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Why Custom Services Kill Your Growth
with Andrew Montz
Are tech consultancies stuck in a cycle of stagnation? It's not just weak sales or poor delivery causing the slowdown—it's the commitment to selling entirely custom services! Every deal starting from scratch consumes valuable time, hurting your business in a world where speed is everything.
In this video, we uncover why custom selling can be a hindrance and offer strategies to break free from lengthy sales cycles. Learn how to streamline your consultancy and keep growth consistent.
Tune in for insights that will transform the way you approach selling strategies.
#ConsultancyGrowth #CustomSelling #SalesSuccess
Transcript
Most tech consultancies don't stall because of poor delivery or weak sales. They stall because everything they sell is custom. When you're selling custom services, every deal is unique and bespoke. That means you can't borrow from the last one. It means you're starting a new every time, and it takes longer and longer to sell. And when we're selling, time is not our friend. I was looking at the
Transcript
Most tech consultancies don't stall because of poor delivery or weak sales. They stall because everything they sell is custom. When you're selling custom services, every deal is unique and bespoke. That means you can't borrow from the last one. It means you're starting a new every time, and it takes longer and longer to sell. And when we're selling, time is not our friend. I was looking at the
How We Hit $40M ARR Without Doubling Headcount
with Andrew Montz
Achieving breakthrough revenue growth doesn't mean increasing your team size. Discover how we more than doubled our revenue, reaching over $40,000,000, without significantly increasing our staff.
Many assume that as revenue grows, so should their team. However, service providers often hit roadblocks when they scale headcount prematurely. In this video, learn how decoupling revenue from team size can lead to sustainable growth.
Understand the art of prioritization which allows you to scale efficiently. Whether your revenue is at $1 million or approaching $100 million, this insight can propel your growth.
Learn from multiple successful team scaling experiences and find ways to maximize revenue without expanding your workforce.
Watch now to get the strategies to scale smarter and achieve lasting growth.
#RevenueGrowth #BusinessScaling #EfficientGrowth
Transcript
We more than doubled our revenue and hit over 40,000,000 in annual recurring revenue. Here's what didn't happen, though. We didn't increase our staff proportionally to that increase in revenue. Many service providers assume that they must increase headcount as revenue goes up, and that's where things start to go a little sideways. I've led multiple teams through scaling from 1,000,000 to over 100,000,000 in revenue. When they start scaling their team to go with the revenue, they often hit a roadblock. It's usually around the 5 to 10,000,000 in revenue, but sometimes it's a little later in the 25 to 50,000,000 revenue. The ones that really hit the breakthrough growth outside of a crazy market situation is where they start to decouple their revenue from the size of their team. They find ways of making money beyond just adding more staff. That's what prioritization does. It gives you scale.
Transcript
We more than doubled our revenue and hit over 40,000,000 in annual recurring revenue. Here's what didn't happen, though. We didn't increase our staff proportionally to that increase in revenue. Many service providers assume that they must increase headcount as revenue goes up, and that's where things start to go a little sideways. I've led multiple teams through scaling from 1,000,000 to over 100,000,000 in revenue. When they start scaling their team to go with the revenue, they often hit a roadblock. It's usually around the 5 to 10,000,000 in revenue, but sometimes it's a little later in the 25 to 50,000,000 revenue. The ones that really hit the breakthrough growth outside of a crazy market situation is where they start to decouple their revenue from the size of their team. They find ways of making money beyond just adding more staff. That's what prioritization does. It gives you scale.
Stop Saying Yes to Every Client Request
with Andrew Montz
Tired of inconsistent business growth and profitability?
Discover why saying 'yes' to every client demand may jeopardize your ability to scale and sustain success. In this video, we share over thirty years of insights and lessons learned on how shifting from custom services to repeatable offerings can revolutionize your business.
Learn how to streamline your sales process, establish clear expectations, and deliver an outstanding client experience while ensuring predictable revenue and profit growth. We'll guide you through strategies to transform your business from chaotic to controlled, ensuring long-lasting client and team satisfaction.
Don't let your business operate on a slot machine model any longer. Tune in to uncover how repeatable services can drive your business to new heights.
#BusinessGrowth #ClientSuccess #RepeatableServices
Transcript
Saying yes to every client demand or request puts you in reaction mode and really puts your business at risk in terms of its ability to scale, generate healthy relationships to your clients and your team members, and certainly from a revenue and a profitability perspective. Why is this? Well, in over thirty years of delivering thousands of engagements with clients, when we did custom services and had no consistent offering to be made, no way to sell it over and over again, inconsistent expectations going into delivery, and then finally scoping and estimating that led to a lot of variety in our financial results. It really was kind of a slot machine type of management running a company. In contrast, we found when we worked on our key areas of services and converted those into repeatable offerings, we were able to build in value and a guide guided path that we could take our clients on, clear options to compare to make it easier for them to buy. And we went through the sales process. We had very clear expectations about what the service was gonna be, what results are we gonna get. Client made easy, quick trade off decisions. We found our sales process really accelerated quickly through that. We moved in delivery mode. The delivery team knew knew better what we had sold because it was predefined upfront. They knew that it was option a, option b, and they could deliver and tune in what they were doing, which made for a much better experience to the client during the delivery of the service. And then finally from a financial perspective, we were able to sell these over and over again, generate outstanding revenue and profit growth as a result of that, and our clients and our teams are much happier with that service as well.
