Most senior leaders I coach at IT services firms walk into the renewal conversation braced for one thing. The client is going to push on price.
That is not the conversation the client came to have.
They want it faster. The board date moved. One of their competitors launched something they cannot match yet. The old system costs them money every month it stays up. So they ask how quickly you can move, and you answer with ‘resourcing, architecture and a delivery plan’.
All of it correct. None of it an answer.
Nothing goes wrong that day. The account cools over two quarters and you cannot point to the moment it started.
This is not a personal failing
The leaders this happens to are strong. They built the delivery organization. They held accounts together through things that would have broken someone else’s back. The skill they are missing was never part of the job. For twenty plus years this industry sold capability. Now it sells speed.
Nobody trained you for that shift. It arrived after you were already senior. That is the hardest time to pick up something new.
I had to learn this the hard way
I know, I know it was not 2026. “Things are harder now”, you are muttering. “What are you going to tell me, old man?”
In 1983, when I joined Price Waterhouse (PW) I was put on the J.P. Morgan engagement (Morgan Guaranty Trust those days). My work was country risk. I could give you the debt-to-GDP ratio of any emerging market and the political risk score of any country you asked about. PW was engaged by regulators to evaluate the Bank’s credit exposure to countries and companies, as an independent party to evaluate those loans and give each loan a quality “rating”.
My reports were comprehensive. I proposed ratings in my discussions with loan officers and other divisions engaged in approving that credit.
The chief economist did not want my ratios. He wanted to know where the bank should lend next quarter. The loan officers wanted to know which countries to pull back from this month. Heads of state wanted to know what it did to their borrowing costs.
They were asking the same question in three different accents. What changes, and how soon.
Once I started answering that question, the work changed. Within four years I was running PW’s entire engagement as a Manager with more than 200 people on the engagement. Here is a guy who did not want to do anything to do with banks, and then it turns out he was thriving.
What it looks like when you can do this
The leaders who make this shift describe the same change, and it is not a bigger number on a slide.
Their clients start bringing them the problem before it becomes a request. They get called about the year instead of the project. They stop being the person who carries out the decision. They become one of the people who make it.
One leader I coach spent three months on this single habit. He stopped opening with architecture and started opening with what changes and by when. His client said to him, “You are talking about my business now, not just your solution.”
That sentence is the whole thing. It is available to you and it does not require you to learn anything new about technology.
Three ways to answer a speed question
One. Give the date before the method. “We can have you live by March” comes first. How you get there comes second, and only if they ask.
Two. Put a number on waiting. Every month the old system runs has a cost attached. If you do not know what it is, ask them. The question alone changes how they see you.
Three. Say what you would drop to go faster. “March works if the reporting module moves to phase two” sounds like a partner. “March is not possible” sounds like a supplier.
My only point here is this: you’re not winging it. You are jumping into the unknown a little bit, and that’s the leap of faith. Every leader who has taken a chance on themselves has won disproportionate rewards. They just had no idea when they were taking that bold step.
And to know when you picked March, you had a good idea that you could deliver! That’s the power of intuition over all the data you can gather.
Three questions for your week
One. In your last client conversation, what did they ask about time?
Two. What is it costing them every month they wait?
Three. What would you give up to move the date forward, and have you offered it?
You already have the answers to all three. Saying them out loud is the part that has not been asked of you until now.
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Raju Panjwani | Founder of Live Masterminds, Inc.
I was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley for 18 years. I now work with senior leaders in IT services and technology consulting, on becoming the leader the business now needs.