The engagement challenge

How do we organise ourselves best for account management – both in selling and delivering to our clients?

GreySpace comment

Consultancy services are not the same as other products and need to be managed and sold differently from other product lines. While organisations whose main business is consultancy - or who have a long track record in consultancy - can usually deal with these questions with ease, other businesses are less focused and experienced. Making the transition is for them therefore more of a challenge. Far from a powerful repositioning and successfully filling a new strategic space, a poor start sets back their mainstream business and leaves them vulnerable to initiatives from better equipped competitors.

Case example

One of the features of consultancy is that professional service deliverers need themselves to be involved in the sales process. This may mean taking on new roles from account management through to selling.
An example of this latter skill is that of being able to spot and realise opportunities for selling to current clients with whom the consultant is working. Our work with many professional service deliverers and practices shows that this problem needs to be tackled in three areas:

1. Clarifying the sales task. This has to be specific - not simply a general exhortation to sell more. Moreover, this has to be supported by appropriate internal systems
2. Ensuring that people have the appropriate selling skills
3. Providing support so that people feel confident and encouraged in undertaking this work

It is an effective approach. One organisation that introduced this showed an increase of 16% in their extension sales in the first six months after introducing the system - highly significant on their turnover of £20 million!