Professional & differentiated Services

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All B2B companies find themselves needing to provide more impactful solutions to their valuable markets and customers. One key aspect of this is Professional Services (PS). Leveraged correctly, PS provides several advantages:

1. Access to the Executive suite and the topics that garner executive interest

2. Ability to make a real difference in customer businesses

3. Opportunities to enlarge deals

4. Additional pull-through for commoditized products and services

However, B2B companies’ inclinations work against properly leveraging a PS business. PS is a ”knowledge worker” people business that requires unique management and talent development to reach its peak. The better organized and developed the PS group, the more impact and value it can drive for the organization.

We are the leader in helping captive PS businesses reach their potential for the corporation. We have worked with over 100 captive PS businesses through all aspects of PS, including strategy, portfolio, offer management, talent, delivery rigor, and much more.

Insights

Description: In this discussion, the M&R team has some fun sharing best-in-class travel tips for young consultants and continues the classic argument of when to arrive at the airport.

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Description: Preliminary sales conversations with high level and executive buyers must be focused on ideas rather than offers or solutions. In this video, M&R founder Dean McMann outlines why this is so critical and explains how to structure what we call “idea meetings.”

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Description: Each generation encounters its own challenges in the consulting world and being aware of those challenges and confronting them can define a young consultants experience. In this video, the M&R team holds a group discussion on some generational differences that we have seen and experienced.

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Description: In this group discussion, the M&R team explores how to strengthen client relationships at all different levels of the organization.

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Description: Internally aligning on how to communicate project outcomes and next steps allows for stronger client communication on all fronts of the project.  In this role-play scenario, the M&R team demonstrates how we go about some of these communications on a daily basis.

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Description: In this role-play scenario, the M&R team shows how to appropriately plan for communications during and after engagements and outlines some of the key success factors throughout the process.

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In our recent blog post, we defined one of the most crucial – and most overlooked – roles: The Account Lead. As we discussed,….

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In recent blogs, we have discussed the importance of clearly defined roles and responsibilities in driving success for Professional Services (PS) teams. Roles and responsibilities create clarity, ….

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We analyzed the metals industry to explore how strong customer relationships can drive differentiation in some of the world’s most commoditized markets…..

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Professional Services (PS) business plays a vital strategic role in an integrated complex services business.

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Description:  Facilitating upsells presents a variety of challenges, but many of them can be expected and planned for.  In this role-play scenario, the M&R team enacts how to drive to an upsell.

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Description: Steering Committee meetings may feel like the culmination of a variety of activities, but in reality, they are only a stop along the entire client journey. Keeping the client’s end goal of the project in mind as well as any upsell initiatives are two important planning objectives discussed in this video, M&R founder Dean McMann shares some others.

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Description: Client journeys fail when consultants can adequately complete the activities of a project but fail to manage the client through the journey.  In order to ensure the client doesn’t stray from the plan, here are some tools that can be used to keep the journey moving forward as scheduled.

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Description: One project is not sufficient to truly help a client solve their significant challenges; it is not enough time and it does not cover enough topics. Pursuing upsells and pull-through drives success for the client and also the Professional Services organization, but it does not come without its share of challenges.

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A Professional Service (PS) group for a company can be viewed like the special forces in the military.  The special forces have a specialized and significantly different mission and therefore are organized,….

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Description: The right professional relationships can impact our lives and our businesses in many positive ways, but how do we decide who to invest our scarce time into? Despite what you may think, it is not always the most powerful person at the client.

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In this Customer Intimacy Overview, M&R Partners, Mark Slotnik and Dean McMann, walk through the three primary business models – low cost, innovation, and customer intimacy. They discuss which…..

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Description:  A successful executive relationship consists of you adding value to the executive’s career and the executive providing value to your career as well. Although at first glance this may sound simple, differentiating yourself from the hundreds and thousands of other professional relationships that executives hold poses challenges.

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Description: A consulting organization’s success in developing its talent defines its future delivery model. Without deliberately training junior resources on a variety of different skills and offers, we can unintentionally find ourselves with specialized silos rather than a functional delivery team.

