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Knowledge Solutions for Smarter Organizations
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Revamping your Consulting Practices
Revamping your Practices' Business Development Process - Group Workshop
Are your Consulting Practices thriving, steadily growing, or barely hanging on? Are you certain that there is a market for the services, but your firm just isn't getting much business? Are your Practice Leaders both highly talented and hard working, but not achieving revenue or profitability goals? Are your Practice Leaders becoming frustrated? Does it seem like a lot of effort goes into acquiring new clients and projects but little to show for it.
Perhaps the reason is that the efforts are being focused on the wrong activities. Consider the following:
 Does the firm have a nice brochure and collateral material for each practice?Is your web site every bit as nice as the brochure?Do your Practice Leaders do a good job of describing their services?Do your services match up well with competitive services?Do your Practice Leaders present thought-leading papers at professional society meetings and industry events?Do they participate in several networking events each month? Do practice leaders cold call a number of new prospects each month and continue to follow up seeking an appointment?If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this could mean your business development practices are focused on the wrong things. Here's why. Nice brochures are often filled with beautiful graphics that say a lot about the company and its services, but rarely provide a sufficient understanding of the client's issues or concerns. They do little to build credibility. A nice matching web site often suffers from the same deficiencies. They may be good looking and flashy, but do they speak to the clients issues sufficiently, and prove that you can solve their problems.
Many Practice Leaders do a good job describing the firm and its services. This isn't a bad thing, but the timing of when to do it is the central point. What's needed is more focus on the client's problems and establishing a mutual understanding of their situation before describing your services. Even then, we need to emphasize the benefits the client will receive should they solve the problem, not the details of how we get them there.
Your services are similar to your competitors? So why should they buy from you? What unique value do you provide?
Your Practice Leaders present thought-leading papers at various events and they participate in lots of networking events - so why don't they get more business? Presenting papers and participating in networking events can be great, but if they aren't generating business, then perhaps the message being communicated is not on target. High concept papers, for example, sometimes fail to demonstrate value to clients who might be listening. Clients generally respond less to conceptual issues than to ideas that quickly solve their current problems.
All of this points to the fact that many Practice Leaders don't know the best ways to build their practice, and some of the most able Practice Leaders need to occasionally fine tune their methods. This purpose of our group workshop, Revamping your Practice's Business Development Process, is designed to help Practice Leaders focus on the right things. It is based on the business development components encompassed in our 15 Dimensions of Practice Leadership (positioning, packaging, promoting, pricing, pursuing, persuading, and proposing).
This workshop is more than just a group training session. Prior to the workshop, I will interview participants and their managers, review marketing materials and sales procedures to identify areas of concern, and then adapt the workshop accordingly. During the class, we will use a combination of presentations, self-evaluations, group action learning activities, and interactive exercises to begin developing the mindset and tools each Practice Leader will need to succeed.
Immediately following the 2-day workshop, I will meet individually with each Practice Leader to focus on their specific issues and help them establish a game plan for moving forward. Over the next 3 weeks, I will hold weekly telephone coaching sessions with participants to answer questions, discuss issues, and help ensure they are progressing smoothly.
You will begin seeing results within weeks of the workshop. In what way? Practice Leaders will be immediately re-energized and be motivated to implement the ideas and methods revealed during the workshop. Client calls will be better focused on uncovering client issues and building credibility. And clients will respond with engagement opportunities that just a short time before seemed unlikely. Over a longer term, clients will begin calling your practice leaders and providing more referrals than ever before.
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