SUCCESS STORY
Our client is a leading global management consultancy that helps organisations radically accelerate performance and innovation. They challenge traditional thinking and bring new ideas to life.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom they have offices in Malaysia, Singapore and the United States. They employ 180 people globally and regularly appear in The Sunday Times Best Company to Work For awards.
An expensive business model – a ‘reverse pyramid’ of expensive senior consultants who were unable and/or unwilling to participate in business development. Without this group of employees working actively in the business development space, the ambitious growth aspirations for the Company simply would not have been achieved.
The mind shift of consultants who were traditionally delivery-focused, technical experts in their field, but also experts at hiding their skills under a bushel. The objective was to get the consultants to augment their conversations with commercial considerations and not solely technical solutions.
In summary, our client had the technical skills, but in order to meet the business strategy, they needed consultants to:
We built a programme of workshops and coaching support. As the programme was rolled out we evolved the content of the course iteratively with feedback from attendees.
There was scepticism from some about the relevance of the programme. We addressed this by planning the launch phase carefully:
The programme has made a strong impact on the business strategy, and the client already achieved three compelling business metrics – revenue growth, reduced attrition and employee engagement in 12 months.
The client saw an increased responsibility among the senior leaders within the organisation for business development. Every Principal Consultant agreed a sales revenue target. Consultants demonstrated ownership for business development and confidence that they have the capability to ‘sell’, not because they are dedicated salespeople, but because they are viewed as a ‘Go to Expert’ in their field.
And something previously unheard of, Junior consultants are now generating their own leads, and selling is certainly the ‘new normal’ for that population. Three leads have already been generated by individuals who are 1-2 years into their careers, something that was previously unheard of.
Our ‘Frog Kissing Calculator’ – a tangible tool which enables consultants to track business development activity – is now widely used; applying the tool has reinforced the ratio of leads required in order to generate an opportunity and subsequently a sale.
Consultants now understand the ‘Buying Journey’ so they can target their external marketing activity accordingly, making it relevant to the client at all times. A win-win. They understand what could be going through prospective clients’ minds at each stage and what they can do to engage and influence at each point. As a result, they now interact with prospective clients in a different way.
Putting the spotlight on this further links to being a ‘Trusted Advisor’, a core thread in our client’s business strategy. The aim is for the consultant to suspend their agenda and demonstrate their credibility to their client at the pre-engagement stage, typically this could be through a blog, sharing an article or a LinkedIn reach out.
The biggest step change was in the way their consultants now position themselves to clients. The focus now is a greater emphasis on how they help businesses achieve their goals as opposed to a focus on just the technical aspects of the project.
Whilst financial performance and margins improved so too was team confidence.
Teams were more confident in articulating the value they could deliver to their clients which had the result of improving win rates.
All the work we do is based on deep experience and we utilise the most comprehensive research sources to ensure that whatever we do will deliver results.
Our broad experience means we can quickly make interventions that are pragmatic and built on what the best do – and often brought to life with real case illustrations.
St. James House,
65 Mere Green Rd,
Sutton Coldfield,
West Midlands B75 5BY, UK
© JA Consulting Limited 2025
But that’s not when we stop working. You’ll often find we’ll respond to you out of hours and over the weekend.
Sign up for our occasional newsletters, along with other interesting updates from us.