Winning New Business in Management Consultancy…the Critical Success Factors
- Real life experience of professional firms
- Focus on issues that increase business win rates
- Discover best practice among other consultancies and professional firms
- Learn new marketing strategies and techniques
- Essential reading for business development professionals and practice leaders
Selling consultancy and professional services is getting harder all the time in the face of more discriminating clients, a sharper focus on value-for-money results and tougher international competition. Drawing upon data on 128 activities and issues concerned with winning business and interviews to gain further insights these reports provide comparisons with the most successful and average performers. They examine why firms want to secure more business and the different roles people play in the process. They reveal why some firms are better than others at getting business from certain sources, making themselves attractive to potential clients, winning new business from existing clients and proactively seeking new business through different techniques. They also examine qualification, proposal preparation, negotiating a successful close and learning from new business pitches.
The Benefits
- Provides detailed framework for winning new business.
- Describes how to develop your consultancy proactively.
- Shows how to make your consultancy more attractive to potential clients.
- Identifies issues which make the big difference for the most successful consultancies.
- Shows how to respond to new business enquiries more effectively.
- Stimulates debate about how to improve competitiveness.
- Focuses on the role staff can play in winning new business.
- Provides insights into winning strategies and practices in other sectors.
Learn from the experience of other management consultants…
Winning New Business in Management Consultancy…the Critical Success Factors is rich in case study material. The case studies are all chosen to illustrate key aspects of best practice in winning new business.
- W S Atkins uses its multi-disciplinary practice to establish footholds in new markets and then create business opportunities for other units in the firm.
- French Thornton won a public service contract by consistently producing a quality response at every stage of a lengthy tendering process and by treating every interaction with the client as a sales opportunity.
- Boardwish Change Management targets clients on the basis of extensive research and market knowledge and offers immediate value with each interaction.
- FBI Consulting used its membership of consultancy network, the Richmond Group, to field a multi-disciplinary team and win a major piece of public sector market-testing work.
- Tony Scott, a sole practitioner, took on a major insolvency practice, in order to win an important consultancy and training contract, demonstrating how differentiation can pay dividends.
- Metra Martech overcame national barriers in opening up international markets and moved to establish itself in the US market.
Contents
Contents Summary
Executive summary
1 Developing new business
How the research was carried out
Overview of survey findings
Defining the most and least successful consultancies
Why companies develop new business
The roles people play
Where existing business comes from
Case study: playing to your strengths
2 Winning an invitation to bid
Learning from competitors and other professions
Becoming attractive to clients
What to do to attract bid invitations
Case study: developing long-term client relationships
3 Selecting the best prospects
Learning from competitors and other professions
What to consider when choosing new clients
Reasons for turning down new business
Case study: using research to target clients
4 Preparing the proposal
Learning from competitors and other professions
Key factors when preparing proposals
Communicating with the client
Building a winning pitch team
Case study: pitching within a virtual team
5 Making the pitch
Learning from competitors and other professions
Key factors when making a pitch
Case study: differentiating expertise during the pitch
6 Negotiating to a successful close
Learning from competitors and other professions
Conducting successful negotiations
Case study: winning new business in overseas markets
7 Learning lessons from the best
Why management consultants should learn from competitors and other professions
Learning from previous new business pitches
Key factors that point to best practice
Appendix 1: Statistical summary of questionnaire results
Appendix 2: Further reading
The Research Team
A top rated research team…
The research team for Winning New Business in Management Consultancy…the Critical Success Factors brings together a leading commentator on the management consultancy profession with an well-known practitioner and an experienced business editor and author.
Mick James (author) is a respected commentator on the management consultancy scene both in Britain and across the world. He was for five years editor of the industry’s leading magazine Management Consultancy and has written about many aspects of consultancy for other business magazines and newspapers. He has a particular interest in the marketing of professional services. James is a regular conference speaker on consultancy subjects.
Colin Coulson-Thomas (executive editor) is director of the Business Development Forum and chairman of the ASK Europe plc group and other companies. He has marketed consultancy services in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia and has advised the boards of more than 50 major companies on strategic performance and business development issues. He is a visiting professor at Luton Business School. He has written more than 30 books including The Future of the Organisation and Individuals and Enterprise.
Peter Bartram (editor) is a business editor and author who has written widely on business development issues. He has helped dozen of companies develop and use winning marketing and sales messages. He has developed numerous innovative business research projects designed to help companies develop their businesses.
Policy Publications is an independent research and publishing company which specialises in producing research reports that help managers understand emerging business issues, critical success factors for key corporate activities and develop world-class performance.
Presentations and courses on the findings of the report are also available.
Winning New Business in Management Consultancy, the critical success factors (112pp; IBSN [978] 1 872980 41 4) is available price £75 plus p&p
Weight: 430g
For further information and to purchase contact Colin Coulson-Thomas