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Description: Projects rarely continue without challenges and overcoming those challenges defines whether or not a project will ultimately be successful.  Steering committees are a critical tool in the ongoing battle to identify and solve issues and communicate results, but only when leveraged correctly.

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Description: Stakeholder Meetings can often be derailed either by ourselves as we lead or outside parties.  Consciously preparing for and structuring the meeting using these tips can help ensure clarity and brevity.

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Description: Asking organizations to purchase an entire journey all at once leads to very long sales cycles and significant risks for the buyer.  In order to break up the buying process and de-risk large projects, we leverage a tool we call Service Chains. For an introduction on Service Chains, watch this video.

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In this blog series about professional services talent, we have introduced two integral roles – the Account Lead role and the Delivery Leader role. Both roles are central to successfully delivering an engagement, therefore, identifying the right resources to play these roles can greatly impact client and project outcomes. Understanding the distinct characteristics and capabilities required of each PS … Continue reading “Characteristics of a Best-in-Class Delivery Leader”

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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”

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Description: Project Management is often isolated as a role with specific boundaries but in reality, it encompasses much more. In this video, M&R founder Dean McMann discusses the differences between learning the science of project management and the art of a successful project delivery.

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As discussed in a previous blog  (The PS Dilemma of Managing Just-In-Time Talent), leveraging a Just-In-Time (JIT) Professional Services (PS) Talent staffing without having a corresponding operating model can lead to increased risk to both delivery excellence and financial performance. Smoothing the natural peaks and valleys of a JIT model is key and many manufacturing … Continue reading “The PS Dilemma of Managing Just-In-Time Talent – Part 2”

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Client Management does not “just happen”… it must be deliberate and proactive in order to be effective. For those of you reading this and our other blogs, by now you are likely not surprised by seeing and reading that statement. Professionals in our industry – whether you refer to it as Consulting, Advisory Services, Professional … Continue reading “Our Role as a Guide in Professional Services Client Management”

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Description: Organizations often struggle to differentiate between selling products and selling true solutions to customer challenges. In this video, Dean McMann discusses how to leverage consultants to support the solutions selling process and guide the client through a sale.

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Description:  Closing deals rarely occurs without hiccups despite having high-level buy-in from key stakeholders.  However, there are variety of different tactics that can be used to flush out details before it comes time to close, some of which are explored in this video.

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In a previous blog, we introduced the idea that Client Management does not “just happen”…it must be deliberate and proactive in order to be effective. And while there are many key roles needed for the success of a PS business, there is an overarching role that is important for every consulting professional: your role as a guide. … Continue reading “Our Role as a Guide in Professional Services Client Management – Part 2”

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Description: When crafting proposals, we find that clients often get lost in the legalities of the contract.  In this video, Dean McMann explains how to use proposals to come to a high-level agreement rather than getting stuck on details.

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Description: Any meaningful initiative that an organization is looking to undertake requires more support than a single sponsor at the client. Appropriately leveraging a Stakeholder Meeting can help engage other key parties and make initiatives more likely to succeed.

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In our previous blogs, we introduced the idea that Client Management does not “just happen”…it must be deliberate and proactive in order to be effective. And while there are many key roles needed for success of a PS business, there is an overarching role that is important for every consulting professional: your role as a guide. This role … Continue reading “Our Role as a Guide in Professional Services Client Management – Part 3”

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The Antidote to Accelerated Commoditization.

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Description: While the ideal end to any Stakeholder Meeting is a deal, there are a variety of other positive outcomes as well. In this video, M&R founder Dean McMann shares some of the key next steps of a productive Stakeholder Meeting and how they can be leveraged to drive to a deal.

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Professional Services can be an indispensable tool for creating customer intimacy if it focuses on outcomes.

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Many Professional Service (PS) Businesses have taken a page from product manufacturing’s cost reduction book and “leaned out” their inventory. In the case of PS businesses, the inventory being referred to and leaned-out is Talent capacity and by default capability. The result is having to do more just-in-time (JIT) hiring and deployment to meet client … Continue reading “The PS Dilemma of Managing Just-In-Time Talent”

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TSIA Consulting Alliance Partner