This week, we begin the release of the very first documents (wrap-up meeting of the engagement that led to the new engagement and five issues meetings).

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This is for a significant and much-requested program: Building a Consulting Practice – from the first meeting to the methodology, proposals, books, and new revenue streams. Documents are being released to SCRA and video explanations will shortly be loaded to StrategyTraining.com.

By now, you should have thought through the questions from the program. You should have read the rough overview of the meetings that led to the pivotal sale. One of the key strategies we follow is to work for large companies and generate multiple revenue streams. In this step, we will show you the key slides from the initial engagement that led to the discussion that created the new practice.

Exhibit One: Overall Engagement Strategy

The initial engagement was an operations strategy engagement described in Succeeding as a Management Consultant. The process was modified into a standard operations strategy process, which we explained in The Operations Management Strategy Journal. Both books are only available within the SCRA. The standard operations strategy process is unique to FIRMSconsulting and StrategyTraining.com. Most firms, including large consulting firms, have no process to develop an operations strategy. Instead, they focus on ad-hoc problems as they arise. This standard process allows you to conduct routine reviews of a client’s operations, which uncovers additional work.

While this email discusses selected pages/slides, the entire document can be found in the SCRA under Building a Consulting Practice. Partner commentary on the strategies and tactics will be uploaded to StrategyTraining.com.

As the partner leading this engagement, where would you focus on next? What is the next logical problem that the client would need help on? Why do you believe this to be true? What would need to happen for this to be true?

The client, Global Corp. Inc. (GCI), has been struggling to grow. The initial engagement was to make the operations as lean as possible (cutting costs) while generating as much cash as possible (moving to continuous operations) to fund new growth opportunities. The client believed its core business was dying. We are already working with the client on their operations strategy and expanding into new businesses.

Exhibit Two: Highly Fluid Approach to Solving Operations Problems

Before we developed the highly effective and unique approach in The Operations Management Strategy Journal, we sent in dedicated teams of consultants to solve operations problems we identified in the top-down financial analyses (See The Strategy Journal for the process). This worked well at this particular client since they had issues arising rapidly and we needed to act quickly to contain them.

Now we are going to discuss the problem with most strategy engagements. And it is a significant problem.

Health vs. Performance
Income statements and cash-flow statements can be easily manipulated to show excellent performance. A company can sell core assets to book non-recurring income as income and boost its earnings while cannibalizing itself. Enron did this, among other things. Earnings go up. Performance goes up. Yet, the business is becoming less and less healthy.

While you can shift, hide and manipulate things on the income and cash flow statements, you cannot make a problem disappear. It has to go somewhere. That is the balance sheet. Everything shows up in the balance sheet. Here is the scary fact, most consultants and consulting engagements rarely look at the balance sheet. That’s because most consultants cannot understand a balance sheet. A balance sheet is like a vast reservoir. Everything collects here.

Here is another example. A luxury sports car manufacturer redesigns its product line and launches $400,000 entry-level cars. To drive sales, they offer highly generous leasing options. They announce sales are up, but many of the vehicles are returned with one to three years, those cars sit on their balance sheet burning a hole in it.

Most consulting engagements focus on performance. Very few focus on the health of the business. And that is reflected in the balance sheet. If you analyzed the balance sheet of a company, you will find many more opportunities to help a business.

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Exhibit Three: Slide presented in the first of five meetings to close a landmark engagement

As a result of the operations strategy study, we had found ways to cut costs, increase production yield, increase productivity, move to continuous operations, and increase the free cash flow. It was a successful engagement at raising the performance of the business.

We assumed the next step was to change their investor relations strategy to communicate what had been done so that their share price could reflect the changes. The client agreed but raised a series of what we will call balance sheet items, though they did not see them as such.

This is what you need to think about, which we will discuss in the program:

1. In general, what is a balance sheet item?
2. Do you think improving the performance of the business hurt/helped its balance sheet?
3. Why?
4. Do you think the client understood the problem that they raised in the meeting?
5. How do you think they presented the problem?
6. What was the key challenge we faced in responding to the problem?

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Evolution of a New Practice
Over five slides and five meetings, we will show you how a practice is designed and ultimately built into a methodology supported by books, journals, etc. This is done to bolster the reputations of the partners and the firm.

Crucially, we have not done this work before, and it’s highly technical. There is no best-practice or experience on which we can rely, which is our key advantage. We can rethink everything from the bottom up. This is often an advantage consultants forget they have. Lack of experience allows you to see things with fresh eyes and see what others overlook.

You will see this in the way we structure and deliver the engagement. We go broad to find the problem, but we go very narrow on the problem statement. The problem is the fundamental reason the engagement worked. We solved a very different issue from what most firms and consulting teams would focus on.

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Exclusive access to the strategic assets top consulting firms keep locked away. The Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) provides a rare opportunity to explore proprietary proposals, advanced strategic planning documents, full studies, centers of excellence, non-public strategy books and high-value insights that have driven over $500 million in results. Designed for those operating or who wants to operate at the highest levels of consulting, strategy, and leadership, this resource offers an unparalleled competitive advantage. Its value speaks for itself, one of the industry’s leading firms you know sought to acquire it. Access the SCRA here.

Your Next Steps

We often receive emails from junior/non-equity partners asking how to become promoted or wondering why the firm is not rewarding them with a promotion. It’s straightforward. If you build a sustainable book of business, which means you have the trust of clients, firms will make you an equity partner (all things being equal, of course, meaning provided compliance with ethical standards, etc).

If you are an independent consultant, you know how important it is to bring in sales, and do so at larger and larger sizes to fund the growth of your business. Sales is critical. That foundational skill must be in place to allow hiring, growth, development, research, etc.

This is the best way to use the material:

1. Go to “Building a Consulting Practice” in the SCRA.
2. Review the document (here is a direct link if you are an SCRA member) on the operations strategy program.
3. Review the five slides used to close the sale.
4. You will find that our sales are significantly different from what you would expect to result from an operations study. We will explain how we did it, but think about how you would manage this before we explain things in the program to follow.
5. Consider how to include balance sheet analyses in your work. This is difficult to do, but we will explain the right way to do it. Hint: It’s not about analyses at all or understanding a lot of accounting.

You don’t need to have read Succeeding as a Management Consultant or The Operations Management Strategy Journal to be a part of this sales program. Though you should if you want to conduct operations strategy engagements in a way that feeds more sales to you.

Three Options to Join + Add-On:

1. Subscribe to Insider – gain access to a vast video/audio library and materials within Insider (thousands of training episodes that will change the way you think) plus all the training episodes we will be releasing related to this program. Note that you can select to enroll as a monthly Premium member and earn Insider status when your 7th consecutive month begins or immediately gain Insider status with an annual membership.
2. Subscribe to Legacy – everything within Insider plus more advanced programs plus be able to submit an occasional question in writing and get an audio reply from us, which takes into account your particular situation.
3. Subscribe to the Strategy Control Room Advanced membership/SCRA – see the full studies, proposals, premium books, centers of excellence and more. This is our full knowledge management system to which you can gain access.
4. 1-on-1 executive coaching results clinics (most effective and powerful, to be used in combination with 1/2+3 above) – Apply to [email protected]. Please submit your resume (in any format you have it available).

Add-on – Article + Book – Published Author program to help you write your article/publish your book or chapter.