Imagine if I told you, "Instead of beginning a lengthy, time-consuming and expensive business consulting discovery process, these are the core essential changes we can implement today that will deliver immediate results.” I doubt you would say, “I think you might be right but let’s go through that lengthy, time-consuming and expensive consulting discovery process first, just to prove that you are right.”
The problem is that more often than not, this is the predicament that many companies find themselves in today. They have been conditioned to think that the best or only solution to solve their growth and/or technology integration problem is to hire an expensive consulting firm. A firm that will take a lot of their time and a lot of their money, only to identify business performance and process problems that in reality aren’t truly unique to their company or industry.
For example, in the B2B environment, regardless of company size or industry, there are certain sales functions and processes that are common to almost every organization. Putting in place an MSA. Locking down the Terms and Conditions of a contract. Agreeing on the budget. Executing the actual close and signature of the deal are but a few of these commonalities. Sure, change some terms, names, labels or lingo – but the core functions and desired results are very common to most companies.
This commonality is true about 80% of the time in 80% of the companies. So why do consultants and their client companies spend so much time and money to identify what is essentially 80% obvious from the start?
Don’t let another high-dollar consultant try to convince you to spend a lot of time and money to start at zero “because your business is unique”. Yes, while your business and your brand are very unique, your business processes share about 80% commonality with 80% of other B2B companies out there. So let’s start from the 80% answer and then fine tune the rest after you get the first 80% right. Using this approach you will get better results, in less time, with less effort and less cost.
Quickly leverage the hard-earned lessons of other businesses because most of our business challenges are more similar than they are different.