You have heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” While there’s some truth to this, developing meaningful client relationships goes beyond simply knowing someone—it’s about cultivating intimacy. As a consultant, building intimate relationships with clients is critical to your professional development and enables you to create a lasting and meaningful … Continue reading “Creating Intimate Client Relationships”

Professional Services (PS) organizations often do not leverage common functional or organizational structure to accomplish their mission. This means that direct-line reporting relationships between individual contributors and managers typically do not exist, instead it is a matrixed project-based structure. For embedding PS teams, this is different than most other groups within the organization and, therefore, … Continue reading “Professional Services Talent – The Talent Pyramid”

Stop Chasing the Silver Bullet to Maintain Simplicity We have two conflicting pressures in business today.  The first is the need for companies to be successful managing a complex business model – products, software, services, and professional services – in different segments and markets. The second is leaders’ interest and comfort with simpler businesses. Today’s … Continue reading “Complex Business: The Future State Business Model”

  Service ChainsSM (a tool set created by McMann & Ransford) were created to carry much of the effort to sell and deliver outcome-based offers to clients.  Service ChainsSM  place, in one integrated toolkit, all items necessary to: Let’s expand on a few of these ideas to assist in understanding the power of the Service … Continue reading “The Guide to Moving the Business from Capabilities to Outcomes: Service Chains”

This blog series deals with growing a Professional Services (PS) business through acquisition.  It will specifically walk you through how to use acquisitions to expand your portfolio of offers and/or get to critical mass in a multi-offer PS business.  This blog does not discuss using acquisitions to merely obtain staff to increase the size of … Continue reading “Growing the PS Business through Acquisitions”

Many B2B companies are experiencing a shift in the way they view their markets and customers.  Historically, these organizations viewed their markets and customers through the lens of the ability to win market share for a suite of products.  Today, many of these organizations have refocused on or are beginning to pay greater attention to … Continue reading “The Shift from Market Share to Share of Wallet – Professional Services’ Role”

Nearly every good story has a hero. They are made into role models. They protect others, save lives, or win big games. They carry others to victory and are idolized by those around them. Studies suggest that heroes in the traditional sense embody charisma, make bold moves, and attract attention. Often embedded Professional Services (PS) … Continue reading “Freeing Yourself from the Hero Trap”

Many corporations have added Professional Services (PS) to their businesses to drive greater customer intimacy and differentiation.  But, how do ensure you’re maximizing the benefits? If you’re looking to unlock greater opportunity provided by your PS business, consider the following questions: What is the role of PS in your overall strategy: For most product-based companies, … Continue reading “Connecting Your Embedded PS Business to Your Strategy: Turning the Primary Revenue Gears to Drive Growth & Value”