Getting Your Foot in the Door With a Client: How To Use a Wedge

Consider the following scenario: Your core business is running. Your client management skills are on point and you consistently deliver quality work. Your current customers are happy, and you’re helping them reach their goals. The only problem is that you’re struggling to convince new clients to invest in your services. From your perspective, it’s clear that your ideal clients need your help—it just seems like they take forever to realize it, and it’s frustrating watching them circle a problem you know you can solve. 

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Sound familiar? If so, you might need a wedge. 

What is a wedge?

A wedge is a product or service you use to establish a relationship with a client who is likely to be a good long-term fit for your business but isn’t yet ready to invest in your core services. For example, an SEO strategy consultant might use a technical website audit as a wedge with a client struggling with site performance. Although the audit isn’t the consultant’s core service, it allows them to form a working relationship with the client that can eventually blossom into something more lucrative.

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You can use a wedge to get your foot in the door with a lead, providing an attractive solution to a problem a client is ready to solve now that positions you to earn more work from the client over time.

Types of wedges 

There are many different types of wedges. A good one is narrowly focused, solves an immediate problem for clients, and naturally segues to a larger engagement. It’s also efficient and repeatable, allowing you to use it to build client relationships without investing too much time or money on the front end. You can offer wedges for free as part of your sales strategy, or you might sell them for an affordable price. Here are four common ways to structure a wedge:

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• Small project. Small projects are things your clients know they need—even if they aren’t your ideal type of work. For example, an HR consultant might consider offering employee handbooks as a standalone service. An SEO consultant might consider offering technical audits as a small and relatively inexpensive wedge. The key is building a repeatable process so that you can execute small projects efficiently. 
• Short trial. Consider offering a brief trial before asking a client to sign on for a longer engagement. A two-week paid trial, for example, can help you get to know a client’s working style and reduce their level of upfront commitment (and therefore, their barrier to purchase). Trials can be particularly valuable if you provide fractional services.
• Sample work. Many people are opposed to the idea of giving away free work, but if you have an efficient way to offer a client a taste of your work, give it to them. The point is to build trust by demonstrating the quality of your services. You might share a draft strategy or a sample document—just keep any original work high-level so you don’t cannibalize your paid services. 
• Consultation. Consider offering a free consultation or discovery call in which you  deliver value up front by co-creating a plan that your business can help execute if the client chooses to move forward. You won’t have time to conduct extensive research, so focus on subjective deliverables that align with your area of expertise, such as leadership assessments, brand audits, or content roadmaps. 

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Don’t limit yourself to this list. Any product or service that leads to a larger engagement can be a wedge, so consider what your clients need and what motivates them to make a purchase—and then build your wedge around that data. 

Why do I need a wedge?

You can use wedges to expand your client base and improve client relationships. Here’s an overview of the benefits.

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• They can shorten your sales cycles. Designing a wedge that meets a client’s immediate needs can help you close sales faster. You’ll spend less time trying to convince leads to trust you and more time establishing the foundation for a long-term partnership. 
• They can help you understand client needs. Wedges establish a working relationship with a client, which allows you to develop a better understanding of their problems and goals. You can use this information to personalize your sales efforts later on. 
• They can help you expand your client base. Wedges allow you to build relationships with clients who aren’t yet candidates for your business’s core service—they might lack the budget, not understand how your business can help, or just need to establish a greater level of trust before committing to a partnership. You can use these engagements to establish trust and position yourself to win more work down the road.

When do I need a wedge?

The more competitive the market and difficult the sales process is, the more helpful a wedge is going to be. If you work in a market that shares some of these traits below, a wedge might help you unlock progress:

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• You work in a competitive marketplace. If you operate in a crowded market (such as HR consulting or content marketing), you might use a wedge to distinguish yourself and incentivize clients to pick you over your competitors. 
• You work in a niche market. If you operate in an emerging or highly technical market (like very specific forms of user research), your clients might struggle to understand the value of your services and be hesitant to commit. You can use a wedge to reduce the barrier to purchase and provide an accessible way for clients to engage you. 
• Your work requires a high degree of trust. If your work requires that clients place their trust in you (e.g., if you’re a product strategist or cybersecurity consultant), you may struggle to sign new clients for high-value engagements. You can use a wedge as a low-stakes way to initiate a relationship and build the trust you need to sell your core services.
• Your ideal clients aren’t ready to make a purchase. In some cases, an ideal client won’t be ready to engage your business yet—they might not have the budget, not understand the nature of their core problem, or be focused on a different priority. Instead of passing these relationships up, you can use a wedge to solve the problems your clients are ready to take on now.

Risks of using wedges

Wedges can be a bit of a gamble—you’re packaging a product or service that may not be very lucrative for you upfront. Ideally, this move gets you in the door with a client, and you can expand into a productive working relationship from there. But wedges can also backfire. 

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• They might not always lead to high-value engagements. A wedge that doesn’t lead to a high-value engagement wastes your resources—and if you’ve offered a short trial at a discount or provided free work, it can potentially devalue your personal brand.
• They take up too much of your time. The ideal wedge is easy to sell, but your work isn’t over when you make a sale: You’ll also need to onboard the client and provide the product or service you’ve promised. Delivering on wedges can take valuable time away from business development or serving your core clients. 

How to pick the right wedge

1. Choose a narrow ICP
2. Choose a specific problem
3. Identify the frontier of the problem
4. Brainstorm repeatable solutions
5. Pitch your wedge

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The ideal wedge varies according to your ideal customer profile (ICP) and your business goals. You might use more than one type of wedge or develop new ones in response to changes in your business or in market conditions. Here’s how to identify the right wedge for a specific situation:

1. Choose a narrow ICP

Start by defining a particularly narrow subset of your ICP. For example, if you provide SEO consulting services and your ICP is a seed stage founder building in consumer tech, you might focus on founders within that profile who have launched an SEO program within the last three to six months but aren’t seeing results.

2. Choose a specific problem

Next, pick a specific problem that is common to this ICP. A seed stage founder who isn’t seeing results from SEO, for example, has likely invested money in developing SEO content and needs a return on that investment. They might not understand the reasons for their poor SEO performance and have limited budget to adjust strategy. 

3. Identify the “frontier” of the problem 

From there, find part of the problem that you can address with relative ease that opens the door to the bigger problem—this is the frontier of the problem. In this case, the founder might need to completely overhaul their technical infrastructure or content program, but it’s going to be hard to convince them of that outright. Instead, focus on the frontier of the problem: The founder isn’t even sure why their SEO efforts aren’t working, so start there. 

4. Brainstorm repeatable solutions

Next, brainstorm ways your business can address the frontier of the problem, prioritizing those that you can standardize and easily repeat. In this case, you might offer an SEO audit that only takes you half a day. The SEO audit solves the frontier of the problem by providing the founder with insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their technical implementation. 

5. Pitch your wedge

Write up a description of the service, pitch it to people who fit your narrow ICP, and see how they respond. You can adjust your pricing, framing, or wedge concept based on what you learn. 

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A good rule of thumb is to match your pitch language to the words your clients are using—remember, wedges are all about solving problems as your clients have identified them. If they talk about “return on investment” for their content marketing efforts or “increasing conversions” for their online store, use that language to describe how your business can help.

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