What you can learn from your peers about growing a successful business consulting practice.
To succeed you’ll need a to start by selecting a methodology to use across all clients so your staff can understand and help on cases when needed.
A methodology will also help you scale. Think of the methodology as the common language your team can use to collaborate on cases. You CPAs out there already do this by using GAAP. A standard language is helpful, isn’t it? The business consulting methodology is critical to the success and growth of your firm-wide business consulting practice.
Once you select a methodology, you need to train your staff. Who should you train? Ask yourself if it’s better to have one person or lots of people speaking the common language. The methodology will help your firm scale faster if you don’t keep it in the closet… Get your relevant staff trained and excited so they can hit the ground running.
What does training look like? If you’re getting it from CoreValue, there are lots of options:
- Orientation: 1 hour how-to
- On-Boarding: 1-1 Customer Success coaching program
- Power User Training: workshops for hands-on experience working a case
- Professional Services: custom training/mentoring for enterprise customers. Deliverables can include compliance-approved template client reports, marketing programs, sales training, and more
While select firm pros should be trained in all of these areas, ALL of your pros should speak the language and be able to start the business consulting conversation. You can get this done in as little as an hour.
How do you start your business consulting engagements? Outfits like Bain start by analyzing their client on a macro or micro level. For example Bain helps “[b]uild a detailed analysis of a market opportunity—and then mobilizes your sales teams to attack it.” (https://prod.bain.com)
Bain’s magic word is “analysis” because if you can measure it, you can benchmark it --and track the growth your services are delivering.
Where do you start? Operational Analysis is a key service you should offer all of 
your clients. Operational Analysis provides a macro view that’s built on 18 micro analyses; and each of these 18 are service engagement opportunities. Operational Analysis is sold as a service to SME players for $4,500-$10,000, and often result in long-term engagements. Let us know if you’d like details, we’re glad to help.
Here are your Best Practices:
- A firm-wide methodology
- Your client-facing pros doing initial consulting assessments, generating leads for the Business Consulting Team
- Business Consulting Team selling and delivering Operational Analysis services
- Operational Analyses helping you to design and deliver long-term client engagements
Would a system like this help your firm to thrive? Please comment, or shoot an email to blog@corevalueforadvisors.com, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
