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hi everyone and welcome to another podcast about building aka growing a consulting firm or consulting practice in today's episode I want to talk about new clients but before I do that I also want to mention that this entire series is based on obviously the experiences we have had helping numerous boutique firms and even the offices of large firms and based on our personal experiences as well now inside us our loyalty members there is going to be an insider version of this program that is probably already launched by now and what we do in that program is a little bit different while we cover the same concepts in that program we are going to case study one fairly large depending on what you call large but a firm with about a two million dollars of revenue and how we help them to significantly increase that revenue change their client mix and so on so in the insider version of this program we're going to discuss one firm and show you each of the tools and techniques we used and how we took them through each step and of course if you are listening to this on itunes remember there is a youtube version of this with graphics right so you can go to our YouTube channel so let's just talk about clients aren't quite important we know sales is important you can't do much without revenue aka sales coming in you can have the best plans you can have the most noble intentions you can want to change the world you want to maybe do things that are important to the well-being of your country but unless you have revenue coming in all of that is just an aspiration that will never see the light of day so one of the first things I always tell clients who run with it's a firm way of eyes just one of them or a group of people or even an office of a large firm is you need to find clients and do it in a way that closes the sale fast and you have to avoid what I call the layman's view of the way McKinsey BCG and so on death sales because the way they actually do sales is very different but I'm not just yet to talk you through how McKinsey closes sales because a lot of the things McKenzie o BCG does you cannot do as a boutique firm so I'm going to talk you through the things we've done with that client in the insider program similar clients that are suitable for smaller organizations organizations consulting organizations that are different from the larger firms so as a starting point right if you stick to the basics finding clients is a not difficult but you must follow the plan of not acting like a large firm so what I mean by this I'll tell you a little bit of an anecdote yeah many years ago when I was a partner I was sent into the Latin American officers to help stabilize one of the offices and I was working with quite a few of the others as a resource partner I had skills that clients that this office could serve would want and I remember arriving there came off a long flight lost my clothing so I went to the office the next day wearing the same clothing from my long flight which was about 17 hours not feeling so good and I'd met everyone and the partners were talking me through an analysis that they'd been working on for a fairly long time led by some EMS and associates on clients they should target sectors they could target to rebuild the practice my feedback to them is that we already have a strategy it's called an MX card and what I meant by that is that I'm not interested in sectors we should target industries we should targets clients we need to get into because let's focus on the claims we know take them out for drinks and dinner and focus on those clients that's a common mistake I see most firms making and people trying to build a consulting firm they focus too much in clients they think they should be serving and ignore potential clients they have access to so in that situation there was no market analysis and they almost is no never a market analysis I've never seen a market analysis ever done with partners what we do is we work on the relationships we have and we start a vid so if you're thinking whoom should i target which sectors which industries you asking the wrong question the correct question is whom are the clients I know and whom are the clients I can get a meeting with those are the clients you target even if it's in a sector that you don't want to sell in fact there's no such thing as a sector you don't want to sell every sector matter what sector it is in the world is gonna have some segment of clients that's going to be attractive to you you worry about clients the first part is go for clients you can access go for clients you know meet them in another story when I was serving this is my first major client and if you follow rebuilding a consulting practice partnership meant I talk about this client a lot it's the client that made me and around the most important engagement at that client but anyway they're officers they had a very very simple office and they believed in it in a low overhead structure small head office anyway the head office a resources client was in this luxurious high-end building complex with these fancy Italian and French restaurants on the lower level so I would go and have a meeting with usually it was the chief financial officer of the chief operating officer sometimes the CEO was involved remember I was just starting out I was still only an engagement manager at this stage so I didn't have the excess I had later on in my career but anyway I would meet these guys 30-minute one-hour meeting and then I would go to the Asian restaurant on the ground floor so that every time people from the client were leaving they'd have to pass the restaurant and they would see us I'd be sitting there with another Engagement Manager was running studies for me and we'd be having a four hour lunch and drinks I mean people from the office would see me it didn't matter because what would happen then is every time an employee of the resources client would leave that I wanted to meet I would invite them along say hey you know it's a Friday evening why don't you join us for drinks and that's basically how I did sales there was no I mean there was some thinking involved and so on but there was no powerpoints an analysis of issues and so on because as someone who's serving that client I know the issues it's not as if I'm serving a client I know nothing about and I gotta do research I know the issues I've been working with them on operation strategy for good few months I've been being exposed to their financial strategy issues and all kinds of things so when I see an employee I know when an employee I want to meet I just pull them or say I won't you have a drink with us it's Friday evening I mean and someone say well I gotta go home I promised my kids I say just one drink we'll have one drink and of course it turns in like 10 drinks but the end of that I can't walk so I gotta sit there for another three hours might have coffee and you know get to the point where I can drive home but my point is that forgetting how you meet clients the most important thing is meet clients you can serve forget about everyone else now this thing about offering to demonstrate your skills for four days a k3 is something we used as well you know if you follow rebuilding and consulting practice I moved to a badly performing emerging markets office and had a chance to go to London had a chance to go to Boston I turned them all down and I went to a pretty terrible office and I remember that the associate principal who groomed me to become a partner what he would do is would call up