Fix Your Offer Before You Fix Your Sales

General

ProfectaBDI | July 15, 2025

The Sales Stall You Didn’t See Coming

 

You’ve got a capable team, strong expertise, and solid processes for your digital transformation or localization business. Yet, sales are dropping. Proposals go unanswered. Old clients are quiet.

 

Something feels off—but you can’t put your finger on it. This is exactly where design thinking becomes your best sales tool.

 

 

Why Selling Isn’t Always the Problem

 

Most service businesses in this situation start tweaking sales tactics: better presentations, more outreach, paid ads. But often, the problem isn’t how you’re selling—it’s what you’re offering.

 

Clients evolve every day. Markets shift. And if your service hasn’t kept up, no pitch will save it.

 

 

Enter Design Thinking: A Service-Centered Mindset

 

 

Design thinking helps you revisit your offer from the client’s perspective. It’s a structured, creative problem-solving method used by designers. But powerful for business too.

 

It has five phases:

 

1️⃣ Empathize

2️⃣ Define

3️⃣ Ideate

4️⃣ Prototype

5️⃣ Test

 

Let’s see it in action through the story of a mid-sized IT consulting firm.

 

Phase 1️⃣: Empathize – Listen Beyond the Brief

 

The IT firm, known for digital transformation projects, started noticing a drop in client renewals. Instead of pushing harder on sales, they reached out to past clients. Not to sell, but to listen. They conducted short interviews, asking open questions:

 

● What’s changed in your business this year?

● What’s frustrating you about current solutions?

● If we could wave a magic wand—what would you want from us?

 

They learned their clients didn’t need “transformation” anymore—they needed speed and simplicity in small process tweaks, not full overhauls.

 

Phase 2️⃣: Define – Get Clear on the Real Problem

 

Based on insights, the team reframed their problem.

 

It wasn’t “How do we sell more transformation projects?” but:

 

“How might we help clients adapt quickly with minimal disruption?”

 

That one shift—from selling a flagship service to solving a felt problem opened a new path. They defined a new value proposition centered on agile, modular solutions, not monolithic projects.

 

Phase 3️⃣: Ideate – Co-Create Possibilities

 

Next, the team gathered for a facilitated ideation session. Rules were clear: no judging ideas, go for volume, and think like clients. They came up with 30+ new ideas—from a 3-hour “digital spring clean” service to embedded micro-consulting via Slack.

 

They invited a few trusted clients to a virtual co-creation session to rank and refine ideas. The clients’ favorite? A fixed-fee, one-week sprint to solve one digital bottleneck—fast, affordable, and low risk.

 

Phase 4️⃣: Prototype – Make It Real, Fast

 

Rather than waiting months to build a perfect new offer, the team built a simple prototype:

 

✔ A one-pager describing the sprint

✔ A checklist of deliverables

✔ A fixed price and simple contract

 

They offered it to two existing clients as a pilot with full transparency: “We’re testing this—want in?” Both said yes.

 

Phase 5️⃣: Test – Learn, Iterate, Improve

 

The pilot clients gave glowing feedback. One solved a nagging integration issue in 3 days. The other booked another sprint. The team collected feedback, improved clarity in the one-pager, refined onboarding, and added a post-sprint “action plan” that clients loved.

 

And the best part? The sprint became a lead-in to their larger services. But now, the sales conversation was completely different: client-driven, outcome-based, and trusted.

 

 

How Design Thinking Changes Your Sales Strategy

Design thinking doesn’t replace sales. It improves it by aligning your offer with what clients truly value. You’re no longer guessing or pitching in the dark. You’re co-creating solutions that meet a validated need, backed by real insight.

 

 

Who Should Use This Approach?

If you’re a mid-sized professional service provider—legal, financial, tech, language—struggling to sell what once worked, design thinking helps you evolve. It’s especially useful if:

 

➡ You offer complex or intangible services

➡ You have long sales cycles

➡ Your market is changing faster than your offering

 

No Budget for R&D? Use Clients as Partners

You don’t need a lab or a product team. Your best innovation team? Your clients. Use short interviews, surveys, co-creation sessions, and pilot offers to validate quickly and cheaply. Think like a designer: build empathy, test fast, iterate often.

 

 

What Happens If You Skip This?

If you keep pushing an outdated offer, clients won’t push back—they’ll just move on. What you interpret as a “sales issue” might be a relevance issue. Your value prop isn’t bad—it’s just out of sync.

 

 

Think Like a Designer. Sell Like a Problem Solver.

Sales isn’t about pressure—it’s about resonance. Design thinking gives you the tools to realign, reconnect, and offer real solutions. When you do that, sales come naturally—because you’re not pushing, you’re answering a need.

 

 

Final Thought: Your Next Step

If you’re feeling stuck, don’t fix your pitch. Fix your offer. Use design thinking to uncover what’s truly missing and build from there.

 

Not sure where to start? We can guide your team through each phase. Want to explore how this works in your business? Let’s talk. Reach out for a free 15-minute exploration session.