If you read Tuesday’s post about the trust recession, you know that buyers have fundamentally changed how they evaluate professional services. They’re more skeptical, more hesitant, and more likely to sit in indecision than ever before.
But here’s what I didn’t say: the trust recession doesn’t hit all professional services equally.
If you deliver one-off projects—an assessment, a report, a deliverable—buyers are asking themselves: “Can I trust this person to do good work for 6-8 weeks?”
If you deliver ongoing advisory work—fractional leadership, retained consulting, monthly advisory, transformation partnerships—buyers are asking something much bigger: “Can I trust this person to stay engaged, navigate complexity with me, show up when things get messy, and actually help me transform over the next 12-18 months?”
That’s a completely different level of trust. And it requires a completely different pipeline strategy.
First: You Might Be Doing Fractional Work Without Calling It That
Let’s clarify what we mean by “ongoing advisory work” because a lot of professionals don’t realize they’re already delivering it—or should be.
You’re doing ongoing advisory/fractional work if:
- You stay engaged beyond the initial deliverable to help with implementation
- Clients pay you monthly or on retainer, not just for discrete projects (or you would like for them to)
- You’re embedded in their business rhythm (weekly check-ins, leadership meetings, strategic planning)
- Your value comes from sustained guidance, not just one-time recommendations
- You help them navigate complexity over time, not just deliver a report
This includes:
- Fractional executives (CEO, CFO, CMO, COO, CTO, CHRO, CSO)
- Retained consultants who advise month-over-month
- Advisory board members who engage regularly
- Transformation partners who stay through implementation
- Subject matter experts on retainer for ongoing guidance
If you’re not handing them a deliverable and disappearing—if you’re staying to help them actually achieve the transformation—you’re delivering ongoing work.(which is what today’s buyers are looking for btw, but more on that later…)
This requires a different approach to filling your pipeline.
Why the Trust Recession Hits Ongoing Work Harder
Think about what you’re asking buyers to believe when you propose ongoing advisory work:
For a one-off project:
- “Trust me to deliver good work for 8 weeks”
- “Trust me to meet deadlines and hand off a solid deliverable”
Low ongoing risk—if it doesn’t work out, the project ends
For ongoing advisory work:
- “Trust me to be your strategic partner for 12+ months”
- “Trust me to navigate uncertainty, internal politics, and complexity alongside you”
- “Trust me to stay engaged even when things get difficult”
- “Trust me to deliver transformation, not just advice”
High ongoing risk—if you’re the wrong fit, they’re stuck with you
In a trust recession—where buyers have been burned by consultants who overpromised, fractionals who treated the role like an audition for their next thing, and advisors who checked out after the honeymoon phase—asking for that level of sustained trust is exponentially harder.
Buyers aren’t just skeptical that you’ll do good work. They’re skeptical that you’ll stay. That you’ll care six months from now. That you won’t ghost them when a bigger opportunity comes along.
And if they’ve been burned before? Forget it. They’d rather stay stuck than risk another bad ongoing relationship.
What Buyers Actually Want (And Why Most Advisors Miss It)
Here’s what the data tells us about what buyers actually need in 2025:
According to Harvard Business Review, 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution. Not bad strategies—good strategies that simply never get implemented.
Think about that. Two-thirds of the time, buyers already know what they should do. They’ve read the reports. They’ve seen the data. They’ve sat through the presentations.
The problem isn’t more information. The problem is they’re powerless to act on the information they already have.
And yet, what do most professional services providers sell them? More reports. More assessments. More data. More recommendations that will sit on a shelf collecting dust. Systems that don’t ever get implemented due to difficulty gaining buy-in. Solutions to problems too challenging for them to tackle alone.
The Economist found that 61% of executives acknowledge their firms struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formation and execution. They know what they should do. They just can’t make it happen.
Why not?
- They don’t have the capacity (everyone’s buried in day-to-day operations)
- They don’t have the expertise (your plan assumed capabilities they don’t have)
- They don’t have the buy-in (internal politics derailed it)
- They don’t have accountability (no one’s job depends on executing your recommendations)
This is why ongoing advisory work is more valuable—and harder to sell—than project-based consulting.
Buyers don’t just need to know what to do. They need someone to help them actually do it. To stay with them through the messy reality of implementation. To navigate the complexity, the politics, the resistance. To hold them accountable month after month.
According to Gartner, top-performing professionals don’t provide more information—they provide sense-making. They help buyers cut through complexity, prioritize what matters, and make confident decisions. Then they stay to help implement those decisions.
And McKinsey’s research backs this up: 70-80% of B2B buyers prefer self-service for simple purchases. But when stakes are high and decisions are complex, they will engage human experts—if those experts add value beyond what they can Google.
That’s the opportunity for fractional executives and ongoing advisors.
