How to develop a compelling idea for clients
Kris Safarova
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Earlier we discussed a truly unique and significant program. One of the most exciting things we will be doing,?based on strong demand from our members. There is nowhere else in the world you can see the step-by-step development of a major consulting practice built to the standards of the top firms. We are going to do it with you and you can see all the pieces and documents as they come together. This is part of our "Year of Consulting Sales" theme. The Point-of-View (PoV) develops over five meetings. We will walk you through each meeting, prep for the meeting, follow up from the meeting, and plan?after each meeting in a program on?StrategyTraining.com with key documents loaded to SCRA.
We will start the release of the program and resources shortly. This email is a reminder to give you time to think through at least the first batch of questions. Meeting One: We are providing an update to the client on the performance improvement (operations strategy) program we have been running for about six months. (That entire strategy and logic of that engagement can be found in the?Operations Management Strategy Journal in the Strategy Control Room Advanced membership/SCRA.) It's near the end of the engagement and we raise the issue of how the changes will be communicated to the markets/investment community. We were focusing on undertaking an investor relations strategy for the client. That is what we assumed could be the new work we should do for the client. (As an aside, we ended up doing that work much later.) The client, however, raises concerns that they are more worried about sharing with investors than crafting a communication strategy for them.?It seems like a subtle difference, but it's significant.
Meeting Two: The issue the client raised was not something where we had domain expertise in the strategy or operations practice. Yet, it was an area we understood from a different perspective. We had a unique lens on?the problem. We decided to present a very different approach to the client. In effect, we wanted to radically slim them down. The idea?is logical but not immediately obvious. From a strategy perspective, we knew it could be done, but at a practical level of going through all the steps, that was daunting. We were also stepping into an extraordinarily political, emotional, and labor-controlled area. We would have to be very sensitive to the media issues. For this engagement, you will see how we went to some unusual outside experts to review our thinking and see if there was a better way to do what we were proposing.
Meeting Three: This was a tougher meeting. The client was intrigued and he wanted to know how it could be done. How would it practically work? What helped us was not having done any work in this subject area before. Since we were not experts, we did not assume we knew best and did not apply best practices from the sector. That made the biggest difference here. Our problem statement surprised most people, including the experts, because we saw it as a business problem while the experts framed the problem around their understanding of the issues. I cannot stress this enough:?being strong in problem solving from first principles and not being the experts in the domain allowed us to come up with what seemed like a simpler solution. As the thinking develops, you will see this tug-of-war between the experts who want to push the engagement and our team trying to keep things moving on what mattered. Scope creep could have been a huge issue if we had not managed it.
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Meeting Four: By the fourth meeting, we had fleshed out our conceptual thinking, and we had more or less the single slide that would be the proposal. We have decided to use no domain experts in this particular stage, but would consult with them as we progressed. As you will see, the final solution does not require much of their input. We will explain the three parts, which became three different engagements. Part 1: Optimize the problem. In other words, make the problem as small as we can make it. Part 2: Take the problem away from the company and give it to someone else (highly theoretical, but high margin) Part 3: Explain what the client did. Investor relations strategy.
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Meeting Five: In meeting five, we fell into the trap of scope creep. We assumed that since the problem was so complex and had been intractable for so long and to so many experts that we had to do more analysis. The good part is that when the engagement began, as we kept rethinking about the problem, we found a way to solve the issue by radically simplifying the work. Coming back to Part 2, we are proposing something that had not been done, was theoretically possible but the rules, regulations, systems and processes where not in place, but if could be done, the client could break into a new market with a new business. As we will explain, we are in effect changing the clients' core business mission, which in effect changed how they would operate.
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Exclusive access to the strategic assets top consulting firms keep locked away. The Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) provides a rare opportunity to explore proprietary proposals, advanced strategic planning documents, full studies, centers of excellence, non-public strategy books and high-value insights that have driven over $500 million in results. Designed for those operating or who wants to operate at the highest levels of consulting, strategy, and leadership, this resource offers an unparalleled competitive advantage. Its value speaks for itself, one of the industry’s leading firms you know sought to acquire it. Access the SCRA here.
Things to note as you go through this year long effort to build your practice and sales pipeline
Read the first message on this program and think through the questions. It's often hard to see this if you are an expert, but expertise is like a straight jacket. You can make some changes, but you often cannot see the scope for radical changes.? The client is often going to lead you to some issue. You have to listen and help them understand the issue. We teach clients and members how to do this. You can sell theoretical work to clients. Provided, you can clearly explain what is possible if this works and the risks. By definition, leading companies must be doing theoretical work to lay the foundations for sweeping moves to knockout competitors. The solutions to complex problems are almost always simple. We often get trapped into selling methodologies and processes. Usually, they distract us from focusing on the real problem. The work should be exciting. It should be meaningful and fun. You can make the work anything you want it to be. Three Options to Join + Add-On:
Add-on - Article + Book - Published Author program to help you write your article/book.?
Sincerely,
Kris Safarova ?
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