The 3 Common Mistakes Traditional Consulting Firms Make

David Maister is widely considered one of the leading authorities on managing professional service firms (such as law, accounting and consulting). He has taught and lectured  at a doctorate in logistics & transportation from Harvard Business School, where he taught and lectured until 1985.  In 2002, he was named one of the top 40 business thinkers in the world and he is the author of six bestselling books.

In his book Managing The Professional Service Firm (Publisher name, 1992), Maister offers practical advice for successfully managing a professional firm and brings to light the alarming realities of mistakes that consulting firms often make.

Although the book was published in 1992, well before the digital technology boom, professional service firms are still making many of the same errors Maister cited 21 years ago.

TrustedPeer now makes it possible for clients to avoid these issues. TrustedPeer’s proprietary online platform system harnesses advances in digital networking to enable client companies to sidestep common issues found in traditional consulting.  It The system allows companies to forego expensive, time-consuming and unpredictable consulting engagements and opt instead for carefully-targeted micro-consulting sessions with top-of-field experts rigorously vetted by TrustedPeer.

Here Below are three of the most common problems recognized by Maister that traditional consulting firms still make.

1.           Traditional Firms “Sell” Instead of “Solve”

As Maister states, “Buying professional services is rarely a comfortable experience.” Traditionally, a clients haves to give up some degree of control by putting their company’s’ affairs in the hands of someone else. Conventional consulting firms are often willing to take on the business of any client even if their knowledge of the client’s industry is severely limited. Firms provide clients with partners who are focused on personal incentives from the firm instead of solving the client’s issue.

Maister outlines the mindset of a potential client considering procuring professional services.

“I’m skeptical. I’ve been burned before by these kinds of people. I get a lot of promises: How do I know whose promise I should buy? I’m concerned that you either can’t or won’t take the time to understand what makes my situation special. In short, will you deal with me the way in the way I want to be dealt with?”

TrustedPeer goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure clients consult with Experts who have decades of experience solving problems in their industry and can deliver on client needs and expectations quickly. Each TrustedPeer Expert’s profile – detailing quantifiable and recognizable credentials and accomplishments – is only a starting point. Each expert also produces deep and robust content exploring common problems, key trends and best practices in his or her specific area of expertise.

Instead of buying a brand, clients can judge TrustedPeer Experts by the credibility of their content.  Before a nickel is spent, clients know exactly whom they will be working with and the depth of expertise their expert brings to solving their problems.

“Above all else, what I, the client, am looking for, is that rare professional who has both technical skill and a sincere desire to be helpful, to work with both me and my problem. The key is empathy—the ability to enter my world and see through my eyes.”

With TrustedPeer Experts, you gain knowledge from independent consultants who are not motivated to meet the quotas of a firm. TrustedPeer and TrustedPeer Experts are dedicated to solving client problems, not selling solutions. Experts are prepared to give objective, unvarnished guidance. 

2.     Traditional Consulting Firms Don’t Reinvigorate Their Assets

While successful firms may adapt and adjust, they rarely reinvigorate the talents of the partners they hire. As the environment changes and technology progresses, new issues arise that require specialized skills and knowledge. Traditional consulting firms can’t or don’t make the pivot to reinvigorate their assets because they become complacent in the skills that have previously brought them success. As Maister puts it,

“What you know now and are able to do now, what your current success is built on, will unavoidably depreciate in value unless you actively work on learning new things and building new skills.”

The network of TrustedPeer Experts is growing constantly by adding  new independent consultants in specialized fields ranging from cloud integration to agriculture.  New experts bring in new knowledge and new content. All TrustedPeer Experts regularly update their business topics and content as they work in real- time to solve client problems.

When an enterprise hires a consulting firm they often have to translate the language of their industry to receive a generalized solution to their problem. This is not a problem with TrustedPeer Experts, who on average have 26 years of experience in their specific areas of expertise. They are able to provide professional counsel that, as Maister prescribes, “does not require the client to do any mental translation of generalities or terminology into his or her specific situation.”

3.   Traditional Consulting Firms Don’t Pay Enough Attention to Existing Clients

Firms often overemphasize new clients, while overcharging existing clients for a lesser quality of service. As Maister puts it,

“When a new client is brought in, rockets go off, bells sound, your name gets in the firm newsletter and you can bank on a good bonus. If you bring in an equivalent amount of business from existing clients, the management yawns and says, ‘at last he’s doing his job.’”

For most firms, the acquisition of a new client is more exciting and potentially more remunerative. TrustedPeer avoids this tendency by frequently updating existing clients on expertise that could be of value and offering carefully-analyzed, personal custom recommendations of TrustedPeer Experts who can address new and evolving problems.

Existing clients can chose to spend their consulting budgets more wisely on frequent well-targeted micro-consulting engagements addressing different aspects of their operations than on a single large and expensive engagement of dubious and unpredictable value. In this way, TrustedPeer offers preemptive solutions to future problems before they are allowed to spiral out of control.

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Has your business growth flattened or even decayed in your market, and no amount of marketing or sales seems to be able to help it? What do you do? Develop new solutions for this market? Try to enter adjacent markets? Here is a process that we have seen used successfully in a number of different technology companies to recharge growth in revenue and profits.

Start with re-examining the Mission and Vision of your company. Why does your company exist, and what would it look like in 5 years if it was more successful in fulfilling that Mission? Don’t accept some generic statement like “to increase shareholder value.” Your Mission statement should be unique to your company, and not apply just the same to General Motors, Apple Computer, or Mrs. Fields Cookies. What will you NOT do?

