KIA Corner: What Flies, What Doesn't

Marketing: Spend more energy on it than in the past
• Communicate effectively to your clients about your achievements in the recent past at similar clients in a similar industry in a similar situation. Being armed with hard facts (vs. complex methodologies) is increasingly key to convincing clients.
• For small clients, group them according to their needs and prepare template-based customized messages to highlight your achievements.

Selling: Sell higher in the hierarchy
• See longer sales cycles and the need to sell higher in the client hierarchy as an opportunity, not a risk.
• Ask for a small project to keep the troops busy. Play the "feel guilty" song.

Fees: Be creative, not stupid; follow the herd wisely
• For high-end top management consultancies: Keep book-rates mostly unchanged, but be ultra-creative when it comes to actual rates.
• For mass and middle market consultancies: Be aggressive about pricing by not only lowering fees, but by turning your product into a commodity, position consultants as high end staff augmentation.

Delivery: Walking is more convincing than talking
• Over-deliver in that assignments are completed in time, on budget, and on target. In difficult times, word-of-mouth marketing is more effective to increase cross- and up-selling than ever before.
• Leverage organizational capabilities more effectively across regions or geographies.

Firms' Most Common Mistakes

• Using tough times to focus on internal matters and cleaning house, before re-engaging with the market.
• Changing business models too drastically.
• Giving in to client pressures on pricing too easily.
• Drastic compensation or compensation-model changes that lead to unwanted departures.
• Too much "free" work for clients.
• Overly pushy sales: too eager and too desperate.
• Not knowing your competition well enough.

Here's What We Recommend

Best practice is navigating rough waters calmly. Although the consulting market traditionally lags the economy by about six months, KIA sees some early recovery and recouping of lost ground. The fourth quarter of 2009 doesn't look as bleak as some feared. How do you get back on track? You need to be more educated than ever before about:

Your own firm metrics: only four in 10 consultancies engage in regular benchmarking exercises.

Your competition, what they do differently: only 1 in 10 consultancies regularly profile their competitors and far fewer develop competitive profiles that form an effective building block for strategy.

Your clients' changed buying behavior: only 0.06 in 10 consultancies ever study the peculiarities of their target market client buying behavior, expectations and perceptions about their business.

Your clients satisfaction: a) nine out of 10 consultancies developed some sort of project-inherent quality assurance program; b) five out of 10 consultancies run a project-independent quality assurance program where somebody other than the external project leader engages with somebody other than the client's project leader; c) two out of 10 consultancies utilize the services of a third party run customer satisfaction and competitive ranking survey. Needless and a little selfish to say, but KIA has the tools and the experience to help you in this regard, if you so choose. But we don't mind if you decide to do it on your own or use somebody else. Just do it!