Building Exceptional Firms: From Rainmaking to Culture Building, What Makes Great Firms Stand Out?
What Iconic Consulting Firms Do to Grow in a Post-COVID Era
Consulting Magazine held the “2024 Best Firms to Work For” Industry Series and awards dinner in New York City earlier this month. Before the evening awards ceremony, Integreon sponsored an interactive afternoon educational program, with business development leaders and innovators exploring today’s success drivers for consulting and providing practical input on what it takes to grow a firm.
Tom McMakin, CEO and board member of Profitable Ideas Exchange and author of best-selling books on business development, hosted the afternoon session keynote, “Unlocking Growth: Rainmaking Best Practices in the Post-COVID Era.” McMakin’s talk was rich with pragmatic advice for delivering new business to a firm. He first outlined what having a culture of business development excellence is not. Selling obstacles in his eyes, include the following:
- Partners who say they are “too busy” to do business development. They need to be involved and help drive new business.
- Overly complex incentives (which confuse instead of inspiring those who sell to sell more.)
- Salespeople who are too protective of their “cash cows.” They do not want to share leads to enable cross-sell.
- Over-reliance on demand generation and leads created from content downloads; not all are qualified leads.
- Salespeople who do not trust their CRM and do not enter all information.
He also spoke about the importance of trust in building a consulting firm business. He went on to explain that consultants possess a unique disadvantage when it comes to building trust, as the buyer must assume an even higher level of trust, as the buyer must have trust someone who is both diagnosing a problem and recommending a way to fix it. He recommended a few ways to close the trust gap effectively with prospective clients, including:
- Leaning into a referral network. Encourage clients to provide a testimonial, agree to a case study, who serve as a reference.
- “Narrowcast” your marketing activity. Instead of broadcasting to a large group of B2B decision-makers, focus your efforts from a title, geographic, or firmographic standpoint. Staying focused will help you to create highly relevant messaging as well as have no waste in your outreach.
- Commit to a market segment over the long term. Being “closer to the deal” helps you to be thought of when an actual need arises, so find ways to “stay close” by creating value as a community builder. Convene like-minded people on a regular basis and serve as host to their networking and peer-to-peer educational sessions. Have your customers participate (they will help lure in others, especially if they are from a well-known/respected organization).
- Start your outreach by offering participation in a virtual event; it is less of a commitment than a live conference.
- Instead of “hunting,” consider yourself a gardener tending to seeds in plots. You need to water and weed in order for anything to bloom or ripen.
The keynote was followed by discussions on unlocking growth for a consulting firm and building a high-performance culture in post-COVID times, moderated by Murray Joslin, EVP of Creative and Business Solutions at Integreon. The discussion uncovered additional insights, centered on the importance of culture, customer curiosity, and relationship building. A panel with Ralph Barone, AVP Consulting, Cognizant; Frank Limardo, Consultant, SEI; and Ben Waskey, Engagement Director, Wilson Perumal & Company on operationalizing rainmaking. One tip Barone offered was to not start with a PowerPoint deck when pitching a new client. He recommended instead to ask good questions, and to follow up with a deck once you have formulated an idea of how you can help.
When asked how he was winning business today, Waskey offered up that in post-COVID times, it is even more important to have a personal touch and to see prospects and clients in person when possible. He suggested taking advantage of existing relationships to build more. Make a point of making a personal visit if he is trying to get to know a prospect.
Limardo mentioned that his firm’s approach to building new business is different. They take the long view to creating relationships and selling and while they have business development goals, there are no targets set per rep. Joslin also raised the importance of tracking people and their career, as a switch in companies could open up the possibility of a project. He mentioned that job changes can be tracked in LinkedIn or via software that notifies you when someone has changed jobs.
The last discussion of the day was a roundtable on “Building an Exceptional Culture – What it Takes to Build a Remarkable Work Environment.” Joslin moderated this exchange, with the above panelists and audience members. There were several key takeaways from this discussion on what creates a culture for consulting firms to thrive:
- What makes for a great culture? Collaboration and teamwork with a diverse set of people with different perspectives working together.
- Empowerment: allowing people to feel like they are part of the organization. Allow them to grow, take on that better assignment, and even make mistakes.
- Build a culture of people not just wanting to help their clients, but to help each other too. This way everyone feels supported and part of a team.
- Maintain relationships with people even after they leave your firm. You do not know how they can help you down the road; they may even become a client themselves.
- Make sure employees at all levels have shared values and are “walking the talk.” Company values can be incorporated into performance reviews to create this accountability.
- Treat every client the same no matter the size of the account. Every piece of work is important to us because it is important to them. Also, you could end up learning more on the smaller engagements.
- Encourage employees to act like owners. This is one way to create curiosity, self-initiative, and accountability.
It was a full afternoon of consultants helping consultants, in addition to firms being recognized at the evening awards show. Visit Consulting Magazine for a full view of the evening’s winners.