A Summary Of My Content - April-June 2022
Luk Smeyers
Consulting Firm Performance Advisor ?? Advisor to Consulting Firm Buyers/Investors ?? Author of 'The Authority' newsletter
Hi dear readers! I hope you are finding the time this summer to unwind and recharge.
Here's my quarterly summary of my content. Take a break, pour yourself a refreshing beverage, and catch up on your reading. In the second quarter of this year, I shared a lot of tips, best practices, and case studies to help consultancies streamline their business development and achieve organic growth by establishing and expanding their reputational footprint.
I share all my content with my newsletter subscribers on a bi-weekly basis, so if you'd like to receive my articles directly in your mailbox, follow the link at the end of this post to subscribe.
Let's recap.
1. 'The Authority', my bi-weekly newsletter
Check out the past editions of my?bi-weekly 'Think Piece' newsletter for consultants. 'The Authority' helps consultants grow their pipeline by sharing intriguing educational stories. It’s my ultimate aspiration to create a bubble of calmness with this bi-weekly ‘think piece’, a place of stillness in the face of everyday stress. A chance to reflect on what really matters in your consulting work.
In each newsletter I address the following:
The issue I address: The consultancy’s website is one of the most discussed topics in my work with consultants and consultancies. I probably receive 2-3 questions about it per week. I decided to add my point of view here by writing about an ‘old vs. new' comparison. Fasten your seatbelts.
The issue I address: I regularly post content on social media about what I call ‘the consulting service delusion’: an exorbitant focus on services instead of on expertise. I got several reactions and questions from a post on social media a few weeks ago, so I decided to explain the service delusion a little deeper in this newsletter.
The issue I address: In this newsletter, I discuss the 'leveraged consultant' - what it is and why we live in the era of the leveraged consultant. I then dive into a case study of a B2B marketing company 'Refine Labs' and how they were able to grow their revenue from 0 to 40 million in just 2,5 years.
The issue I address: I did a workshop earlier this year with a mid-sized consulting firm as a result of a positioning audit. We had a long discussion about ‘moving upstream’ as a consulting firm, moving from project work to strategic advisory, and how to go about this. In this newsletter, I provide a summary of what we’ve discussed, as it seems to be a challenge in many consulting firms.
The case study I highlight: 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 later to ensure the adoption of the initial changes. I hope to give you a solid understanding of such a market positioning review.
The case study I highlight: I had an 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. Still, after a while, internal discussions about the productization and the opportunity to start selling licenses for the tool began to take place. This is a regular discussion, and I’d like to give you my point of view.
The issue I address: 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. And that's what I am telling my consulting clients.?
2. The Visible Authority blog
Most consultancy websites suck. Big time. Sorry to say. I am struggling with such poor professionalism. And to be honest, most of you are underestimating the criticalness of a website to succeed in consulting. What do you think buyers of consultancy services do when evaluating candidate consultancies (or their consultants)? Exactly, they check out the consultancy or the consultant/advisor.
In this article, I break down the difference between the 'old school' consultancy websites and the 'new school' ones that all consultancies should aspire towards.
When I audit consulting firms to help them improve their positioning in the market, this is one of the standard questions I always ask:?"Do you have at least 70% referenceable clients?" It's one of the best possible measures to see how focused (or unfocused) the consultancy firm is.?If they are far below 70%, I immediately know something is wrong with their consultancy’s positioning.?
Here, I explain the main reasons why consultancies fail to achieve this critical target and offer my advice.
When I meet with a consulting firm or a consultant, I always ask: "What is the expertise of your consulting firm?" In 99% of the cases, they immediately start explaining their services: “Here’s what we do”. They explain to me the actions, the activities, the output, the deliverables they provide, and the steps they take, without considering the ultimate outcome of their work: the transformation of their clients. Outcomes instead of output. Services instead of problem-resolution and transformation.?
In this post, I explain the big and ugly service delusion in consulting and present a case for consultancies to move towards an outcome-oriented offering.
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?
Here, I list the typical characteristics of consulting work in front and behind the wall and explain two easy ways to cross the project wall in consulting.
I was drinking my morning coffee when I saw a LinkedIn post from a fellow consultant on my feed. It started off strong. She opened with a gripping introduction about some bagel company that had hired her consultancy team and how they’d helped analyze its strengths and weaknesses. She shared the final (and remarkable) result that her team’s analysis had on the bagel company’s bottom line. It was a great story. I was impressed. But I was also curious. Throughout the post, she didn’t ever share how she did this. Her consultancy acted as a black box.?
Curious, I reached out to her: “Why didn’t you include those details in your post?”?Her answer surprised me: “Don’t give away the cow if you want to sell the milk!”
In this article, I discuss the prevalence of this attitude among consultancies, which I believe is actively holding them back from proper limitless growth.
Business development in consulting will never be the same anymore. A few of the reasons include: (1) Research says that 70-80% of the decision-making is done BEFORE contacting the consultancy. Buyers have access to an abundance of information that empowers them to navigate most of the buying process independently; (2) Buyers do research at the level of specific expertise linked to THEIR SPECIFIC PROBLEM, not at the level of your services or the level of your incomprehensible consulting language; (3) Due to the growing business complexity (a lot of new pillar topics such as supply chain, cyber security, hybrid work, and many more) and the speed of all these changes, the trust importance has gone up 70% (says research). You won't be at the party without your leading 'trust stuff' (consistently sharing your leading thoughts).
Here, I explain why consultancies should pay attention to the changing nature of business development and what they can do to adapt and flourish.
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 later to ensure the adoption of the initial changes. I hope to give you a solid understanding of such a market positioning review.
I recently worked with a consultancy that couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. They could handle pretty much any client request in the book, no matter the industry. They had a very high utilization maximization – no benchwarmers on the team.?And with every new project successfully completed, they were able to add new expertise to their roster that they could sell to the next client, making them more competitive. On paper, they felt like they were doing great.?Yet they found themselves struggling, hitting the so-called ‘the project wall’: doing all sorts of small projects at low rates and under huge business development pressure. Having to sell such small projects, again and again, makes them very vulnerable to big ups and downs without reliable revenue development.
In this article, I explain the results of my audit and why consultancies should stop thinking in terms of missing out on opportunities and, instead, focus on only taking on the right ones.
Consulting firms love to create ‘products’. But most of these consulting firms get it wrong. I always get that question 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.
领英推荐
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that many productization successes in consulting firms. In this post, I explain why that is the case and offer tips that might help consultancies integrate productization more smoothly in their business models.
Let me be straightforward with you. I would never again start an important consulting project with a new client with such a ‘trial and error’ mindset.? Just like an operator wouldn’t order spare parts for 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.?
Here, I dive into what a discovery service entails and present my arguments for why every consultancy should start their client work with discovery and diagnostic step.
3. My LinkedIn posts
4. Previous 2021 content summaries
If you'd like to catch up on my content from the beginning of the year:
Summary #1: January till March
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