The most important question of all....

The one question to ask your prospective consulting firm.

It may not surprise you that many large consulting firms hire staff with little or no experience in sales, marketing or finance roles who are then "marketed" to you as experts under the banner of a consulting firm that is essentially a tax and audit group or similar.

These same people end up providing “advice” to your executives who have many years experience as account managers, marketing managers or held commercial finance roles. Thus the “borrow your watch to tell you the time syndrome arises”.

You will receive your answers gift-wrapped back at you in a meeting but under the consulting firm’s logo. “Hey I have been saying that for years”! You think. “Why is it they only listen when some inexperienced strangers come into our business and simply write down what we just told them"? as you wade through latest management jargon that is illuminated in a PowerPoint presentation?”

This scenario above is one we have all lived through if you have been part of senior management at any large company over the last 20 years. Fortunately, many companies now recognise that the power of consulting lies in the combination of process driven skills AND real world experience. Hiring a big name consulting brand falls under the strategy of “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”. Possibly no one ever got promoted either!

Consultants do add value your business

Using third party advisory services is an excellent way to understand a business issue in an impartial and objective way. We are all guilty of missing something when we are asked to take an introspective look at our performance. It’s commonly known as the “Blind Spot”. The Blind Spot binds us all together but none of us can see it and many of us don’t believe we have a blind spot.

A large company is always characterised by competing and often conflicting interests. These conflicts are effectively the free market of ideas and personalities that drive the business forward. The other characteristic is the issue of time.
Few senior executives have the time to set aside 2 days per week to develop and manage a project from start to finish.

All of us want to step up to the plate and rise to the challenge of whatever is sent our way. The reality is always that a project or initiative that is under resourced inevitably falls short of expectations and fades away until the next burning platform comes along. In this environment, the third party consultant can add significant value and be part of your team drive business improvements and grow earnings.

"Oh really how"?

Well there is one question you must ask any prospective consultant before deciding to engage them to work within and on your business. What is that one question? That one question should essentially be this:

“Have you ever worked in a business and managed pricing before”?

Not, “have you ever been a consultant before”?, but,

"Have you actually had real world experience to pull off what your proposal suggests can be achieved"?

Making clever recommendations is one thing, delivering real world practical pricing strategies and solutions is another. As managers, we all spend much time interviewing and hiring staff to ensure they have relevant and appropriate experience and qualifications. Yet, when it comes to consultants we like to think the the "brand" provides enough credibility. Brands are important, but look beyond the brand for substance.

Put the individuals you meet with to the test. Are they going to to be directly involved with the project or will you get the "school bus syndrome*"? Am I going to have real world experience and a structured, world class approach to pricing working on my business or some analysts who have only read about key account management and pricing techniques from a textbook?

Surround yourself with Real World Experience

Pricing Insight’s real world experience across 100s of companies and dozens of industry sectors ensures you get pricing solutions that the sales force can believe in when they face the moment of truth with the customer, that marketing can employ to build and protect the brand equity to the key customer segments, and, solutions that finance or commercial teams can understand, track and manage for planning, budgeting and profit forecasting.

Pricing Insight is fully accountable to its clients. All good business succeed because of the second, third and fourth sale to their customer base. That follow on work only arises from the delivery of real world, practical business ideas and solutions. We make sure the required pricing outcomes are realised and embedded within your business.

Is your company ready for pricing optimisation?

Pricing is your most powerful profit lever you can optimise and if you were to rank the expected financial benefits over the next 18 months of all your current projects, pricing optimisation would be sitting at the top of the list.
It is worth calling / emailing to discuss your current pricing capability, business situation even to simply get some feedback on how you are currently performing.

Many companies are not ready to undertake full scale pricing projects or significant change management programs. Pricing Insight recognise this may be your current company and have developed a range of ways forward that you can implement in your business now. From public executive education courses through to customised in house programs and diagnostics, we have a solution to you help you move forward in the right direction and make progress toward a larger more strategic goal.

I look forward to talking with you soon about ways to generate gross margin improvements via pricing optimisation.

Regards

Ron Wood
Director
Pricing Insight
Sydney Australia

* "school bus syndrome" - a traditional consulting technique whereby the silver-haired partner sells in the capability of the firm and then once the engagement has started, brings in young low cost analyst labour with little real world experience to simply gather data, crunch numbers and publish impractical recommendations. It is one of the key drivers of why prospective clients are wary of using consultants. It shouldn't be this way.