Is your consulting firm a job shop in disguise?

Is your consulting firm a job shop in disguise?

One definition of a job shop is:

“A business or facility specialising in the manufacture or fabrication of parts in relatively small quantities,?produced to the specifications or requirements supplied by the customer.”

Obviously, you don’t manufacture parts, but is the rest of the definition a reasonable description of what you are and how you work??

If so, that’s okay because, in reality, that’s what most buyers of consulting think they want. Before engaging you, they have already decided and specified what they want and the problem they want you to solve.

We've been there in a past life. Maybe at the time, I wouldn't have put it in these terms, but a job shop is what we were. Looking back, it wasn't a life I enjoyed – it eventually wore me down.

It meant taking on jobs that I didn’t really want to do. They were poorly scoped, which meant dealing with technical buyers, many out of their depth but still calling the shots. Margins were cut to the bare minimum as we were forced through RFPs and competitive quote processes to deliver solutions that gave the buyer what they wanted, not what they needed. This work sucked the energy and enjoyment out of working for the client, but we rarely, if ever, said no, as we had mouths to feed.

Financially we did OK, albeit very lumpy and unpredictable - feast or famine – but too often not what I would call professionally fulfilling.?

So how can you break that cycle and move to a better, more fulfilling place?

The first step is understanding how to do it, the second is making the time to do it, and the third having the courage to do it.

I can certainly help you with the first step. This is the easy bit and, to a certain extent the third, but the rest is up to you and your own intestinal fortitude.

Okay, so a bit on the how.

Ultimately, you have to take control of the buying cycle. You have to wrestle power from the buyer and give it to yourself.

And how do you do that?

1. By reinventing yourself, not necessarily on the inside but certainly from the outside, the way you present yourself to the market.
2. By creating something your clients haven’t seen or heard before and want to buy that they can't buy a replica of somewhere else.
3. By injecting yourself as early into the buying cycle as possible before they are ready to buy or, ideally, before they are even thinking about it before you come along.

And how do you do that?

1. Don’t conform to what the market wants you to be; otherwise, you end up looking the same as everyone else.
2. Stop trying to appeal to everyone out of fear, disenfranchising, or losing a certain set of clients.
3. Stop talking about yourself and trying to differentiate on service level attributes.
4. Develop a perspective on how to solve a particular problem set for a particular type of client.
5. Articulate your perspective in an engaging and compelling format.
6. Define a “your way or the highway” engagement model, and don’t change it when the client asks you to.
7. Develop an educational, nurture-based lead generation program targeted at the economic buyer – typically only C-suite but ideally the CEO.

This is what we mean by making your firm marketable.

What to do next??

You've probably already downloaded our "NO BS MARKETING GUIDE FOR CONSULTING FIRMS". If you haven't, start by?grabbing your copy here.

Next,?our blog?covers most of these challenges mentioned here, giving away as much of our thinking on how to actually solve them.??Access all our content here.

Finally, if you are ready to put rubber to the road, jump into one of our Kick Starter Workshops.?Find out more here.?

And, of course, feel free to hit reply to this email ... feedback and questions welcome!

DISCLAIMER: originally written by my colleague Jim Thomspon and sent to our 6,000+ strong One Rabbit community via email. I thought it was too good not to share more broadly :-)