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Hi there, this is Danilo.

Here’s a hard-learned lesson from someone who’s trained and advised dozens of consultancies: You get no benefit from systemizing a sales process. You get the benefit of following a systemized sales process.

This also applies to client work, strategy, and any other key activities of your consultancy. Following the request of 8 readers, let’s quickly talk about enforcing standards.

Wish you a great reading.

Estimated read time: 7 minutes.

David Maister wrote a powerful essay, more than 20 years ago, titled "The Problem Of Standards". It's a piece I recommend every consulting partner to read in its entirety, but here's how it starts:

I see this in nearly every training engagement I deliver to small consulting firms. Here are a few examples.

Consultants say they are committed to client satisfaction, but how many of you have a system where you regularly ask clients for feedback at the end of every project? How many of you share those results, with the name of the relevant partner, with everybody in the firm?

Consultants say they care about their clients, but how many of you regularly read their press releases, news, or newsletters? Not all your clients, just your biggest ones.

Consultants say they are growth-oriented and always learning, but how many of you are investing time in writing articles, speaking in public, or doing any kind of initiative to create IP or build visibility for the firm? Are you willing to kick off one of your partners who haven't written a line in 10 years?

The thing is: We like to preach values and high standards of quality, but most firms don't actually enforce those standards.

As Maister puts it,

There's nothing wrong with having no quality standards. Most consultants work like this. But it is stupid to keep running your firm pretending you are going to shine when you know you don’t have the discipline to do it.

If you know you don’t have the discipline, stop hiring training for skills you won't put into use. Don't waste time with strategic planning sessions when all you want to do is bill enough to fund your lifestyle and do your job. Enjoy the choice you have made.

You get no benefit by preaching anything. You get the benefit of that which you actually do.

Source: David Maister​

Buyers were asked to reflect back on the past few times they purchased professional services. 18% of buyers reported service providers being late to meetings, and 30% reported that the provider did not respond to their requests in a timely manner.

If these are the standards for client delivery, imagine what those numbers would look like for strategy or business development work.

Source: ”How Clients Buy”, Mike Schultz and Joe Doerr​

Forget about what you preach and highlight in your value propositions. What are the standards that, if your team or collaborators do not follow, will lead to their immediate fire from the work? What are the standards that you enforce for yourself in your business?

You gain nothing by fooling yourself. If you want to see consistent, above-average results in your work, you need to set and enforce higher standards than the average boutique firm.