designing a professional services business

8/6/2019 Designing a Professional Services Business

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13th September 2007

Designing a professional services business

Uniqueness of services

V a l u e

t o

c l i e n t

*Adapted from Alexander Consulting

Specialists

Game Changers One-stop shops

Vendors (bottom-feeders)

Characteristics

•customer sufficement

•high staff t/o •supplier of commodity skills •low margins

•high utilisation rates •no training or esprit de corps •shambolic processes

?

Characteristics•Niche players

•high margins low utilisation •state of the art •guru-intensive

•quirky

Characteristics•customer satisfaction •account mgmt

•middling to good services •middling margins hi t/o •high staff t/o

•high levels of control

Characteristics•thought leaders •pick and choose clients

•best in class •process-intensive •no lightweights •low staff t/o

•alumni programmes •hi margins low to mid t/o



13th September 2007

Characteristics of ‘game changer’ consultancies

• Reputation and brand management

• Selective recruitment – well-disciplined second-rate people following a first-

rate process can achieve anything• Low staff t/o – golden handcuffs

• Disciplined and process-intensive

• Consultants responsible for achieving personal sales & billing targets

• High trust/low admin• No distinction between selling and operating staff

• No advertising or conventional PR

• Lots of thought leadership, books, non-exec directorships, policy-making etc

• Best clients, big jobs, most interesting work, most valuable tools

• Global• Strong commercial management

• >30% gross margins



13th September 2007

Things that stop services firms becoming great

• Picking the wrong area to work in. All game-changers operate firmly in the strategy area(innovation).

• Employing people without a consulting profile. They are not self-managing (overheads grow)

lack sufficient drive and ambition and are not credible to CxO’s (TC’s)• Bad (or absent) operating and/or commercial processes

• High staff turnover. Staff t/o is a measure of quality of a firm as well as a cost

• Tolerating indiscipline. Damages morale and frustrates results management

• Separating commercial people and consulting staff. This creates internal tensions and relieves95% of client-facing staff of their opportunities to sell and grow

• Treating consultants like manufacturing operatives rather than trusted professionals• Having professional managers who are not billable. This is both unhealthy and unaffordable.

Internal admin should be based on self-service principles.

• Advertising or PR. This repels top clients and is vapid

• Bad marketing. Game-changers apply superior knowledge and process to deliver better results.Market superior knowledge through various outreach events

• Lack of client confidentiality/sub board level behaviour/poor ethics• Doing work for free

• Not learning/evolving. The stuff we do for clients this year they’ll do for themselves next year etc

• Bad leadership and/or lack of values and identity

• Greedy partners (staff turnover and mass desertions)

designing a professional services business

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