Of course the headline’s promise is a vast overstatement. And as a result, the credible advice I share with you below will be a letdown, which is ironically the point of this blog.

While there are certainly notable exceptions, the IT consulting marketplace has had more than its share of engagements that overpromised and under-delivered. Examples of disappointed companies were seemingly everywhere at APQC’s 2012 Process Conference (held in Houston in late October).

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Countless books, reports, and journal articles lament the decline of the consulting profession, couching this grim forecast in phrases like the “end of big ideas.”

For professional services firms, knowing what clients value in a consulting firm—and crafting the message accordingly—can be the difference between winning and losing an engagement. To that end, APQC asked senior procurement and C-level executives to prioritize what they value when hiring a consultant and the takeaways couldn’t be clearer.

Priority #1: Experience

Turnabout is fair play: Consultants spent decades helping companies squeeze out every bit of margin across supply chains and within their internal operations. Now, consultants are the vendors feeling the vice clamps.

The last decade was bookended by two downturns, both of which led consultants to lower their average hourly rate. And those rates have been slow to climb as the steady migration of consultants into industry has turned clients into smarter buyers of consulting.