Early 2022, second month of freelancing, sitting across from a potential client whose product I genuinely believed in.
I was losing him. Twenty minutes in I could feel it, the polite nodding, the slight lean back. So I stopped presenting and let him talk, which is the only useful thing I did in that room.
Ten minutes later a name came up. Two names actually, people I had worked under in my job for four years, and he knew both of them personally. The temperature in the conversation changed completely. We went from me explaining myself to us talking for over two hours.
He signed. That contract took me past my third month revenue target inside my second month, against the Rs 15,000, 20,000 and 25,000 that my friend Karthik had set as targets when I started with no clients and no idea whether any of this would work.
Nothing in my plan won that meeting. My plan was fine. The plan was not the variable.
The checklist everybody publishes
Look up how to hire a marketing consultant and you get the same list every time. Proven results with metrics in the case studies. Certifications from Google or HubSpot or Meta. Client testimonials. Relevant industry experience. Good communication.
None of that is wrong. All of it is reasonable. And in my experience it predicted almost nothing about whether a given engagement would actually produce anything.
I have had engagements where I ticked every box on that list and delivered very little. I have had ones where I was visibly learning the category in week one and they worked out well for both sides.
Something else was doing the deciding.
The two things that actually predicted it
Access to whoever decides. Not a meeting with them at kickoff. Ongoing, direct, unmediated access. When I could message the person who owned the outcome and get an answer, things happened. When everything went through a coordinator who then relayed it to somebody I had met once, nothing happened, regardless of budget.
How fast decisions got made. Not how fast they worked, how fast they decided. A client who could say yes or no to a recommendation in two days was worth several times one who took three weeks, because marketing is a sequence of small bets and a three week decision cycle means you get to place four of them a year instead of forty.
That is the whole pattern. Access and decision speed.
The best engagements I have had were with people who could change their mind on Tuesday and act on it by Thursday.
The ones that did not work, honestly
I will be specific about the shapes, because the failures were more instructive than the wins.
The one where my actual contact was enthusiastic and had no authority. Every recommendation went into a queue for somebody senior who had not been in any of the conversations and was reading a summary of a summary.
The one where the brief changed monthly. New priority, new channel, nothing running long enough to produce a signal. That was not indecision, it was too many people with opinions and no mechanism for settling them.
The one where I was hired to validate a decision already made. The answer was pre-written and my job was to put a number next to it. I did not spot that early enough, and when an engagement is going nowhere that is often the reason underneath the visible symptoms.
And, being fair about my own share of it: the one where I said yes to work I was not the right person for because I needed the money in month three. That is a real thing that happens to freelancers and it is worth a client knowing the shape of it.
The money question, which matters less than you think
Bengaluru rates run high by Indian standards, reportedly 20% to 30% above the national average. Published figures put freelance SEO retainers somewhere around Rs 20,000 to Rs 80,000 a month and hourly rates anywhere from Rs 500 to Rs 3,000, with senior specialists well above that. I have written separately about what the cost question actually decides.
Here is what I noticed across the range. My smallest paying client in that first year got more value per rupee than some considerably larger ones, entirely because he answered his phone and decided things quickly. The larger ones had more budget and more people, and the people cancelled out the budget.
So if you are choosing between paying more for a better known consultant and paying less for somebody whose availability and access you trust, the second one is usually the better bet. Not always. Usually.
What I would actually ask
If you are hiring somebody for this kind of work, four questions are worth more than the whole checklist.
Who is my day to day contact, and can I reach the person who decides directly when it matters. If the answer involves a process, factor that in.
What does the first ninety days look like, and what would you need from me. Anybody who has done this will have a clear answer about what they need from you, and the answer will include your time.
What would make you tell me to stop spending. This one filters hard.
And what happened on an engagement that did not work. Somebody who cannot tell you that has either not done enough of this or is not being straight with you.
The uncomfortable part, which is on your side
Most engagements that fail do not fail because the consultant was bad. They fail because nobody on the client side had the authority, the time or the appetite to make decisions at the speed the work required.
Which means the most useful thing you can do before hiring anybody is decide who owns this internally, by name, with the ability to say yes. If that person does not exist, you are not ready to hire, and a better consultant will not fix it.
I learned that from the client side of the table rather than from any book, and I learned it slowly, mostly by getting it wrong first.
To be clear about my own position: I work full time under contract now and I do not take outside work, so none of this is a pitch. If you want to think through your own situation or you are choosing between people, drop me a line on email, WhatsApp or LinkedIn and we can have a quick chat. My notes on how I work cover the rest.
Cheers!