After enough engagements the same three problems show up in the first conversation, regardless of size or specialism.
One: they're selling capability, not outcome
The site lists technologies. The buyer wants to know what changes in their business. These are not the same document and the first one is much easier to write, which is why everyone writes it.
Two: nobody owns marketing
There's usually one capable executive reporting to a founder who has no time. Work happens constantly and none of it accumulates, because there's no strategy for it to accumulate against.
Executing well against a strategy nobody wrote down.
Three: the pipeline is a person
Growth depends on the founder's network, and the founder is the bottleneck. Every plan to fix this fails at the same point, which is that nobody else in the company can have the conversation the founder has.
The order matters
Most firms attack the third problem first because it's the one that hurts. It's the one that can't be fixed until the other two are.