[From Michael] Let's build a consulting practice, together.
Hi Fc,
Along with several significant and ongoing updates to Coaching, Insider, Legacy & the Strategy Control Room Advanced, we have a year-long series of programs that outlines the steps to build a consulting practice/business. From the early idea to a functioning practice and lots of sales strategies, we are going to take you along on that journey.
You can watch what we are doing, follow our guidelines, and assess yourself against the best-practice examples we will show you. The files will be loaded in the SCRA and the videos will be available to Insiders &Â Legacy members.
We want to start this in February/March so you have the entire year to follow our guidance, build your practice alongside us, and set yourself up for the first three months of the year after. Building a strong practice should be done slowly, sequentially, and with a strong foundation. Flash-in-the-pan sales, without a sustainable base, often do not lead to growth. We will show you each step as we build things out.
1-on-1 coaching clients can receive our focused personal guidance in our weekend clinics. To get the most from this year-long program, it helps to have done the prep work before we begin in February/March.Â
Here are the different parts of the program.
Module 1: Point-of-View
Consultants must have a PoV. This differentiates you from all other consultants and is what clients buy. They buy your PoV and agree to implement it within their organizations. A PoV is your idea about how something works or does not work. Kris and I are going to use a single-threaded approach. Over the year, we will show you how to develop a POV, why it should be simple, and how to explain the PoV. Your PoV must be simple. Simple does not mean it is not valuable.
We will follow that one PoV as it leads to a proposal, into a study, an article, a book, a sale, and more sales. So, you can see how a single PoV evolves into a practice. We have not used this approach before in our sales training and it is complementary to The Consulting Sales Rainmaker Process, but it is a different process.
Prep:
Explain your PoV in about 5 minutes orally.
Write your PoV and edit it to cover about half an A4 page.
Is this PoV valuable to clients?
Is it your PoV because you are an expert here or because it helps clients?
What are the limitations of your PoV?
How have clients responded to it?
Why do you believe it is not working with clients?
What is the equivalent PoV at your three main rivals?
Does the PoV organically lead to upsell/spin-off work?
What assumptions are you making about why this PoV will be successful with clients?
Why make these assumptions?
Why do you believe these assumptions to be true?
What would need to happen for them to be true?
Programs within Insider/Legacy to review before we begin:
Re-Building a Consulting Practice
Partnership. Memoir
How to Build a Consulting Firm
How to Sell Like a Partner, While Facing Discrimination
How to Solve Big Problems
Competitive Strategy
Advanced Competitive Strategy
Resources within the Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) to review before we begin:
One Week Immersion: Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence (1,078 SLIDES)
The Professional Sales Journal_draft (242 PAGES) (Update Coming)
Competitive Strategy Journal_draft (123 PAGES)
The Strategy Visioning Workshop Journal (214 pages)
Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Tools Center of Excellence (264 SLIDES)
Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence (709 SLIDES)
Module 2: Proposal
Once we have the PoV, we will show you how to convert the PoV into an engagement structure to generate the benefits from the PoV. Always remember that a PoV is just an idea/theory until it is tested on a consulting assignment. We will focus on the critical elements of the proposal, including work streams, staffing, pricing, and margins. Selling a PoV is the easier part. Structuring an engagement to deliver the proposed benefits is much tougher. In many cases, the engagement team is not skilled at the analyses required to find the anticipated benefits. This is a primary reason engagements fail. The PoV may be correct, but the team cannot unlock its value at a client.Â
Prep:
Has this PoV ever led to a sale?
If not, why do you believe it did not lead to a sale?
What is the most successful proposal for this PoV?
Why do you consider it successful?
Have you been able to replicate the success?
How are you measuring success?
What are your strategic intentions with sales/this PoV?
Do you find sales for this PoV to be difficult and tiresome?
Why is this?
What assumptions are you making when determining whether the proposal is ready for the client?
Have the proposed benefits from a PoV ever been realized by a client? Why?
If not, why do you still believe the PoV has value to clients?
Module 3: Engagement Structure
Now, we have to design the sequence of steps and activities that must be done to complete the engagement. This is the engagement structure and contains the project logic, workstream charters, and activity plans for the major workstreams. The goal is to keep things simple. Simple studies can deliver astonishing insights and value to clients. Most engagements fail at this stage. The engagement structure is generic and the guidelines are generic which eats up billable hours since everything is tested and no one knows what is the hypothesized answer. Therefore, they do not know when to stop the analyses. Streams are built around hypotheses.
Prep:
What are your answer-first hypotheses driving this study?
How does the engagement structure focus on these initial hypotheses?
What assumptions did you make when developing the engagement structure?
What role did you intend to play, and what role did you end up playing?
Did you have an explicit goal to grow as a professional through the engagement?
What are those goals, and did you achieve them?
Did you assume that the act of completing the engagement alone would lead to your growth?
Have you explicitly built in a buffer/actions to grow the practice while delivering this engagement? What are they?
Where have you staffed the most insightful team member and best leader in the engagement?
Is the entire team trained in the same operating standards?
Module 4: Engagement
In this phase, we plan to concurrently release the full engagement that was completed as a result of the POV, proposal, and engagement structure we developed earlier. You will see the entire study and all of the analyses. This is what we classify as one of the core studies. Mastering the approach will teach you foundational skills in strategic thinking. The earliest full studies done for a POV are important since they become guides for other similar studies you will do. They help train new team members. They are the cornerstones of the practice. So, we often tend to over-deliver when documenting the initial studies. That said, documenting and documentation is critical to any professional services firm. Poor knowledge management is a lead indicator of a declining professional services firm.
