The budget written without you

Why this matters to you now

In 1964, Aaron Wildavsky published The Politics of the Budgetary Process, a study of the US federal budget process that became a classic of public administration. His conclusion comes down to one idea any finance director will recognize: a budget is not built from zero. It starts from a historical base, last year's budget, and the discussion is almost entirely about the difference. The base itself is rarely re-examined as a whole, and those already in it defend it. Entire reforms, zero-based budgeting among them, have tried to break that habit without lasting success.

For a consultant, the consequence is brutal. If your engagement is not already in your client's base, it has to fit into the difference. And the difference is negotiated at a specific time of year, between people who know each other, almost always without you. By the time your proposal arrives, the question is no longer what your work is worth. It is whether it fits inside a number someone has already written.

In mid-September, that moment begins for many of your clients. Organizations whose fiscal year follows the calendar year are building their 2027 budget right now, and that includes municipalities: in Quebec, the Cities and Towns Act requires the ones it governs to adopt theirs between November 15 and December 31. Other calendars are offset, and you need to know them one by one. The Quebec and federal governments close their fiscal year on March 31. Quebec's school service centres start theirs on July 1, Ontario's school boards on September 1. And your private clients end theirs on a date they chose, which no public calendar will give you: that one, you ask for.

Edition #5 on your one-page plan observed that a conversation that hits "not now" in October gets "let's talk" in January. That is true, and it is exactly the trap. In January, people will happily discuss a project whose amount was written in October, without you.

The price you will defend next spring is being decided this fall, in a meeting where nobody will say your name.

Pricing: the hallway number is already a price

The move: During budget season, treat every number you say out loud as a price, because it is one. When a client asks "what would that cost, roughly?", do not toss out a hallway number. Answer with a range whose low end is the price you actually want.

Why it works: In Never Split the Difference, former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss recommends talking in ranges instead of single figures. Rather than naming a salary, you say that people in this job earn between US$130,000 and US$170,000 at top organizations: the point lands without putting the other side on the defensive. Two Columbia University researchers, Daniel Ames and Malia Mason, measured it in 2015: an offer stated as a range whose low end is the target often gets a better deal than a single number, and the person making it is not seen more negatively. Apply that to your client's budget. The person writing the line will keep the number that is easiest to defend in front of their committee, which is the low end. So the bottom of your range has to be your price. If there is a discount to give, it comes out of the space above it.

If you bill by the hour, it gets worse. A budget records an amount, not a rate. Whoever turns your rate into an amount does it with their estimate of the hours, not yours. That is one more flaw in the model edition #10 called a liability.

The trap: The hallway number. "Somewhere around fifteen grand," offered in September to be helpful, becomes a line adopted by a committee in December, then the ceiling on your proposal in March. It is the pricing version of the problem in edition #28 on the diagnostic you give away: you hand over your most valuable asset without a frame, and you will not get it back. I have thrown out plenty of those numbers. More than one came back to me in the spring, written into a budget, to the dollar.

This week: For each of your three main offers, write down the range you would give tomorrow if a client asked in a hallway. Then check one thing: could you sign at the bottom of each range without regret? If not, raise it now, before someone writes it into their budget.

Sales and business development: "not in the budget" is a date, not a no

The move: When a client tells you "it's not in the budget," do not file the proposal under losses. Ask two questions before you hang up: when does next year's budget get prepared, and who writes the line this project would sit in?

Why now: Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman, both professors at Harvard Business School, call the discipline they lay out in Negotiation Genius "investigative negotiation." Two of its principles are enough here. One: work to understand the other side's constraints, and to ease them. The other: keep investigating when the deal seems lost, because the reason behind a no often shows what would have to change to reverse it. "No budget" is the constraint consultants hear most often, and the one they investigate least. Sometimes it is a polite no. More often than most people think, it is a date, and a date can be prepared for. The two questions tell you which one you just heard.

For years, I asked "what is your budget?" at the end of the first meeting, as a formality. The answer had been written months earlier.

The trap: Asking "what is your budget?" Edition #28 called it a salesperson's question. It has a second flaw: it asks for an amount, and it fails in both seasons. In March, the answer is a number already written, and you will anchor on it. In September, the answer is "we don't know yet," and you will conclude there is nothing to do at the exact moment everything is being decided. Ask when and who. The amount will come with your note.

This week: Go back through the last twelve months of proposals that ended with "not in the budget." Send each recipient a single message: "Is next year's budget being prepared this fall? If the project still interests you, I can send a one-page note to attach to your request." Do not chase the proposal. Offer the note.

Collaboration networks: the people in the room in October

The move: Name the three or four professionals who work around your clients when they build their budget: the outside accountant preparing the forecasts, the IT provider renewing its contracts, the firm that handles payroll or insurance. Ask them one question: across the organizations they serve, when in the year does the budget usually get locked in?

