David A. Fields Consulting Group Zach Zimmerman, CEO of ZZ’s Tops, emails you about a potential consulting project he’d like your consulting firm to handle.
You conduct an excellent discovery call (a.k.a. Context Discussion).
However, at the end of that conversation, Zach suggests you take a spin over to ZZ’s offices to meet with him and his senior team in person to discuss the opportunity.
Reaching ZZ’s headquarters takes a solid half day of travel.
Should you go?
Consultants frequently ask, “Should we spring for airfare to visit a consulting prospect?”
The more pertinent query is, “Should we use an entire day to meet one consulting prospect in person?”
Meeting consulting prospects in person is an expensive proposition in terms of time, and the results of an in-person meeting are unpredictable.
My team and I have worked with successful seven-figure and eight-figure consulting firms that have built their practices almost entirely on in-person meetings.
Their senior teams spend the majority of their time on the road.
It’s effective, but I’m not convinced all that travel is necessary, because we’ve also worked with numerous, equally successful firms that rarely travel.
Rarely doesn’t mean never. There are times when jetting off to a prospect’s site winds up being the right call.
Should you and your senior team hit the road?
Use the two travel rules below to guide your travel decision.
7 to Go, 5 to No
7Any project over $1 million (i.e., seven figures) warrants an in-person visit to seal the deal.
5Any project under $100,000 (i.e., five figures or less) is not worth spending a day plus travel expenses to close.
For six-figure projects, turn to the second rule:
Travel When Positive
This rule employs a quickly calculated formula:
[Size of Project] x [In-Person Lift] – [Value of Time]
If the result of the formula is positive, then travel to pursue the consulting opportunity.
Otherwise, move the opportunity forward via virtual meetings and email.
Size of Project
Give your best guess.
Are you looking at $100K, $150K, $250K, $500K?
Important: Do not include the value of any potential follow-on projects.
In-Person Lift
How much more likely is it that you’ll win the project if you visit the prospect in person. Choose from three levels of impact:
Meaningful – Established relationship, but not with all decision-makers.
Very Significant – Mostly new relationship, or a highly-competitive situation, and your in-person demo rocks.
Massive – Prospect has explicitly stated an in-person meeting is required (or very strongly recommended); or, you’ve found that your firm’s value is impossible to communicate effectively in a remote setting.
In the “Travel When Positive” formula,
use 4% for Meaningful, 8% for Very Significant, and 16% for Massive.
While these numbers may strike you as low, they’re realistic. Most consulting firms wildly overestimate the impact of an in-person meeting on actual close rates.
Value of Time
Even if you (wisely) don’t think in terms of day rates and you never determine your fees based on time, you should have a rough idea of what a day of your team’s time is worth to your firm.
Realistically, traveling anywhere over two hours away, ends up eating a full day of productive time.
Example:
The ZZ’s Tops opportunity strikes you as having a decent shot of winning a $100,000 consulting project.
7 to Go, 5 to No doesn’t help since this is a six-figure engagement.
You’ve never met Zach, and he suggested an in-person meeting. However, your sense is that an in-person meeting isn’t required. Hence, you gauge the in-person lift to be Very Significant.
Further, you want a typical day to generate $5,000 in revenue for you and $4,000 in revenue for the senior consultant you’d bring to the meeting. You calculate…
$100,000 x 8% – $9,000 = -$1,000
The result isn’t positive (above zero), so you politely decline to visit in person, and do your best to win the project via remote meetings.
Use the time you would have spent traveling to drum up additional opportunities for larger engagements that are more likely to close.
How much of a difference have in-person meetings made for your consulting firm when a project is on the line?
Text and images are © 2026 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
I am city planning/transit consultant. I consider how much travel time and costs of undertaking the project would involve. On site work & meetings could result in staff not being available for other work, and/or missing other opportunities.
Also, how much local knowledge and connections are required which might place you at a competitive disadvantage.
Finally, early morning and evening meetings add hotel and other expenses compared to local competitors.
All good points, Marc. The “local connections” consideration is an interesting one. For most consultancies, geography is a secondary concern at best, and they take clients from across a large geographic region or, perhaps, globally. However, we have seen a number of successful consultancies lean heavily into geographic presence, with very good results.
Thanks for adding insights to the article, Marc.
My son-in-law has been a salesperson for IBM and AWS. Of course , most of those deals are in the millions. If he’s talking to a prospect and they say “I’m going to be in Colorado skiing” or “I’m going to be in Seattle on (some date)”, my son-in-law says: “Really, I’m going to be there too. Can we meet for coffee or lunch?” How slick is that?
He’s completely unafraid to hop on an airplane, have a meeting and fly home. That’s what top salespeople do.
I don’t get many 6-figure gigs, but if I do, I’m going to hop on a plane.
Fun story, Jay. Almost regardless of industry, a multi-million dollar/euro/pound deal warrants an in-person visit. That’s what most salespeople working with that level of offerings do… even the bad salespeople travel!
Time to start winning some 6-figure projects, Jay! Thanks for chiming in today.
This is a very useful set of criteria for making the sometimes challenging decisions about whether to travel or not. Another approach I take with folks who want to meet with me in person is to offer to meet me at my office or somewhere nearby, or to meet at an upcoming networking event. (Of course this works better with folks who seek me out, rather than potential clients.)
Exactly, Gwen. The “Come to my place” approach works best when, 1) you have a physical office location, which isn’t always the case, even for firms in the $10M range, 2) when you’re speaking to a client rather than a prospect and/or the other party is local.
I appreciate your adding that perspective, Gwen!