The aim of our new report, Strategies for growth in consulting, and what clients think of them, is both unashamedly lofty and perfectly simple: we want to help the consulting industry to grow by helping consulting firms to develop effective strategies that are based on finding a way to give clients what they want.

What we did

Last year, we asked more than 400 clients (senior end-users of consulting services) the question on your behalf: how can consulting firms grow their business with you in the next 12 months? They identified three broad areas: new services and markets, new behaviours and new business models.

So we took those thoughts to consulting firms to explore what could be done, a process which resulted in our growth compass. This takes each of the main areas of potential growth identified by clients and encapsulates the ten different strategies consulting firms were focused on to exploit those opportunities. Not every firm did every strategy: the compass covers the consulting industry’s collective response to the opportunities for growth.

What we did next

And then we went back to clients again. Over the last four months we’ve been testing out how nine of these ten strategies (we dropped the mid-market one because we only heard from clients in big organisations) sound to clients. Are consulting firms approaching the opportunities for growth in the right way? Will the way in which consulting firms are planning to grow actually yield growth?

Why the client view matters

It’s our long-held belief that too much of the analysis read by consulting firms about their market is based on an inside-out perspective: they’re listening to the views of their competitors and feeling reassured when what they hear matches their own views. Of course it does: ideas are simply being spun round in ever decreasing circles and their competitors’ views are their own views. You can learn a lot about yourself by looking in the mirror, but you won’t learn whether anyone finds you attractive.

So we prefer to talk to the people who can tell you: clients.

The structure of this report

Our report is divided into five parts. In Part 1, we revisit what we heard last year, from clients and consulting firms, about the possible strategies for growth. In Parts 2-4, we analyse in detail how clients view the strategies for growth that consulting firms have adopted. What’s the nature and scale of the opportunity? How well positioned are consulting firms to exploit it? What are the critical success factors which will sort winners from losers in the consulting industry?

In the fifth and final part of the report we look at what clients have to say (and believe us, they have a lot to say) about the ways in which consulting firms market and sell themselves. After all, the right strategy is one thing but unless it’s allied to effective sales and marketing activities then there’s always the prospect that it won’t deliver the intended results.

For a full list of contents, click here.  For further information on how to buy this report, please contact Alice Noyelle.