The mechanism: In 1973, sociologist Mark Granovetter published The Strength of Weak Ties, one of the most cited papers in his field. He had surveyed professional, technical and managerial workers in a Boston suburb who had recently changed jobs. Among those who found their job through a contact, barely one in six saw that contact often. Most saw them occasionally, and more than one in four saw them once a year or less. The explanation is simple: the people close to you move in the same circles and know what you already know. New information comes through the people you rarely see. The budget rhythm of the organizations you target is exactly that kind of information. There is nothing secret about it, but it circulates in rooms you are not in.

The trap: Asking about one client in particular. An accountant is bound by professional confidentiality, and a partner who tells you how much a shared client has set aside for next year has just betrayed that client: they will do the same with your numbers. Ask for the pattern and the role of whoever prepares the budget. A pattern can be shared. A client's budget cannot. That is what separates this network from the one in edition #25 on the client who brings three: there, you designed a referral system. Here, you design an exchange of information that compromises no one.

This week: Write to two partners who serve the same kind of clients you do: "For most of your clients, when in the year does the budget get locked in, and who usually prepares it?" Offer the same pattern back, without naming anyone. Two answers are enough to tell whether the channel is worth keeping up.

Value creation: the line named after the problem

The move: Write your client's budget justification with them, before you even have an engagement. That first deliverable fits in one paragraph your contact will defend in front of their committee: the problem, the order of magnitude of what another year of doing nothing costs, and the scope they chose. It describes the problem as it shows up in organizations like theirs. Diagnosing theirs is still the engagement, and that is what separates this paragraph from the free diagnostic in edition #28.

Why this changes everything: Tim Williams builds Positioning for Professionals on one premise: the most profitable strategy for a professional firm aims at the edges of the market rather than its centre, and the goal is not just to be better, but to be different. In your client's budget, that difference shows up in the name of the line. The generalist ends up in "professional fees," a shared envelope where every dollar is defended against the lawyer, the auditor and everyone else. The consultant positioned on a named problem can get a line named after the problem, because the client can finally say what they are buying.

Some of the most useful paragraphs I have written appear in none of my reports. They sit in requests my clients signed.

The test: Count how often your name appears and how often the problem does. If your name wins, the paragraph will read as a vendor pitch and be treated as one. A committee does not fund a consultant. It funds the solution to a problem it recognizes. It follows directly from edition #30 on the value you bury: value the client cannot name does not get budgeted.

This week: Pick one client you would like to work with next year. Write the five lines they could paste into their budget request as is, without naming you once. If you cannot do it without talking about yourself, the problem is not yet named clearly enough for a committee to fund it.

AI: prepare the number before the proposal

A proposal written faster still lands in March. In budget season, drafting speed does not make up for a calendar problem: what matters happens earlier, when each client writes its number, and comes down to three questions. When does it get written, which number can you defend, and which words will get it approved?

The move: Put artificial intelligence to work on the date, the floor and the words, and leave the proposal for the end: it arrives once everything is settled. The five uses below follow the order the fall will need them in.

1. 1.The fiscal year mapper. List your public sector clients and prospects, along with any that publish their financial statements. For each, ask for the fiscal year end, the month budget preparation usually starts, the body that adopts the budget (municipal council, board of directors, executive committee), and the public document where each item can be checked. For private clients, no public document will give you those dates: they will come from the two questions in the sales section. You get a twelve-month calendar of the moments your price gets decided.

1. 2.The floor calculator. Submit your last ten engagements with client names removed: the initial estimate, the hours actually worked, the amount invoiced, and the hourly rate below which an engagement is not worth your time. Ask for the amount below which more than one engagement in three earned less than that rate. That amount becomes the bottom of your range. You stop guessing it.

1. 3.The budget note writer. Provide the problem as the client described it, names removed, and your three scopes of work. Ask for a one-page note: the problem in the client's own words, the cost of a year without action, the three scopes with a range each, and five lines ready to paste into a budget request. You revise it, then send it in September, not in March.

1. 4.The category translator. Paste an excerpt from your client's adopted budget or published annual report (for a municipality, the budget is public). Ask which category and which vocabulary your engagement should use to fit their structure: operating or capital, which department, which strategic plan objective. A paragraph that already speaks the committee's language does not need rewording by someone who has never met you.

1. 5.The loss reader. Submit your lost or stalled proposals from the past twelve months, names removed, with the reason given, the month each was sent and, when you know it, the date the client adopted its budget. Ask to sort them by cause: price, fit, timing. Then ask how many "not in the budget" answers arrived after that client had adopted its budget. That count tells you how much of your "pricing problem" was a calendar problem, and a year from now it will tell you whether the first four uses worked.

The warning: The machine does not know your client's fiscal year. It will offer plausible dates with great confidence, and a plausible but wrong date is the most expensive mistake in this edition: one missed month costs you a year. Check every date from the first use against a primary document (financial statements, annual report, adopted budget) before it goes into your calendar. And submit neither a client's confidential figures nor the name of a private client: public documents are enough for uses 1 and 4, your own data for uses 2 and 5, and the third works fine with names removed.

This week: Find the fiscal year end of your five best clients: the first use for the ones that publish their figures, a direct question for the others. Check every date yourself. If one of them puts budget preparation in October or November, your note needs to go out this month. In March, it will land after the number.