You’re not selling reports. You’re selling transformation.
You’re not delivering recommendations. You’re delivering implementation support.
You’re not giving them more data they’re powerless to address. You’re becoming the partner who helps them address it.
But here’s the catch: buyers have been burned by advisors who promised transformation and delivered PowerPoint decks. They’ve hired “fractional executives” who treated the role like resume-building instead of real partnership. They’ve engaged consultants who diagnosed problems and then disappeared.
And let’s be honest, your best clients? You probably are doing this work to ensure execution happens, you’re just not getting paid for it. You’re ‘bundling’ it into your fees (in your mind, but are you REALLY getting paid for the extra time you’re putting in?)
So when you show up proposing ongoing advisory work, they’re not just asking “Can you help us?” They’re asking “Will you actually stay? Will you care six months from now? Or are you just another consultant who’ll collect the fee and ghost us when implementation gets hard?”
In a trust recession, that question kills more deals than anything else.
And you can’t answer it with a pitch deck. You can only answer it with proof—proof that comes from trusted referrals, visible track record, and relationships built over time.
Why AI Makes the Execution Gap Even Wider (And Why That’s Your Opportunity)
Here’s the uncomfortable reality that’s reshaping professional services:
Everything you used to charge $50K to deliver—the market analysis, the financial model, the competitive assessment, the data synthesis—can now be done by AI in 10 minutes.
ChatGPT can analyze their financials. Claude can draft the strategic plan. Perplexity can validate the information and remove hallucinations. AI can create the report, build the deck, and synthesize the data faster and cheaper than you ever could.
So if you’re still selling reports, assessments, and recommendations, you’re competing with a tool that costs $20/month.
But here’s what AI can’t do:
- Navigate the internal politics when the CFO and COO disagree on priorities
- Read the room when the leadership team says they’re aligned but clearly aren’t
- Hold the CEO accountable when they get distracted by the next shiny object
- Adjust the strategy when market conditions shift mid-implementation
- Build trust with a skeptical board that’s been burned before
- Help a founder make a gut-wrenching decision about letting go of a long-time employee who’s holding the company back
- Stay engaged through the messy, uncomfortable, human reality of transformation
AI can tell them what to do. It can’t help them actually do it.
And buyers are starting to realize this.
According to The Wall Street Journal, law firms, accounting practices, and consulting firms are all facing the same dilemma: AI makes them more efficient at creating deliverables, but clients aren’t willing to pay the same fees for work that takes a fraction of the time.
The billable hour model is collapsing because hours don’t equal value anymore.
The only defensible position in professional services now is ongoing partnership that delivers transformation, not just information.
Buyers don’t need you to analyze their data—AI can do that. They need you to help them make sense of what the data means, navigate the complexity of acting on it, and stay with them through the hard work of implementation.
This is why fractional and ongoing advisory work is the future of professional services—and why the trust gap is so critical.
If buyers could trust that you’ll actually stay engaged, help them implement, and navigate complexity alongside them for 12-18 months, they’d hire you in a heartbeat. The ROI is obvious.
But they can’t trust that. Because they’ve been burned too many times by advisors who delivered AI-level insights and then disappeared.
Your competition isn’t other consultants anymore. It’s AI + inertia.
Buyers are asking: “Should we just use AI to generate the recommendations and try to figure it out ourselves? At least AI won’t overpromise and ghost us.”
The only way to win that comparison is to offer what AI fundamentally cannot: sustained human partnership through the messy reality of transformation.
But you can’t sell that through cold outreach or a polished pitch deck.
You can only earn that level of trust through strategic referrals from people they already trust, visible expertise that proves you understand their world, and advisory positioning that demonstrates you’re there to help them succeed—not just to collect a fee.
The Mistake: Treating Ongoing Work Like Project Work
Here’s where most fractional executives and ongoing advisors go wrong with their pipeline strategy:
They use project-based business development tactics for relationship-based services.
What that looks like:
- Cold outreach (“We offer fractional CFO services…”)
- Transactional networking (collecting cards, sending LinkedIn connection requests)
- Pitch-heavy conversations (“Let me tell you about our process…”)
- Generic proposals that could apply to anyone
- Relying on their website and credentials to close deals
Why this fails:
Buyers don’t hire fractional executives or ongoing advisors because they saw a good website or received a polished pitch deck.
They hire them because someone they trust vouched for them.
They hire them because they’ve seen their work and perspective over time (through content, speaking, shared networks).
They hire them because the advisor demonstrated they understand the buyer’s world before ever pitching services.
In other words: ongoing advisory work requires relationship-based revenue, not transaction-based tactics.
