I get suspicious when a brief arrives already packaged as a deliverable. “We need a new website.” “We need influencers.” “We need a rebrand.” “We need an event.” Sometimes that is exactly what the business needs. Sometimes it is only the most visible way the problem has been described.
The useful question is not whether the deliverable is good. It is what the business expects to be different after it exists. If nobody can answer that clearly, the project is starting with production before diagnosis. That is how teams end up delivering beautiful work that is technically complete and commercially unfinished.
Why is a deliverable not the same as a business problem?
Because a deliverable describes what will be made; a business problem describes what needs to change. The distinction sounds simple, but it changes how a team scopes the work, measures success and decides what not to do.
A company asking for a new website may actually have a conversion problem, a positioning problem, a trust problem, a product-information problem or a sales handoff problem. A company asking for “more content” may have an awareness gap, weak differentiation, poor retention or no clear reason for the audience to care. If the team accepts the noun in the brief as the diagnosis, it may solve the wrong thing very efficiently.
The Jobs to Be Done framework makes a related point: customers do not simply buy products or features; they “hire” them to make progress in a specific situation. (Harvard Business Review: Know Your Customers’ Jobs to Be Done)
For me, the same logic applies to agency work. The client is not really hiring a deck, a campaign or a website. They are hiring the work to move something in the business.
The deliverable is a tool. The business outcome is the job.
What should come before the deliverable?
Start with the outcome, the obstacle and the evidence. Before discussing formats, the team should be able to explain what needs to move, what is preventing it from moving and what evidence would show that the situation improved.
- The outcome. What business or customer result should be different? Revenue, qualified demand, conversion, retention, trust, market entry, cost, speed, adoption or something else?
- The obstacle. Why is that result not happening today? Weak positioning, the wrong audience, poor distribution, friction, low trust, product gaps, slow follow-up or a different constraint?
- The evidence. What would prove that the intervention worked? Define the signal before the team falls in love with the output.
- The intervention. Only now decide whether the answer is a campaign, website, partnership, event, product change, process fix, technology solution or a mix of them.
This is also why strategy should stay close to execution. The original diagnosis needs to stay visible while the work is being built, because execution can reveal that the problem was different from what everyone first assumed.
How do you reframe a deliverable-led brief?
Translate the requested output into a business question. The point is not to reject the brief. The point is to understand what job the brief is supposed to do.
| The request | Possible underlying problem | Better strategic question |
|---|---|---|
| “We need a new website” | People visit but do not understand or convert | What is stopping qualified visitors from taking the next step? |
| “We need influencers” | The brand lacks relevance or trusted reach | Whose credibility can change the audience’s decision, and why? |
| “We need a rebrand” | The market does not understand the value or the brand no longer fits the business | What perception needs to change, and which parts of the brand are causing the gap? |
| “We need an event” | The business needs trust, access, experience or relationship-building | What should people believe, feel or do after being in the room? |
| “We need more content” | The audience is not learning, remembering or returning | Which information gap or decision barrier should content remove? |
Why does outcome thinking create more value?
Because clients do not experience value as a list of completed tasks. They experience whether the work improved something they care about. That can be economic, operational, strategic or even emotional, such as reducing risk or uncertainty around a major decision.
Bain’s B2B Elements of Value framework is useful here because it goes far beyond specifications and price. It includes value such as improved top line, cost reduction, risk reduction, simplification, integration, time savings, expertise and commitment. (Bain: B2B Elements of Value)
That matters in agency and consultancy work. A client may ask for one deliverable, but the reason they choose one partner over another is often whether the partner understands the business, reduces complexity, brings better judgment and stays accountable to the outcome.
McKinsey’s 2026 B2B research makes the same shift visible in commercial teams: the stronger model is not simply more transactional selling, but an insight-led approach that centers interactions on customer value and better outcomes. (McKinsey: The future of B2B sales)
Does this mean deliverables do not matter?
No. Deliverables matter a lot. They are where strategy becomes visible. The problem is confusing quality of output with quality of solution.
A great campaign still needs strong creative. A website still needs good UX, performance and content. An event still needs production. A strategy still needs a clear document. But those things should be judged in two layers: was the work made well, and did it help solve the problem it was chosen to solve?
This is exactly why 360 marketing without strategy becomes noise. More channels and more assets cannot compensate for a weak diagnosis.
When should you push back on the brief?
Push back when the requested output cannot be connected to a clear problem, when the evidence points somewhere else, or when the requested scope would consume resources without changing the outcome. Good pushback should make the project sharper, not more complicated.
- When the metric and the deliverable do not match. If the goal is revenue but the scope only measures reach, there is a missing bridge.
- When the real constraint sits outside marketing. The issue may be pricing, product, inventory, sales follow-up, service or market access. Marketing cannot permanently compensate for a broken system.
- When the work is bigger than the problem. A full rebrand may be unnecessary if the real issue is one confusing offer or customer journey.
- When the work is smaller than the problem. A few social posts will not solve a market-entry, positioning or commercial-model problem.
- When nobody owns what happens next. Attention has little value if there is no follow-up, sales path, customer experience or decision process after it arrives.
This is also why I do not separate marketing from business development. The business problem often crosses the line between demand, product, partnerships, sales and execution.
What to do next
Before approving the next big deliverable, force the brief to answer five questions.
- Name the business problem. Write it as a change that needs to happen, not an asset that needs to be produced.
- Define the audience decision. What should the customer, partner, employee or stakeholder understand or do differently?
- Find the real constraint. Identify what is currently preventing that decision or outcome.
- Choose the smallest credible intervention. Select the mix of work that can realistically move the problem without adding unnecessary activity.
- Measure the outcome and the output. Track whether the work was delivered well and whether the underlying business condition improved.
A useful discipline for the next step is to ask whether the presentation makes the decision clear, not just the information. That is the subject of another article in this series: What most people don’t communicate in presentations.
Final thoughts
I still care deeply about the deliverable. Craft matters. Execution matters. Details matter. But I care about them more when I know what they are trying to change.
The best work is not the work with the longest list of outputs. It is the work where every output has a reason to exist, the client understands why it is there, and the result can be traced back to the business problem that started the conversation.
See you,
Tai Perez
