MANAGEMENT AND SPECIALIST CONSULTANCIES
You're the best consultant in the business. That may be the problem.
Coaching and mentoring for owners of management and specialist consultancies, £500K to £10M turnover.
Strategy, operations, HR, change and specialist consultancies of five to fifty people, where the owner still wins most of the work, leads the biggest engagements, and fills the gaps with associates.
SIGNS OF STRAIN
Does any of this sound familiar?
That doesn't mean something is wrong with the business. It is what happens when a good consultancy grows faster than the way it is run.
Most new work still comes through you, and dries up when you're busy delivering.
Business development happens between engagements, so the pipeline runs feast and famine.
You price by the day, and the day rate hasn't moved in years.
Clients ask for one more thing, and the team says yes without a second thought.
The bench is never quite right: empty one month, full the next, with associates taking the margin.
Clients ask for you by name, so stepping back from delivery feels impossible.
Cheaper competitors, and now AI, have clients asking what a day of consulting is worth.
FIVE OF THE TEN KEY AREAS
Where consultancies usually start
The SMARTer System looks at ten key areas of the business. In consultancies, these five come up most often. They are the usual starting points, not a fixed route: we work only on the two or three that would make the biggest difference to you.
Direction and leadership
A clear view of what the business sells and who it is for, so you stop competing on price for work anyone could do.
Practice behind it: Strategy as a few clear choices; Goals that actually get done
Sales
A pipeline that doesn't wait for you to be free, proposals that diagnose before they prescribe, and fewer bids you were never going to win.
Practice behind it: Diagnose before you propose; Staying visible to the 95%
Finance and commercial management
Knowing which engagements and clients actually make money, and pricing for the value of the work rather than the days it takes.
Practice behind it: Service and client profitability; Reviewing your prices; Leverage, paid time and pricing
People
Developing consultants who can lead engagements and win follow-on work, and using associates by choice rather than in a hurry.
Clients
Turning finished engagements into follow-on work, extensions and referrals, so each year doesn't start from nothing.
WHY ME
My business sells expertise too
My own business runs on the same arithmetic as yours: a limited number of days, a fee for each of them, and a pipeline that needs attention even when the diary is full.
Before that, I spent thirty years in frontline commercial roles for Oracle, Infor and Lawson, selling complex, high-value work to cautious buyers who took months to decide. I have also built three businesses of my own.
What I don't do is your consulting. You know your field far better than I do. My job is the business around it, and I'll always tell you whether you are hearing a question, the evidence, or my own experience.
AN ILLUSTRATION
What this can look like
55%
of working days paid for
1,190 days
a year not paid for
Take a consultancy with twelve consultants and fees of about £1.3 million. Everyone is busy, the owner still does most of the selling, and profit has been flat for three years.
There is one number worth checking: what share of your consultants' working days do clients actually pay for? Suppose it is 55%. Twelve consultants have about 2,640 working days a year between them, so around 1,190 days go unpaid: proposals that didn't land, internal meetings, and extra work clients asked for but never paid for.
Three changes usually help. Agree what each engagement includes before it starts, and quote for anything extra. Put someone other than you in charge of keeping the next three months booked. And review the day rate for new clients, which most consultancies haven't touched since they set it.
If paid days rose from 55% to 62%, that would be about 185 more paid days a year: around £166,000 at £900 a day, with the same team.
BEFORE YOU BOOK
Questions consultancy owners ask
Do you need to know our field?
No. You know your field. The business questions are the same whatever you advise on: where the work comes from, what it is priced at, how much of the team's time is paid for, and how much depends on you.
We advise businesses for a living. Why would we need a coach?
For the same reason your clients need you: it is hard to see your own business clearly from inside it. I won't tell you how to consult. I'll help you run the business that does it.
Should we move away from day rates?
Possibly, for some work. Day rates are simple and clients understand them, but they cap what you earn and reward taking longer. I'll help you work out where fixed or value-based fees would suit your clients and your margins. The decision is always yours.
We're fully booked. When would we find the time?
On the Programme, plan on two to four hours a week, including our sessions. Most of it is time already spent on the problem, such as chasing the next engagement, rewriting proposals and doing work nobody paid for, spent more usefully.
Talk it through
Forty-five minutes to an hour on Zoom, fitted around your client work. Bring the engagement that overran, or the proposal you didn't win. No pitch, no pressure, and you'll leave with something useful either way.