Spot a Business Process Gap? Good. That Is Your Biggest Opportunity as a 1-Man Consultant.
Process weaknesses = Room for improvement
If you observe your client’s organization carefully, you notice one thing. There exist many gaps.
These are not holes in the ground, by the way.
I refer to business process gaps. Every organization is made up of a portfolio of processes. They tell us how work travels from the first to the last touch.
A classic example is an Order-to-Bill process. It covers the following domains.
- Product sales
- Payment
- Inventory checks
- Shipping
And this business process requires sales, operations, logistics, and finance teams to work together.
Question.
What happens if this process is broken?
Broken Business Processes Exist In Every Company. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
Listening to complaints from my consulting clients is part of my job.
Such content is annoying to my ears, of course. It wears me down. But I continue to do so.
Why? Because opportunities exist within complaints. And this is true when consulting clients lament about their internal process.
This is direct client intelligence, folks.
I listen attentively, absorb, ask more questions, and then head home to formulate a problem statement that will translate into an objective for future engagements.
Here’s a recent one.
I work very closely with a business development executive in a current engagement. She knows what needs to be done and does them without prompts or nudges.
Julia does not believe in coffee chats or do-lunches. She is perpetually busy.
However, she took me out today.
This is what she told me when I asked what happened.
“I have gotten more website-driven appointment emails from HubSpot. The number of appointments shot up. But the conversion rate went down. I am working more for less.”
I sipped my cup of black without making a sound. Julia went on.
“I got frustrated with the marketing team. They reported a higher contact capture rate. But my appointment conversion collapsed. The C.E.O. thinks we are skiving.”
Ah ha! Another zero-sum game is being played out.
For almost a minute the two of us were locked in a battle of wills that had no possible winner, only a different order of losing.
― Mira Grant, Parasite
A zero-sum game is characterized by finite results. A game of tennis is a zero-sum game. Albert’s victory is Eugene’s loss.
Winnings cannot be shared. They are merely transferred.
In Julia’s case, her exceptional performance last year (winnings) was transferred to the marketing team via website automation. She is bitter.
But she does not understand why.
So, I explained to her.
Understand Your Clients Quickly by Analyzing Broad-Based Key Performance Indicators
Firstly, what is the marketing team’s mandate?
You need not attend business school to figure it out. Uncle Google is your aide.
This is a list of high-level key performance indicators (K.P.I.s) for marketing teams.
- Generating marketing qualifying leads
- Brand awareness and exposure
- Website contact capture
- Email campaigns
- And many others
Many marketing teams are unbelievably obsessed with their website. They spend time analyzing bounce rates, click rates, and lead magnet downloads.
And… not forgetting how fast they can get website visitors to surrender their email addresses.
Visit any website with a prominent Book An Appointment button, and you will see my point. What happens when you decide to click it?
- It brings you to another webpage
- Or a prompt window appears
- You provide personal details
- An appointment is secured
What you do not know is for whom the appointment is secured. Not for the marketing team. They know prospects do not want to speak to marketers.
The appointment is secured for business development specialists, consultants, or call center staff.
The marketing team plant a flag of victory when the appointment is booked. Subsequent sales conversion?
That is your job, dude.
And That is a Problem
Because the client’s marketing team’s K.P.I. is to secure an appointment.
And so they will continuously revamp their website to ensure a frictionless user experience to facilitate lead capture. Perfectly normal up till this point.
And the following happens.
- There are 5 fields in the personal information online form.
- All 5 of them must be filled last year
- This year, only name and email address are mandatory
Because speed is of the essence.
But what happens to the team in the next leg? They become fools.
The reason for booking an appointment is no longer required. So the business development team never knew why appointments were scheduled.
They do not know what the prospect is looking for either.
And their calendar is choked full of such appointments.
Author’s Notes: I do not harbor any grudges with marketers, by the way. This is a real situation that gave birth to my recent consulting engagement.Parting Keynote
An unhappy customer is a high-ticket consulting client.
I asked Julia how urgent she needed this issue resolved. She said yesterday. The business development team is drowning in unnecessary and unproductive meetings.
I heard her loud and clear.
I went home, got to work, and presented my proposal the next day. It is a consulting engagement covering a study of business process inefficiencies. Julia fought for it to commence in a fortnight.
And secured a 5-digit budget for my work.
You see, handsome dividends await when you pay close attention to your consulting clients. Stay sharp. Have your ears straight up like a rabbit.
Listen carefully and identify business process gaps.
You hit a gold mine when you close these gaps.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
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