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If you’re wondering how to build a consulting practice that attracts good clients, helps to earn their trust, and grows steadily over time, start with one thing most people overlook: a clear, differentiated Point of View (PoV).
Most consultants believe they have a Point of View.
But what they have is usually just an opinion, interesting to them, not to the client.
A true PoV builds trust. It reframes how clients think. It drives sales. It creates pull.
In this article, we walk through:
– Why most PoVs fail to create value or trust
– How one bold decision not to build a risk consulting practice became the foundation of a consulting business
– How to apply this same PoV-driven approach to strategy, corporate finance, and more
When you’re figuring out how to build a consulting practice, there’s no shortage of advice: focus on branding, thought leadership, cold outreach, referrals, lead magnets, etc.
But if your PoV is weak, unclear or undifferentiated, none of that will work long term. Clients will not see you as essential.
This is an update on our substantial new program, How to Build a Consulting Practice (Level II), where we will walk you through the documents, slides, proposals, studies, etc., to build an entire management consulting practice that generates sustainable revenue. It is the only place where members can learn these powerful consulting skills through real examples, documents, and strategies we’ve never shared elsewhere.
We are privileged to see senior executives in consulting, industry, law, accounting, tax, private equity, etc., all using the material.
If you have not already done so, think through the critical questions in each step to build the consulting practice, visualize those five initial meetings to frame the POV, review the upsell investor relations strategy work and proposal, and finally view the original engagement update, which led to the work and the five meeting slides, which led to the new engagement that built the consulting practice.
Your input matters. This is the only post on FIRMSconsulting.com where we’ve added a comments/questions section. While we may not be able to respond directly, we’ll review submissions closely and use them to shape upcoming program episodes on StrategyTraining.com. To keep the discussion focused and helpful to everyone, we’ll curate and share the most thoughtful comments that move the conversation forward.
Let’s break down the overall process:
Trust
+
Insight (also known as your PoV or initial hypothesis)
+
Ability to deliver what the insight promised
In the Consulting Sales Rainmaker Program (CSRP), we teach a robust process for generating consulting sales while building trust. Many of you will try to build trust before generating a sales pipeline, which can take years. The CSRP fast-tracks the process where the client gladly shares with you their problems, debates them for you, and ranks their importance – for you, the consultant. CSRP can be used within the approach in this program to improve the results.
This is the general trend on most insights/PoVs/initial hypotheses:
1. They are interesting, but only to you, the consultant.
2. They add no value to the client but help you make sales numbers or keep your utilization up.
3. They are very hard to understand.
Let’s use an example to explain a PoV and why there is so much room to do more with them.
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I am going to use risk as an example to make this point. Yet, the point applies to all functions, sectors, and regions. You probably discuss risk with your clients. If you are in the world of business, half your efforts must be around managing risk and half around return. Unfortunately, in the real world, ninety-five percent of effort is on return, and five percent is on risk. Yet, that’s for another program.
Consider these common statements:
“We discuss risk with our clients.”
“We have a risk practice.”
“We have a strong risk practice.”
“We have been highly rated for our risk practice.”
“There is nothing new we can do in risk.”
How many statements do you agree with? Please take a moment to think through them again.
Even if just one feels true, we’d argue it isn’t.
Yes, all five statements are false.
Let’s unpack them.
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This is what consultants are actually saying, even if they do not use these words, but they usually do.
“We discuss risk management with our clients.”
“We have a risk management consulting practice.”
“We have a strong risk management consulting practice.”
“We have been highly rated for our risk management consulting practice.”
“There is nothing new we can do in risk management.”
Most consulting firms have decided they will allow a risk into a client and, thereafter, manage it for the client. Most consultants do not realize this is their PoV when they focus on managing risk within the world of things you could do with risk. Logically, something must exist (be allowed in) to manage it. You cannot manage something that you did not allow into a business.
This may seem technical, but it’s a big deal. It’s the motherlode.
In the How to Build a Consulting Practice (Level II) program on StrategyTraining.com, Michael shows how he built an entire consulting practice by making a bold decision. Very different from his competitors, he chose not to build a risk management consulting practice. He believed it was unsafe for clients to deliberately introduce unnecessary risks into their businesses, and then have the chutzpah to think they could tame those beasts.
