your position while remaining open: "I want to make sure I am not missing something. Here is the data I based this on. Is there data you have seen that would change this picture?" Do not change a correct finding because the client is uncomfortable with it. That is the one situation where capitulating to pushback damages your credibility more than the discomfort of holding the position. --- ## Managing Scope During the Presentation Client presentations frequently surface new requests. The client hears a finding and asks whether you can also look at X. They hear a recommendation and ask whether you can also fix Y. Handle these in the moment by acknowledging the request and deferring the scope decision: "That is a good question and probably worth examining. It is outside the current engagement scope. Let me note it and we can talk about whether it makes sense to add it." Then note it visibly. Write it down in front of them. This signals that you heard it and you are taking it seriously. Come back to the list at the end of the meeting: "A few things came up during our discussion that are worth considering. Here is what I noted. Some of these might warrant a follow-on conversation about scope." This approach acknowledges client requests without committing to them in the moment, and creates a natural opening to discuss scope expansion without it feeling like a sales pitch. --- ## Deliver the Presentation Plan Output in this format: ``` CLIENT PRESENTATION PLAN Client: [name or anonymous] Presentation type: [findings readout / status update / final recommendations / results review] Attendees: [who will be in the room] Built: [today's date] FRAMING OPENING (2 minutes) [The restated goal, scope of work, and one-sentence summary of what you found. Specific to this engagement.] FINDINGS (ranked by impact) Finding 1: [most important] - What you observed (specific) - Business impact - Root cause Finding 2: [Same structure] [Continue for 3-5 findings total] BAD NEWS HANDLING [If there is difficult news to deliver, the exact language to use. If no bad news, skip this section.] RECOMMENDATIONS (one per finding) Recommendation 1 (addresses Finding 1): - The action - The rationale - The effort and timeline - The outcome - Scope note: [if this extends the engagement, state it here] [Continue for each finding] CLOSE [The specific next step, with owner and timeline. Not open-ended.] SCOPE REQUESTS TO EXPECT [Based on the findings and recommendations, the 1-2 things the client is most likely to ask about that are outside current scope, and the exact language to use when they come up.] RISKS IN THIS PRESENTATION [The 1-2 things most likely to go sideways in this specific meeting based on what the user has described, with specific guidance on how to handle each.] ``` --- ## Output Rules - Always separate findings from recommendations in the structure. Never combine them in a single slide or section. - Never present more than five findings. If there are more, choose the five with the highest business impact and note that secondary findings will be documented separately. - Bad news must be delivered directly. Do not soften findings to the point of obscuring their significance. - The close must be specific. "Let me know how you want to proceed" is not an acceptable close. Name the next step, the owner, and the timeline. - If the user has not defined what they want the client to do next, ask before producing the presentation plan. A presentation without a clear desired outcome is not a consulting presentation. It is a report. - No em dashes. Use commas or periods.