First, you have to find out what the client's needs and desires are with regard to where he wishes to spend his time offroad or if at all.
After that, you discuss tire size. Once tire size is settled on, then the details of what it takes to run that tire size for what he wants to do come into the discussion and a build plan is laid out either all at one or more typically in stages with the key goal being to not go backwards in any aspect of the build.
Being able to read a client gets tricky. Over the years I've come to learn that there are some like Chris who are just modification collectors and at the other end are those like myself who started wheeling on stock tires, when it wouldn't go where I wanted, I took it home, built it some, took it back and kept after it until it did what I needed.
The collectors are tricky. I had one in particular who asked me what to do next. Where are you going? Mostly Big Bear, some day the Rubicon, local mild stuff. I told him he didn't need a thing and his rig was set up perfectly for all of that and then some. He tells me, alright, what if I want to go to Johnson Valley? Well, you're gonna need some armor, lighter bumpers, lose the swingout, and get some better rock sliders. Dial in the shocks and you should be good.
He has me do all of that and over the course of a year I got to know him and his wheeling style and there isn't a chance in hell he is ever going to JV. That part of the conversation was just to get me to tell him what to buy and have installed.