You can apply this same thinking across strategy, IT strategy, operations, corporate finance, supply chains, law, accounting, tax, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital.
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The exercise is:
(1) when we say we are doing x (like risk),
(2) we often do a subset of x (like managing it versus all the other things we could do with it),
(3) and we often do what our competitors are doing.
Strategy is another great example. Most consulting firms do a lot of analyses and call it business strategy. They assume strategy is a lot of detailed number crunching. In the Corporate Strategy & Transformation Study, we show you how strategy at the most senior levels is based on logical inferences versus lots of analyses.
The insight is that your firm can approach strategy in another way, just as there are other ways to approach risk versus just managing risk.
Younger strategy consultants who move to industry are often surprised to learn that at the most senior levels – board and executive – most decisions are not based on extensive analyses but on targeted logical thinking.
Corporate finance is another excellent example. To most of the world, and this includes textbooks and MBA programs, corporate finance is primarily about valuations. The majority of corporate finance is not about valuations. Here is a discussion between Michael and Tim Koller (McKinsey Senior Partner, Co-Leader of the Corporate Finance Practice, and co-author of Valuation). Tim was very pleased with this discussion because, in his words in the interview, we took the debate into the central area of corporate finance, outside valuation.
The insight is that you could build a corporate finance practice whose primary PoV was to optimize all of corporate finance, versus simply having a valuation shop.
What do you think about business cases? Just about everyone adopts the same PoV that business cases must generate the most accurate future cash flows with the appropriate discount rate, and this final number is found in all business cases. In How to Build a Consulting Practice (Level II) program, we show you a superior way to handle business cases that only audit firms have the capability to do. You must/should have a PoV on what you do, which will determine how you do it, the value you bring to clients, and how you differentiate yourself and your consulting firm.
The thinking you have to do… and remember to post your questions/comments
What is your PoV/Insight/Initial hypothesis?
Why is it an initial hypothesis?
What is the industry-wide general PoV on this topic?
How is your PoV different?
How does it help the client?
Could you do the work and realize value for the client?
With whom have you tested your PoV?
Could you explain the value of the PoV to an eight-year-old?
Some of you will say that you are in enterprise cost reduction, operations, change management, and the like, and there is no way to have another PoV.
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To prove this is false, go to SCRA and look at The Operations Management Journal. This is a radically logical and new way to approach operations strategy because it avoids the typical view that you only consider operations when you are performing below competitors or have an operations problem.
Your PoV, together with the trust you have with the client, will determine how much value you create for a client. The less value you create, the less you can typically bill.
Therefore, having a Point of View that clients want you to apply to their business is not enough. It should create significant value.
We will walk you through each step and answer all the questions we have posted in all the articles for How to Build a Consulting Practice (Level II) program.
If you are in the Consulting Sales Rainmaker Program (CSRP), which is an executive coaching program where we work personally with clients to help them build their book of business, you can combine CSRP with this approach. We will teach you to generate consulting sales at all levels, even if the client does not trust you yet.
You read that correctly. There is a way to generate significant sales when you do not yet have the clients’ trust.
If you’re an Insider or Legacy member, How to Build a Consulting Practice (Level II) program will be released soon within your membership area.
There are primary consulting sales programs are stacked in four areas:
1 – CSRP (executive coaching program) is the flagship. It is the core process and the most powerful process. Most of the studies in SCRA and StrategyTraining.com were generated via CSRP.
2—Building a Consulting Practice, Level II (this program) shows you how to build a viable consulting practice from the PoV, including the proposals, studies, articles, books, and sales we generate. Building a Consulting Practice (Level I) can be found here.
3 – Generating consulting sales when you are younger and do not have clients’ trust. Michael teaches this program and explains how to generate consulting sales rapidly when it is impossible to gain clients’ confidence in the time you have. This is coming to Insider/Legacy; you can ask questions in the comments below.
4 – In Legacy, we will have a program where we dissect the Strategy, Tactics, Pricing, and Trust-Building Plans Behind >$1MM Winning Proposals; You can send any questions in the comments below.
Not a member yet? Enroll here: strategytraining.com and select Insider or Legacy.
We care about your success and are here to support you. Feel free to reach out with questions at [email protected].
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