New Clients + Growth

This evening we had dinner with the founders of a boutique firm of management consultants. As former colleagues we were interested to know how they were doing. Invariably the question of growth came up and the question above was posed. It is an intriguing and very common question. If you are starting a new firm by yourself this question would also come up, or like my former colleagues, if you are growing and need to break into new areas this also comes up. To win new work you cannot mislead clients since that goes against the core of management consulting ethics. So you need to find a way which works but does not misrepresent yourself. This is what we would recommend you do. Conduct a mini-study. In our own experience this works really well. It does not always work, but it definitely positions you well for future work. Let’s use an example to explain how you could do this. Imagine you knew that Toyota was interested in reviewing their dealer network in the US and wanted to appoint a consulting firm to do the work. You have never done dealer strategy work, never done work in the automotive sector and…