The Mission and Vision statements give you the framework to take the next steps, illustrated below:

Gather the Strategic Planning team to kick-off a Strategic Planning session. This team is usually composed of the Senior Executive Staff along with some company thought leaders and maybe a key outside partner or two. An expert facilitator (such as one from TrustedPeer.com) can really help focus the effort and move things along, but the CEO should be the main driver. Give yourselves enough time to develop a robust and validated plan – usually 2 to 4 months, depending upon people’s availability and the amount to market research undertaken.

The first four steps should be done in parallel:

1. Identify what must be done to defend your current market share. The plan may involve developing new solutions, refreshing older ones, and adding marketing and service resources to provide increasing value and love to your customers.
   
   
2. Identify opportunities to enter new or adjacent markets, where you don’t currently play. This exercise is challenging because the opportunities (and the work to find them) may seem endless. Fortunately, the Internet and search engines allow efficient ways of finding and researching many opportunities. Don’t be afraid to engage outside experts or buy professional reports in areas of potential interest. Don’t just look in the most obvious and familiar places – encourage creative thought and cast a wide net. And don’t just look at areas where you have a “core competency” (see the blog: Tenet #1 of Ten Tenets of Strategy: Your core competency is not your strategy). Needed core competencies can be acquired and unneeded ones can be divested. What is important is that the new opportunities optimally fulfill your Mission and Vision. For each opportunity identified, do a short SWOT and market sizing. Pick a person in the team to “champion” each one and write a brief business case.
   
   
3. Define the market criteria for markets you may want to pursue. What are the Total Available Market (TAM) and Segmented Addressable Market (SAM) sizes that you need to see to make it worthwhile? What are the minimum revenues and margin you would consider? How fast should the total market be growing before you would consider it? What barriers to entry would keep you from entering it? How much are you willing to invest to enter a new market? These criteria will be your filter for subsequent steps.
   

4. Do a capability assessment: What are your company’s Core Capabilities? (Not your Core Competencies; see Tenet #2 of Ten Tenets of Strategy: Compete on Core Capabilities). We advise you to seek outside experts to help you figure out what you do that makes you successful in the first place. It’s a bit like medical self-diagnosis – too easy to be fooled by your own self biases.

5. By this time, you should have identified 20 or 30 or more possible opportunities to either protect and grow your existing markets or grow into new ones. Now it is time to filter and prioritize. Look at the brief business case for each of those opportunities and apply your market criteria to them. How does each one stack-up against the others? Prioritize and pick the top 5 to 10 candidates.

6. Have the “champions” for each of the top opportunities lead a “deep dive” market research effort and write a more detailed business case. Give them the time and resources to do a proper job so that the market size, potential share, achievable margins, etc. are reasonably accurate and validated. The business case should contain potential Value Propositions for your company: what customers will you serve, what pain or unmet needs are you addressing, and what would your solution need to add to have them choose it over other available solutions?

7. Prioritize the opportunities based on comparing these business cases, and on your “bandwidth” – your appetite and resources available for such initiatives. Most companies cannot attempt more than 3 or 4 new such initiatives at the same time. The winning initiatives will form the basis of your market strategy; make sure that the whole team buys into pursuing them.

8. Study how your market strategy matches your capability assessment: what are your strengths and gaps for entering these markets? What do you need to do to fill the gaps and strengthen your core capabilities? These factors are critical in deciding your market strategy.

9. Validate your decision through further market studies, and develop a detailed market strategy plan, including goals, timing, investment, resources needed and scenario planning. Decide what events or metrics might trigger a change in your plans. Discuss these plans and tweak them until every member of the team is satisfied that it is a plan with the highest probability for success. This plan becomes the Plan of Record.

10. Present the Plan of Record to the Board or Executive Committee for approval or modification.

Of course, this process or any other Strategic Planning process cannot guarantee that you will be successful. It needs to be followed by excellent execution, inspirational leadership, and a fair measure of good luck. But it does give you the best chance of success.

To book an expert session with Scott, go to Scott's page on TrustedPeer.

Sunday’s WSJ featured a piece on CEO pressure turning up in 2014.  

We talked to TrustedPeer Expert and CEO Philip Bouchard about what CEOs can do to manage the pressure they are under.  Here are 5 simple rules, garnered in a 30-minute Expert Session.

1. The primary responsibility of the board of directors is to hire and fire the CEO.  The tool the board has is blunt, so it needs attention.
2. The biggest mistake a CEO can make is to over-promise on your plan.  Be realistic and push back on pressure if the expectations feel unreasonable.
3. Managing the board isn’t about personal relationships; it’s about trust and straightforward information. This means open communications for both good news and bad.  A board member should never hear news about the company from a third party. Never.
4. Board-level communications should always be inclusive.  Send an email to all board members stating that you will call each of them over a specified time-frame.  Phone or face-to-face is the only way effective board-level communication should happen.
5. Use the board to manage strategy, not the details.  You don’t want to ask the board's advice about managing the company; they can hire a new CEO to do that.  You want to talk about your plan, how the company is performing, and what you see coming. Board members respect solid, well-thought-through arguments in which the CEO takes a position and provides a risk assessment.

If you do all of the above, your performance as CEO will burnish board members’ reputations with investors and limited partners. 

Make them look good!

Ultimately, straight talk and predictability earn trust and respect. 

If you need consulting on business management, contact TrustedPeer Expert Philip Bouchard.