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| Welcome |
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For the first half of this year, the advice business has been on a tear. Many consulting firms are enjoying double-digit revenue growth and client demand is showing no signs of cooling off, at least in the near term.
Isn't this a problem we want to have?
But a surging market, like a falling one, has its challenges. In a previous growth spurt, some firms became mere order takers and let their investments in marketing wither. Landing new work was as simple as it ever gets in the consulting business.
When the tide eventually turned and clients reined in spending, those order takers were left with little new work in the pipeline.
No matter how strong demand seems, do not let up on your marketing efforts. Instead, consider ratcheting up your marketing initiatives to help you gain new, profitable clients and prevail over competitors.
For some consulting firms, a strong market encourages risk-taking. So don't be surprised to see new, well-financed competitors entering your market. These new entrants may not last long, but they can wreak havoc in the short term. Making a strong marketing push, particularly if it's focused on growing your important client relationships, is a winning strategy to protect your market as demand grows.
This month's issue will help you in any type of market, so read on. And have a look at our redesigned archive pages. We've tried to make our growing library of interviews and articles more accessible to you.
Enjoy this month's issue.
And send me an email if you have comments.
P.S. Don’t miss the next session in our Path to Profit webcast series. This month's program, Creating a Killer Web Site, focuses on six specific strategies to help you get a bigger bang for your web site buck.
Mike
McLaughlin
Editor
Management Consulting News is a publication of MindShare
Consulting.
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| MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services |
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As the US stock market indexes reached new heights, most of the companies in the MCNews 12 Index outpaced that record-breaking performance. For the third month in a row, though, BearingPoint, Wipro, and Infosys have struggled with sagging stock prices, and that performance pulled the overall MCNews 12 Index down.
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MCNews 12 Index |
YTD
Change |
S+P 500
YTD Change |
| May |
1042 |
4.2% |
7.24% |
| April |
1039 |
3.9% |
4.09% |
| Jan to March |
1016 |
1.6% |
.98 |
If the index is adjusted to exclude these three companies, the stock price performance of the remaining companies is easily outpacing the performance of the overall market.
The MCNews 12 Index reflects general investor sentiment about the state of the global professional services industry.
The twelve publicly-traded companies included in the MCNews 12 Index account for roughly $80 billion in combined annual revenue, and serve clients around the world.
Learn More about the MCNews 12 Index 
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| Interview:
Harry Beckwith |
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  ...comfort nudges us dangerously close to complacency, and nothing good comes from that. It kills businesses, dulls lives, and encourages nothing better than ordinary.
Harry Beckwith's latest book, You Inc: The Art of Selling Yourself, which he coauthored with his wife, Christine Clifford Beckwith, begins with a simple, but powerful idea—"Living is selling." The book offers hundreds of tips on selling, working with others, and living.
Beckwith is the author of the modern marketing classics Selling the Invisible, The Invisible Touch, and What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business.
We asked Beckwith for some of his best advice to help consultants master individual selling.
Read
our interview with Harry Beckwith
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| The
Writing on the Wall, by Alan Weiss |
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 Stopping Just Short
It's apparent to me that consultants are "stopping just short" of their intended goals because they seem to have a fear of screwing something up rather than an anticipation of exploiting an opportunity.
When I ran track, I was taught to "run through" the finish line, as if the real finish were five yards beyond, because the tendency is to actually slow up as the finish line approaches.
Read
the article
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| Timing How You Stay In Touch |
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 by Mark Satterfield
If we look at marketing as a three-pronged initiative, the main components are lead generation, lead capture, and staying in touch.
Staying in ongoing contact is often the most difficult component of the process.
Part of the challenge is uncertainty. How often should I be in contact? What should be the content of my messages? How does the frequency of messaging change over time?
Here's an approach that may be helpful in developing your own strategy.
Read
the article
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| Thought Leadership Update |
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BearingPoint and PA Consulting Surge Ahead in Thought Leadership, by Fiona Czerniawska
 The global thought leadership ranking for consulting firms, White Space, has dramatically reallocated the top positions after the first quarter of 2007.
On the basis of volume of material produced over this period, BearingPoint and PA Consulting Group have taken over the top two slots from McKinsey and Accenture. The latter two firms have slipped to third and eleventh places respectively.
Another surprising development puts Indian offshorer TATA Consultancy Services in fourth place, just ahead of Deloitte and PwC.
The focus of thought leadership material has also changed significantly during the first quarter, with a shift from strategy and finance-related material to operation issues such as operational risk, regulatory compliance, technology, outsourcing, and innovation.
Want to read more by Fiona Czerniawska? Visit her author page.
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| Coming
Attractions |
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 "The problem is that nobody knows how to tell a story. And what's worse, nobody knows that they don't know how to tell a story."
Next month, our guest will be Jerry Weissman, presentations coach and author of Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story. Weissman is the founder of Power Presentations Ltd. His techniques have helped executives at more than 500 firms--including Cisco, Yahoo!, and Microsoft--to develop and deliver their most important business presentations.
Join us as we ask Weissman how to transform our presentations from "dry recitals of facts into compelling stories with a laser-sharp focus on what matters most: what's in it for the audience."
Look for the next issue of Management Consulting News on July 3, 2007.
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