I was having a conversation with my friend last night, where he was arguing strongly in favor of hourly-billed consulting. Ultimately, I was able to diagnose that he did not discern a difference between a deliverable and an outcome. In a stroke (of genius?), I was able to come up with a succinct way to illustrate the difference that communicated the core of that difference.
I put the short version in a Quick Fact on the difference between an outcome and a deliverable, and I want to spend a little longer on it here, because I think it’s one of the most useful distinctions a consultant can memorize.
What is the difference between a deliverable and an outcome?
A deliverable is what is delivered to a client, while an outcome is the strategic, tactical, psychological, or otherwise beneficial value of what is delivered.
Deliverables vs outcomes: an illustration
The difference between a deliverable and an outcome is akin to the difference between what is delivered to the front lines and the outcome of the battle.
I like this illustration because of its clarity. This sentence helped me communicate what I’ve learned reading Alan Weiss’s book on Value-Based Fees. What is delivered to the front lines is ammunition, food, orders, geospatial intelligence, etc, etc. The outcome of a battle is whether or not it was won.
Few are grateful for the crates outside of the context of their use. They’re grateful for what the crates make possible. If the crates arrive and the battle is lost, the delivery was complete and the outcome was a failure.
As a potentially offensive aside, here’s a saying I don’t like: “Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” With all due respect to those who have taken a different position on this: are you kidding me? Wars can be won and lost on the basis of supply chains. People need food. They will die without it, especially on the front lines. Farmers and gardeners absolutely bring value to a war, just like they do in peacetime. Shoutout all the veterans who have taken up these practices!
Why outcomes matter more than deliverables for a consultant
Many consultants describe their work in deliverables, because deliverables are easy to name and easy to count: a report, a workshop, a strategy deck, a website, a design system for content, and so on. They’re also easy for clients to compare, which can be a problem. Once the work is a list of things, the client’s natural question is who delivers it the cheapest.
There are three places where the difference shows up:
- Describing the work. “A 40-page report” is a deliverable. What the client can decide, stop worrying about, or start doing once they’ve read it is the outcome. The latter is why they hired you.
- Pricing the work. If you sell deliverables, you drift toward justifying pricing by effort, often measured in hours. Hourly pricing almost always means you’ll be underpaid against the value of the outcome.
- Proving the work. A list of things you delivered is a weak testimonial. The client’s joy about what changed afterward is a strong one.
There’s a trap here: a client’s outcome depends on the client too. You can deliver the report and still have it ignored. So it’s hard to guarantee an outcome, especially when the client is not held accountable (contractually or otherwise) to their end of the effort to reach it. It’s the goal you aim at, and the ultimate point you should ask about before you start: what will be different for you if this goes well?
That question is useful even if the answer is vague, because a vague answer helps you find an opportunity to elicit precision.
What this means for a website artisan
Whatever you may think of President Biden, he had an excellent saying in his inaugural address: “We should not lead by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
I build websites, so here is my own example. The deliverable is the site and everything else I give with it, like a design system that can be used to make branded content. Outcomes can include that a prospect can find you, believe you, and get in touch. A site can be delivered perfectly and have none of those outcomes, especially if it’s slow, inaccessible, undiscoverable, an inauthentic corporate brochure, or says nothing a prospect cares about.
That’s why I would rather be judged on whether the site does its job: a good thing is one that fulfills its concept.
Truth is, I may have issues in my pricing model. As it is, this is a project-billed system. I’m thinking about moving more towards value-billed pricing like the clients I focus on.
A small exercise: list the deliverables and the outcomes
Take your last project and write two lists. On the left, everything you delivered. On the right, the beneficial outcomes. If the right-hand list is short or empty, you’ve found a conversation to have with your next client at the beginning and not the end.
If you’d like help turning your services into something a prospect can see the outcome of, that’s what I do.