How To Use Interviews & Green Light Selling To Create Consulting Opportunities
Stop inventing demand - step into green-lit projects and win revenue faster
If you’re hustling to originate deals as a solo or boutique consultant the trick isn’t creating a need. It’s finding the projects already green lit and slipping yourself into the delivery.
I call this Green-Light Selling.
It changes the entire dynamic: from pushing a client to buy something they haven’t budgeted for, to offering to mitigate risks or accelerate work they’ve already approved.
You’re not selling hope. You’re joining something in motion.
Below I’ll explain the idea and show you how to run one simple mechanism that finds those opportunities: Client Insight Interviews.
I’ll also tell a short story about a consultant who thought the only way to win was to originate deals - and how everything got a lot simpler when he learned to look for green lights.
The rainmaker who didn’t need to rain
A client was proud to call himself a rainmaker.
The sort of person who’d spent two decades in big firm programs, originations, and elaborate pitch processes. He was proud of it. He’d run corporate programs, pulled in leaders, and chaired steering groups. He believed the only real path to big work was to invent it, persuade committees, and carry a sponsor through multiple approvals.
We had a call.
I listened to his list of tactics: thought leadership, big white papers, complex pitches, expensive proposals.
He’d tried them all.
The gap he couldn’t bridge was time and runway he didn’t have the months and the retainer budgets to play the long game.
So I asked one simple question:
“What projects do you know are already green-lit for the next 6–12 months in the companies you are talking to?”
He blinked. He’d never thought to ask it that way.
Then we unpicked his corporate programs: hundreds of projects were already approved and scheduled: transformation sprints, platform rollouts, cost-reduction programs, regional expansions, new product launches and even new AI initiatives.
Most of them were dependent on a handful of people inside those organisations: delivery leads, program managers, or newly appointed directors tasked with execution.
“Why would you be trying to create something new when you can inject yourself into what they’ve already said yes to?” I asked.
“Why not find the people who now have to make it happen and offer to help them implement it quicker, faster or with more likelihood of success?”
He did what many rainmakers don’t: he moved from origination pride to execution pragmatism.
That’s Green-Light Selling in a sentence: identify the initiatives that are already authorised, then become the specialist who helps them hit the objective.
Why Green-Light Selling beats “originator” mode
Most small consultancies try to invent demand. That means:
Building an offer nobody has budgeted for.
Pitching to people who aren’t the execution decision-makers.
Asking organisations to change their priorities so they can fund your idea.
That’s slow, costly, and emotionally exhausting.
Green-Light Selling flips it:
You find approved projects (the organisation already has a budget or mandate).
You target the people accountable for delivery (not just the sponsor).
Your proposition is framed as risk reduction or speed to value - exactly what a delivery lead needs.
This is not about being opportunistic. It’s about being useful at the moment they are allowed, and compelled, to act.
Client Insight Interviews: the simplest way to uncover green lights
You don’t hunt green lights by guessing.
You ask.
The most disciplined, high-signal way I use is the Client Insight Interview - a 15–20 minute conversation with a target prospect that follows four lean phases:
Problem identification: Validate the symptom. Ask: “What is the main programme or objective your team has been asked to deliver this year?”
Problem agitation: Understand the impact. Ask: “What will happen if this programme misses its milestones? How will that show up financially or operationally?”
Solution exploration: Learn current workarounds and gaps. Ask: “How are you trying to execute this today? What’s not working?”
Permission to solve (the Bridge): Offer the next step as a statement, not a question: “I’ll put my thinking cap on with my team and come back with a short insight presentation on how to mitigate the risks on this project.” [Full word for word phraseology in the video - make sure you watch it.]
The Bridge is the pivot.
It’s not a pitch. It’s an offer to help them diagnose and de-risk a green-lit initiative. If you’ve listened well, they’ll usually say yes.
How the Bridge actually works in practice
When you deliver the Bridge right, two things happen:
You’re invited to an insight presentation where the CEO, MD or Programme Lead asks the finance director or operations head to join - because the risk you’ve described sounds real to them.
That insight presentation is naturally tied to a small, packaged front-end offer (a readiness assessment, a 2-week pilot, an audit) that the implementation team can sell internally.
That’s crucial: the front-end must be packaged to fit the buyer’s internal procurement box (80% known, 20% customised). If it lives in a box they recognise, they can sell it upwards. If it’s exotic, you’re back on the uphill push.
A practical sprint you can run next week
If you want to test Green-Light Selling, try this mini-sprint:
Pick 20 organisations in your Hot-100 that you suspect have approved initiatives.
Draft a short outreach: “15 minutes. Research call. No sales pitch. I’m exploring how [trigger: e.g., ‘margin improvement’ or ‘cloud migration’] is being executed your insight would help.”
Book 10–15 interviews over two weeks. Keep them to 20–30 minutes.
Run each call through the four phases and always finish with the Bridge statement.
Book insight presentations for any warm follow-ups and prepare a short, tightly scoped front-end offer they can easily approve.
A large number of short calls fuels predictable second-stage meetings. From there, a subset becomes pilot work and paid projects.
What to expect after 6 months
Do this consistently and you’ll notice three things:
Your new business conversations move from speculative to executable.
You spend less time “originating” and more time delivering demonstrable value.
Your proposals convert at higher rates because you’re responding to verified, authorised needs.
And you’ll sleep better.
When your work is about making a green-lit project succeed, you’re selling confidence, not convincing committees to invent budgets.
If you do one thing this week: ask three clients or prospects,
“Which projects in your organisation have been green-lit for the next 6–12 months?”
That single question will give you more clarity than six months of posting.
To stepping into motion, not creating it. And if you need more help with this - I’m opening up a few spots on my laser coaching program - the same one the rainmaker turned green lighter - is in.