How to redesign a consulting business

These are the six levers I help partners and directors calibrate in order to unlock higher margins from their practice. Left unattended, you'll witness how your business runs amok with little regard of your desires, intentions, and actions.

Lever 1: Client

What success looks like:

You work with ideal clients and they see you as an expert (not as yet another vendor).

What to watch out for:

• Ideal client ratio (ideal clients / total client base)
• Expert positioning ratio (ideal clients seeing you as an expert / total ideal client base)
• Client base sustainability (Billing fee distribution, client roster size, and financial runway)

Lever 2: Offering

What success looks like:

Your products and services focus on solving your client's dream outcomes (as opposed to offering outputs that could be linked to results, somehow...).

What to watch out for:

• Outcome-based offering ratio (outcome-based products & services / total products & services in your portfolio)
• Outcome-based billing fee ratio (Outcome-based billing fee / total billing fee)
• Outcome-based margin ratio (average outcome-based contract margin / average contract margin)

Lever 3: Delivery

What success looks like:

Your work fulfills the outcomes you promised during selling and your client incorporates those results into their narrative.

What to watch out for:

• Avoid starting an engagement with no clear baseline.
• Track elapsed time from start to first insight.
• Track elapsed time from start to first quantitative business outcome.

Lever 4: Team

What success looks like:

Your team lead every engagement (as opposed to acting as your client's extra pair of hands).

What to watch out for:

• Are you walking the walk, leading by vision, developing others, and removing systemic roadblocks?
• Is your team learning, growing, and evolving?
• Are you investing a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings?

Lever 5: Processes

What success looks like:

You achieve remarkable results thanks to your systems and processes (not in spite of them)

What to watch out for:

• Reporting processes (Time invested in reporting, usefulness, and simplicity)
• Approval processes (Time to approve requests, transparency, and relevancy)
• Knowledge management (Avoid turning every engagement team into an isolated silo)

Lever 6: Culture

What success looks like:

Your habits take you closer to your desired outcome (as opposed to derail your progress).

What to watch out for:

• How do you address problems
• How do you address failure
• Meeting culture (Time invested, meeting effectiveness, numbers of meetings that should have been a chat message)

Now you know it. Incorporate those six levers into your steering framework. Observe the system, make questions, and decide where the 80/20 resides. Start there. Start now.

Hit reply if you want me to take a look to your specific context.

Have a great Thursday,

Alberto