Client-consultant relationship

By Fiona Czerniawska.

We’ve done a variety of research recently that has, in passing, highlighted a gap between the proportion of clients who say they rate a consulting firm highly or that a given firm would be their #1 choice, and the percentage who say they’ve used that firm in recent years. Which seems counterintuitive: Surely you use the firm you think is best?

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Told that a particular general was competent, Napoleon famously asked, “but is he lucky?” And luck, it seems, is just as important a concept in consulting as it is in war.

Let’s take two recent conversations I had with clients.

By Alison Huntington

Every year we survey thousands of senior end-users of consulting around the world, and a hefty proportion of those clients (27%) are former consultants themselves. For consulting firms, this network is incredibly important in spreading tentacles into new client organisations and winning future work. Our research has also shown that alumni are more likely to be champions of the value added by their former employer, far more so than prospective clients who know a firm by reputation or advertising, though they’re still less likely than a firm’s long-standing clients to recommend their alma mater.