A Case for Digital Marketing & AI Consultancy Teams
The Story
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and Priya Rane, from a boutique Digital Marketing & AI Consultancy, had gone to a packaging unit on the outskirts of Pune to close a LinkedIn content retainer for the owner. While wrapping up over chai, the owner mentioned something in passing:
“You know, my cousin runs an engineering company near Chakan — precision components, exports to Germany and Italy. Good product, but he keeps saying LinkedIn hasn’t brought him a single serious inquiry. He’s talking to a couple of agencies right now.”
Priya made a note, took the contact number from the customer and on her way back, called ahead and stopped by. The owner, Rajesh Oberoi – Director of Vertex Precision Engineering – was courteous but guarded. “Two others are already in the room,” he said. “A large Pune-based digital agency, and a boutique firm that’s done work for our industry association before.”
Priya didn’t pitch. She asked instead – about his business, his sales cycle, who actually reads his LinkedIn posts, what his current agency delivers, and where does he think they are not doing their best. It turned out Rajesh wasn’t worried about follower counts or post frequency at all — he was worried about lead quality. His team was fielding inquiries from students and job-seekers, while the actual buyers — plant heads and procurement managers in Germany — never showed up in his DMs.
Over the next ten days, Priya did her homework. She studied Vertex’s last 40 LinkedIn posts, mapped them against what actual European procurement managers search for, and sat in on a sales call to understand the real objections his team faced. She also learned, through a casual chat with his sales head, that the large agency’s account was run by a junior team in Mumbai who’d never spoken to a single Vertex customer, and content was often repurposed from a generic manufacturing template used across their client roster. Priya was surprised with the rampant use of AI in writing almost all the posts. They were too superfluous, she thought. She was sure they ‘did not brainstorm internally or with external stakeholders’ before creating this content.
When Priya next met Rajesh, she didn’t mention or criticize the competition. She placed ten sample LinkedIn posts on the table – written specifically for Vertex’s actual buyer persona – and said: “Sir, these aren’t generic. Each one is built around a real objection your sales team told me about. And also one more, here are three clients in similar B2B manufacturing spaces – you’re welcome to call any of them and ask how their inquiries have changed.” Rajesh was struck that she invited him to verify rather than simply asking him to trust her pitch.
The large agency, sensing they might lose the account, dropped their monthly fee by 15%. The boutique firm’s founder personally called Rajesh, leaning on “years of working with the association.”
Rajesh didn’t decide immediately. Priya didn’t chase. She called once every couple of weeks – never to ask “so, have you decided?” – but always with something useful: an article on a new EU export compliance rule, an AI tool that could cut his quotation turnaround time, an invite to a free 90-minute AI-for-Sales-Teams workshop with no strings attached. She was subtly and meaningfully ‘in touch’.(Priya, always remembered what her mentor says – slow and steady win the race. Keep meaningful engagement with the client. Have a plan to do this)
Three weeks later, Rajesh signed with Priya’s firm – for the LinkedIn retainer and an AI workshop for his entire Sales and Marketing team – even though her pricing wasn’t the lowest on the table.
Priya’s firm won a ₹9 lakh annual retainer and a ₹1.5 lakh workshop mandate.
Discussion Questions
Individual reflection (5 minutes, write your own notes first):
- List the qualities Priya showed as a consultant winning business. Point to the exact moment in the story where you observe them.
- Which of these qualities do you already use naturally? Which ones do you avoid or find uncomfortable?
- Think of a prospect you lost in the last year. Looking at your list above, which one quality – shown a little more – might have changed the outcome?
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