people he knew in the executive offices of resources clients clients he wanted to serve they were not here at our clients they were clients of the firm but not that this particular branch of that client was not being served that office so it called them up and sometimes it was the head office as well because there's a lot of resources companies in the area and say you know what we know it's Christmas time why don't we send one of our top people to work with you think through issues and you know see what happened it's free but he would never say that you'd quite a second mentor whatever he wants you know because we're trying to work with clients and see what could happen and I would be deployed and later when I became more senior and become a partner I would do that resolve my top people the point is that it's basically five days continuous access to clients you're doing work for free but what is the alternative sit in an office and send them emails send them proposals no so at the end of this I've never been in a situation where it never led to some work maybe the work came immediately sometimes the work came three months later sometimes it led to a significant improvement in the relationship but it always led to us doing work and what we were doing those four or five weeks we would do one of two things we're gonna sketch out an issue that's required us to do an analysis or we'd identify an issue and say you know what we think we know what we need to do to fix this but why don't we do a short two-week pilot with just two people obviously it's paid and then that would lead to billable work and then that would lead to implementation so whenever I look at firms and they talk with how they're gonna do the studies and this analysis that's what clients you do not know never clients you do not know easiest thing in the world is to do a survey of supply chain issues in their SEC to anything do a study right firms invest in intellectual property do some kind study for this of the sector do an analysis doers and a summary develop a new approach do some benchmarks or whatever it is and then use it as an opportunity to meet an executive to talk about what you find in the sector that's how you meet clients you do not know all of this can be done cheaply and quickly yes interesting thing in the insider version of the program we're going to talk about that one client we work with which is representative of other clients as well but the interesting thing for them is that this area of work generated eventually over 50 percent of their revenues when we were done with them because we wanted them to diversify away from revenue that was purely generated from billable hours it was difficult because quite a few them X McKinsey and so on so they had this view that consulting is pio it must only be billable hours so focus on clients you know that's the most important thing right now if you watching this video listening to us on iTunes and you want to see some of the more advanced stuff we do go to firmsconsulting comm fi our MSC o NS ult ing comm and if you register for free I'll put your name into the opt-in to pop up we will send you sample videos of some of the advanced stuff we do now as you go through this program remember this right it's all about going after the clients you have access to even if you've sent them from a long time notice what I always tell firms serve larger clients because if you finish one engagement to them there's always a chance something else will be coming up if you serve a smaller client the odds are they're going to be doing less consulting work and there's less for you to move on to so how are you approaching your current clients how many meetings have you arranged how will you lower resistance what are you going to do to get them to speak to you and then the other category which is for later down the line but you got to start pursuing now is how do you get to clients you do not have access to but you want to know so let's do a bit of a wrap-up here right so let's tie this together and some of the lessons now it's applies to new young small consulting office small offices but it also applies to large offices these are techniques I used when I was at the firm and I had to go after big multi-billion dollar clients when here to turnaround offices with 70 people 120 people first thing is that you should not spend your days and weeks developing a strategy for how you're going to serve client and how you're gonna grow the firm because you just don't know enough about the market and you cannot afford to burn so much hours on something that's really an expense you gotta go out there meet clients and as you talk to them you will find out what the issues are having two associates Sigyn offers a reading annual reports to find out the company's issues is really a hit and miss if you sit with a client for an hour you're gonna find out more than anything anyone could ever do in the office to prepare you for that meeting don't get bogged down with complex sales presentations this is something that people tend to forget about the major firms we don't really didn't have complex presentations because of our reputation we get to put together very simple presentations and get the work but because you usually don't have a reputation as a younger smaller office and smaller firm you should position yourself as someone who can get bankable results don't talk about implementation it's such a cliche don't talk about implementation implementation is not the same as bankable results you can implement something and not get the results you promised bankable result says you hire us you will get this but if you talk about implementation it doesn't mean you can get bankable results a lot of implementation fails folks and the clients you know offer to you know basically even if they don't agree to free work go to them four days five days in a row and talk to them help them develop issues I've been in situations where I remember the CEO of a very important client lady wanted to work with us don't really like the firm so much but she liked me and she would call me and I would go every damage to see her for something like a week I obviously didn't bully for anything I would sit in her office she had a nice lounge and I do work for her help her things through issues when meetings came up should go for the meeting should come back we talk about things that led to a incredibly important mandate for the firm to work for a client that we really wanted to work for because it was a very prestigious client that is the same thing as working for free but you can see you can be creative in the way you do it meetings five days in a row were you thinking through issues providing updates and that's free work but we don't talk about it we don't call it free if you want to meet new clients and you have a great reputation it's gonna be easy but if you don't have a great reputation then do some kind of free work analyzing the section present the results and finally the goal is always to create sustainable revenue streams and not follow traditional consulting models I may talk about this more but in the insider version we definitely talk more about breaking the revenue streams because it's just tiring and demoralizing to go through these sales lumps whereby you don't have revenue coming in for billable work right and of course you've got to ask yourself how you're spending your day because it should be in front of coins so if you have any questions or comments post a response on iTunes or YouTube as always I look forward to seeing you in the next episode