Prep:
What percentage of your time in a week is required to work within your engagement teams to complete the engagement from the/a PoV?
Why did you pick this percentage?
Are you intentionally involved in the delivery of the engagement?
Is your engagement structure the ideal structure?
What would the engagement structure look like under ideal conditions?
Do you think you are working in the practice or on the practice?
Do you find there are conflicting demands from the firm as you grow your practice through this engagement?
How are you managing those conflicting demands?
What is your strategy for documenting the engagement analyses, best practices, methodologies, etc?
How will you explicitly use this knowledge?
Are there any instances where you will not share this knowledge within the firm?
How will this knowledge be used to improve the engagement teams' and their work?
Module 5: Writing Your Article
Potential clients must understand what you do. The best way to do this is to write an article. In this phase, we will show you how to write an article as part of the deliverable of the engagement. So, the article is not a distraction to the engagement, but it becomes the primary tool to guide the teams and update the client. The article will become the final deliverable to the client versus a set of slides. Though you can have both if needed, you will find the article is more powerful and is more likely to get the client to act. Articles tell a story that PowerPoint often fails to capture.
You will see the article we wrote for the engagement from the POV. And we will guide you on how to do this. We also have the Published Author Program where we can write the article with you or for you since consulting articles have an accessible yet technical style that is not found In general writing.
Prep:
Do you understand the strategic significance between the following three options; 1 - Writing an article unrelated to an active engagement, 2 - Writing an article after an engagement, and 3 - Writing an article as an output of an engagement?
What is/was your strategy from the options above?
Why?
When will you begin the article?
How will you structure the article?
What writing style will you use? Why?
How will the article be checked and circulated?
Will draft versions be shared? And to whom?
How have you built in the article writing to be an asset and not a distraction?
When, where, and how will you specifically use the article (please be as detailed as possible)?
What will you do to get the maximum return from the article?
How have you defined returns?
Module 6: Developing a methodology/book
Here we are going to do something that takes you to the next level. And we truly mean a level above most professionals. Once you solve a problem that can be useful to many clients, it is strongly encouraged to write out the methodology of what you did so your teams can use this approach as a guide. Yet, if you will do all this work to update the methodology from an engagement, why not convert it to a published book? This elevates your standing and places you far ahead of your peers.
So you will, by this point, have seen us develop a POV, convert that into a proposal, design the engagement, deliver the engagement, write an article, and now develop a book from all the work done thus far. All off a POV and without distracting you from your work. All of this supports your work and ongoing sales.
You are welcome to prepare the book yourself or you/your firm can use ourPublished Author Programto prepare (or even publish) the book with our help. Consulting books tend to be more complex, and this is something we specialize in.Â
Prep:
What is the explicit value to you, your team, your firm, and your clients from converting the study methodology into a book?
Break down AND expand the benefits to you even further.
Write down how the book (and article) saves your time, saves money, improves your branding, improves your visibility, increases the size of your sales pipeline, expands your connections to clients, and allows you to market yourself 24 hours.
Repeat the question by adding in the non-financial and non-quantifiable benefits.
Are the benefits clear to you?
Are you able to explain the benefits?
What is your critical path to preparing the book?
How can some of the work to prepare the book be done within the engagement?
What are your plans to publish and distribute the book?
Will you do all of this yourself, use professional help, or a combination thereof?
What is your timeline to publish the book?
What is your critical path?
Module 7: The next sale
It is often the case that clients do not want large and wide-ranging projects. In this phase, we will show you how to adapt the largeer study into a smaller study that is more easily sold to a client. So, now you have two assets:
A - The larger detailed methodology.
B - A smaller piece to get into the client to develop the business case for the larger program.
Prep:
From the original PoV, what smaller concepts within/aligned to the PoV can be taken to clients to quickly demonstrate the value of the overall PoV/your practice?
What is the benefits case to the client of the smaller concept/s?
There are six primary benefits cases. Have you looked at them all?
What is your strategy AND plan to take this to your most promising potential client?
Why can these smaller concepts not be taken to an existing client?
What is the burn radius of the PoV and/or smaller concepts? (How replicable is the work at the same client in the same year)
How will you use the smaller concept engagement to gain a larger engagement?
Module 8: The Professional Sales Journal
In this phase, we will give you access to updated The Professional Sales Journal (which will be available within the SCRA and discussed within Insider and Legacy membership). This is a Journal we use with consulting teams to help them understand the conversations they need to have to build their sales. We will show you how to use the journal, specifically the conversations that should be held. Kris and Michael will release guides around the conversations within Insider/Legacy membership.
At the end of the program, you will have finished the only complete consulting sales practice building program to scale into major clients.Â
Prep:
What is your sales bench strength? (how many people on your team bring in sales)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength?Â
What is your delivery bench strength? (how many people on your team can lead an engagement in your absence)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength?Â
What is your insights bench strength? (how many people on your team can generate valuable insights that lead to additional revenue for your practice)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength?Â
Do you train people to sell or do you hope it catches naturally?
Are you defensive of your clients, from the rest of your firm, AND your team?
Why is this?
Three Options to Join + Add-On
Subscribe to Insider - gain access to video/audio materials related to this program.
Subscribe to Legacy - everything within Insider plus submit your question and get an audio input from us tailored to your situation.
Work with us via personal results clinics - 1-year executive coaching program where we work with you personally to help you build out your practice (email team@firmsconsulting.com to apply).
Add-on - Team access - Want to build out associated digital assets for your business? Use our nontechiesleague.com service, where our team will help you build out digital assets.
Add-on - Article + Book - Published Author program to help you write your article/book.
Sincerely,
Michael