The Visible Authority

28/07/2022

The best way to grow your consulting firm is by educating your audience

“Luk, it’s getting so hard to compete. New consultancies are popping up daily and buyers have more options than ever.” I hear statements like this daily – in my Zoom conversations with large consultancies, in the emails I receive from consulting leaders, and in the conversations I have with my clients.

Yes, prospects have more choices than ever when it comes to hiring a consultancy. However, the demand for consulting services is insanely high! You just need to know how to adapt your firm's business development strategy to tap into this giant pool.

Educating your audience through expertise-driven thought leadership is the only sustainable way to grow your consulting business.

Read why consultancies should rethink their BD approach in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (July 27):

https://hubs.ly/Q01hsdcm0

14/07/2022

With improper diversification, consulting firms are at risk to fail

Most consulting firms keep adding new services because they believe that more services will lead to more opportunities and revenue.

Unfortunately, more services mean more competition, more price erosion, smaller margins, thinner expertise, poorer thought leadership, less time to get visible, more hiring challenges, more training hours, more client gatekeepers to deal with, more objections from more stakeholders, and probably 100 more fallouts.

Read my tips on service diversification in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (July 13):

https://hubs.ly/Q01gGNzv0

30/06/2022

Every consulting firm needs a discovery service

It has become an all too common story; a company hires a consulting firm to help them with a specific problem, and winds up spending a lot of money without any real solution. Unfortunately, this happens because many consulting firms rely on the outdated method of "trial and error" to solve problems for their clients.

Let me be straightforward with you. I would never again start an important consulting project again with a new client with such a ‘trial and error’ mindset.

Just like an operator wouldn’t order spare parts of a broken manufacturing machine without a full diagnostic, a consulting firm will only quote costs on a large-scale project with a proper discovery.

And to avoid ‘hit and miss’ I’ve learned to leverage the incredible power of an upfront discovery or diagnosis approach, fully paid.

Read my experience with an upfront discovery approach in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (June 29):

https://hubs.ly/Q01fR8zq0

18/06/2022

To Succeed As A Consultancy, Get Rid Of The Scarcity Mindset.

It will be hard if your consultancy is used to saying yes to every potential revenue opportunity. But it’s a necessary exercise to deepen your authority and become more visible in your field of expertise.

In my new article, I am encouraging consultancy firm owners to discover the confidence to wait for the ideal client, trusting that they’re out there and the consultancy firm is uniquely qualified to help them. Let go of the scarcity mindset and embrace your focus, the specialization, and the domain of expertise.

That’s the only way to truly succeed as a consultancy.

https://hubs.ly/Q01dqXhH0

So many consulting firms struggle to own their lane thanks to their scarcity mindset. They’re afraid to lose out on potential business.

16/06/2022

Client case study: the productization dilemma

Consulting firms love to create ‘products’. But most of these consulting firms get it wrong. I get that question all the time from consulting firms: “How can we turn our self-developed tool into a product that we can sell at scale?” I get that, we are all looking for new revenue sources.

The past few days, I had another interesting discussion with a client about the topic of productizing an internally developed tool (technical audit) that gets used in the daily consulting work. The tool was developed to improve the quality of the consultancy work but after a while, internal discussions about the productization and the opportunity to start selling licenses for the tool started to take place.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that many productization successes in consulting firms. Why is that? Mainly because of these two reasons:

⭕ Because of the big, fat consulting cannibalization monster

⭕ Because ‘real productization’ of a service requires product development expertise

Read my approach to helping the client resolve these issues in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (June 15):

https://hubs.ly/Q01dqYj50

02/06/2022

Client case study: finetuning a mid-sized consultancy’s market positioning

From January till mid-May 2022 I worked with a medium sized tech consulting firm (50 FTE, just under €10M revenue) to help them finetune their market positioning and expertise narrative. I am disclosing here the playbook that we have used with 6 sprints.

We’ve now finalized Sprints 1-3. Sprints 4, 5 and 6 will be executed in a later phase to ensure adoption of the initial changes.

The main reasons for the project

⭕ Service overkill: the number of services gradually increased – each successfully delivered project became the basis of yet another new service - a pretty common challenge;

⭕ Tech language: too much tech feature-driven language instead of value proposition language (as I always say: “You are not in the business of selling tech features but in the business of solving client problems”);

⭕ Hitting the project wall: too much lower-value, smaller project work, not enough high-value strategic consulting despite existing upstream/strategic expertise;

⭕ Business development challenges: too slow revenue growth, not enough organic new client development, not enough top-of-mind for the expertise, smaller projects don’t drive enough total revenue.

Read my approach to helping the client resolve these issues in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (June 1):

https://hubs.ly/Q01ctVwJ0

19/05/2022

Too many consultancies never get over ‘the project wall’.

They wish to become strategic advisors but get stuck in lower value project work (or even ‘body shopping’). Does that resonate with you?

These are the characteristics of project work when you are in front of the wall:

● Lower value work
● Lower pricing, mostly hourly billing
● Output-driven
● Client in the lead
● Selling activities, time/hours as measure
● Lower average project revenue
● Lead generation pressure (selling a lot of smaller projects to hit revenue targets)
● (lower) Manager-level connection

These are the characteristics of project work when you overcome the wall and it's behind you:

✅ Higher value work (eg. strategic advisory)
✅ Premium pricing, more often some form of value pricing
✅ Outcome-driven
✅ Expert in the lead
✅ Selling impact, transformation results as measure
✅ Higher average assignment revenue
✅ Concentration pressure (risk of a few big clients driving all the revenue)
✅ C-level connection

How do you break through this wall? Read my advice in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (May 18):

https://hubs.ly/Q01brrRw0

16/05/2022

An ordinary consultant can solve a problem a buyer can see. An expert can solve a problem a buyer didn't know they had.

14/05/2022

Does your consulting firm have at least 70% referenceable clients?

The referenceable client list (RCL) in your consulting firm is THE representation of your focus, your expertise, and your ability to deliver specific results by solving prototypical problems of your narrowly defined target audience.

I see 2 reasons why consulting firms don't achieve the 70% RCL. Read it in my new article.

https://hubs.ly/Q019NCbB0

The Referenceable Client List (RCL) in consulting firms represents their focus and expertise, and is a key success measure for consulting growth.

09/05/2022

New school business development in consulting is rooted in educating your target audience. However, as Adam Grant says: "Many people hesitate to share their work because they're uncomfortable promoting themselves. Sharing your work isn't an act of self-promotion, it's an act of self-expression. If you don't put your ideas out in the world, no one else can benefit from them".

05/05/2022

We live in the era of the ‘leveraged consultant’

The way buyers buy has fundamentally changed. And Corona has cemented these buying behaviors forever.

➡️ Buyers do deep research: buyers of consulting services do their homework before getting in touch. Research confirms: 70-90% of the decision-making is done BEFORE getting in touch with the consulting firm.

➡️ The social era: We're in the age where buyers discover & evaluate consulting services through their NETWORK: analyst reviews, social media, word of mouth, content platforms, etc.

The traditional, non-leveraged business development models - relationship-driven & selling from within (legitimate and necessary, of course) - in the professional services industry are getting in trouble.

👍The leveraged consultant creates an important volume of organic demand for the consultancy by educating the target audience in the market, at scale.

Read my explanation in full + examples in the new edition of my newsletter 'The Authority’ (May 4):

https://hubs.ly/Q019ncv20

02/05/2022

My business development message to consulting is very simple: your business development efforts should be rooted in EDUCATING your audience as experts. Believe it or not, educating your audience is the #1 lever that can fundamentally change the growth trajectory of your consultancy.