What “Good Pipeline” Looks Like for Ongoing Advisory Work
Let me contrast two scenarios:
Scenario A: Project-Based Pipeline Tactics (Doesn’t Work for Ongoing Work)
- Send 100 cold emails offering fractional CFO services
- Maybe 3 respond
- 1 takes a meeting
- You pitch your process and experience
- They say “let me think about it” (translation: “I don’t trust you enough for a 12-month commitment”)
- Deal dies
- Repeat next month
Result: Feast-famine. Constantly hunting. Low close rates with clients who don’t fit your ideal client profile, but you take them anyway because you’re hurting for $. Exhausting.
Scenario B: Relationship-Based Pipeline (Built for Ongoing Work)
- You have 3-4 strategic referral partners (M&A attorney, business coach, CPA, fractional CMO) who regularly serve your ideal clients
- You’ve built deep, reciprocal relationships with them over time
- They send you 1-2 warm introductions per quarter because they know exactly who you help and when to think of you
- Those introductions come pre-loaded with trust—”My CPA recommended you” carries weight
- You show up in the first conversation as an advisor, not a seller
- You’ve published content consistently, so when they Google you, they find credible expertise
- The conversation isn’t “Should I hire this person?” It’s “When do we start?”
Result: 1-3 warm opportunities per month. 50-70% close rates. Predictable pipeline. Sustainable.
Why Referrals Matter More for Fractional/Ongoing Work Than Project Work
For one-off projects, buyers can afford to take a risk on someone they found through cold outreach. If it doesn’t work out, the project ends in 8 weeks and they move on.
For ongoing work, buyers can’t afford to get it wrong. If they hire the wrong fractional CFO, they’re stuck for 6-12 months (or they have to go through the painful process of firing them and starting over).
That’s why trusted introductions are non-negotiable for ongoing advisory work.
A warm referral from a strategic partner answers the buyer’s most critical questions before you ever talk to them:
- “Can I trust this person?” (Yes—my CPA trusts them)
- “Will they stay engaged?” (Yes—my CPA has worked with them for years)
- “Are they the right fit?” (Yes—my CPA knows my business and wouldn’t refer someone who isn’t)
Cold outreach can’t create that level of trust. Ever.
The Partnership Approach vs. The Networking Approach
Most fractional executives and ongoing advisors think they need to “network more.” Go to more events. Connect with more people on LinkedIn. Stay visible.
That’s the networking approach. It’s Transactional. And it’s exhausting and ineffective.
The partnership approach is different:
Instead of networking with hundreds, you build deep relationships with 3-4 strategic partners who:
- Already work with your ideal clients regularly
- Have trusted conversations with decision-makers
- Serve complementary (not competing) services
- Would benefit from reciprocal referrals from you
Instead of hoping someone remembers you, you make it effortless to refer you:
- Clear positioning: “I work with [who] dealing with [what] when [specific scenario]”
- Specific use cases: “When your client mentions they can’t close the books on time, that’s when to think of me”
- Generous reciprocity: You send them referrals first, without keeping score
Instead of transactional touches, you nurture real relationships:
- Monthly coffee (genuine connection and engagement in each other’s businesses and life, not “just checking in”)
- Share relevant insights and articles
- Make warm introductions to others in your network
- Celebrate their wins
The math:
- 3-4 partners × 1-2 intros per quarter = 12-16 warm opportunities annually
- Converting at 50-70% (because these are trusted introductions) = 7-10 new ongoing clients per year
- Each staying 12-18 months at $5K-8K/month
That’s $630K-$1.4M in predictable, relationship-driven revenue from just 3-4 deep partnerships.
You don’t need a massive network. You need the right partnerships.
What This Means for You
If you deliver ongoing advisory work—fractional leadership, retained consulting, transformation partnerships—you can’t build pipeline the way project-based consultants do.
You need:
- Strategic partnerships with 3-4 people who serve your clients and can introduce you with trust
- Visible expertise so when partners refer you, prospects Google you and find credibility and social proof from happy clients.
- Advisory positioning from the first conversation (help them think, don’t pitch your process)
- Client experiences worth referring (transformation, not just deliverables)
The trust recession isn’t going away. Buyers will continue to approach ongoing commitments with skepticism.
But when you’re introduced by someone they trust, when they’ve seen your expertise through your content, and when you show up as an advisor instead of a seller?
The trust gap closes. The sale continues an organic conversation. The pipeline becomes predictable and effortless.
Ready to build a pipeline that actually works for ongoing advisory work?
Join our free webinar on Tuesday, January 13: “Discover Your Hidden Referral Engine.”
We’ll walk through:
- The 3-4 partner framework that creates 1-3 warm opportunities every month
- How to position yourself so strategic partners know exactly when to refer you
- The Client Experience Audit that identifies why referrals aren’t flowing
- Why the partnership approach beats networking every time
And if you’re already building referral partnerships and want to connect with other professionals doing the same, join our SolutionsXChange Community on LinkedIn—a space for honest conversations about what’s actually working.