Transcript
Saying yes to every client demand or request puts you in reaction mode and really puts your business at risk in terms of its ability to scale, generate healthy relationships to your clients and your team members, and certainly from a revenue and a profitability perspective. Why is this? Well, in over thirty years of delivering thousands of engagements with clients, when we did custom services and had no consistent offering to be made, no way to sell it over and over again, inconsistent expectations going into delivery, and then finally scoping and estimating that led to a lot of variety in our financial results. It really was kind of a slot machine type of management running a company. In contrast, we found when we worked on our key areas of services and converted those into repeatable offerings, we were able to build in value and a guide guided path that we could take our clients on, clear options to compare to make it easier for them to buy. And we went through the sales process. We had very clear expectations about what the service was gonna be, what results are we gonna get. Client made easy, quick trade off decisions. We found our sales process really accelerated quickly through that. We moved in delivery mode. The delivery team knew knew better what we had sold because it was predefined upfront. They knew that it was option a, option b, and they could deliver and tune in what they were doing, which made for a much better experience to the client during the delivery of the service. And then finally from a financial perspective, we were able to sell these over and over again, generate outstanding revenue and profit growth as a result of that, and our clients and our teams are much happier with that service as well.
Your Best Clients Keep Negotiating Because You're Doing This Wrong
with Andrew Montz
Are you tired of constant client negotiations and scoping each engagement from scratch? Discover the powerful impact of productizing your services and focus on delivering real value. In this video, learn how to shift from being treated as a commodity to being recognized for the results you deliver.
We'll explore how productizing services can transform your business dynamics, providing clear value propositions and clear deliverables to your clients. Understand the difference it makes in simplifying your sales process, delivery, and finances. Say goodbye to endless cycles of client negotiations and embrace a more efficient, value-driven approach.
#ClientNegotiations #ProductizeServices #BusinessTransformation
Transcript
If your best clients are negotiating with you or you're facing endless scoping and estimating cycles, you're doing this wrong. I've seen this many times over the years selling and delivering thousands of engagements with clients. And what tends to happen is is that you come in, you custom scope, these engagements, and you go through this whole series of scoping and estimating and confirming back with the client when even the smallest thing changes, you go through another cycle. It's a constant game of going through this process. You expose the hours that you're estimating. The client begins to negotiate your hourly bill rate as if you're a commodity. You don't produce the value that you're looking for out of each engagement, and the client feels like they're comparing you apples to apples based off of bill rates and other types of things. Well, this can be dramatically different when you productize your services and really focus around the value that you're providing a market niche. The service that you offer, the deliverables, the focus around the results that your clients are gonna get. You get away from custom scoping and negotiating every single deal over and over again, and it has a huge change in the business. Clear value prop, clear deliverables, clear sets of options of what's gonna happen, and it carries for from sales through delivery and your financials as well.
Transcript
If your best clients are negotiating with you or you're facing endless scoping and estimating cycles, you're doing this wrong. I've seen this many times over the years selling and delivering thousands of engagements with clients. And what tends to happen is is that you come in, you custom scope, these engagements, and you go through this whole series of scoping and estimating and confirming back with the client when even the smallest thing changes, you go through another cycle. It's a constant game of going through this process. You expose the hours that you're estimating. The client begins to negotiate your hourly bill rate as if you're a commodity. You don't produce the value that you're looking for out of each engagement, and the client feels like they're comparing you apples to apples based off of bill rates and other types of things. Well, this can be dramatically different when you productize your services and really focus around the value that you're providing a market niche. The service that you offer, the deliverables, the focus around the results that your clients are gonna get. You get away from custom scoping and negotiating every single deal over and over again, and it has a huge change in the business. Clear value prop, clear deliverables, clear sets of options of what's gonna happen, and it carries for from sales through delivery and your financials as well.
Hiring More Salespeople Won't Fix Your Revenue Problem
with Andrew Montz
Discover how to boost your revenue without simply increasing your sales staff. This video reveals strategies that I've used to grow six professional services companies by more than 50%, just by refining offerings and efficiencies.
You'll learn why adding more salespeople might not be the solution you need. Instead, explore how a fresh look at what and how you're selling, as well as delivering, can vastly improve your revenue. Realignment from offering through to delivery creates scalability, allowing for increased profit margins without added headcount.
Our approach revealed that up to 50% more revenue is possible without increasing delivery staff, thanks to comprehensive sales enablement and streamlined service offerings.
Watch now to unlock new ways to scale your business smarter, not harder.
#RevenueGrowth #BusinessStrategy #SalesEnablement
Transcript
Hiring more salespeople won't fix your revenue problem. I've seen this many times over growing six professional services companies. There's a temptation when revenue plateaus or you're hitting a bit of a valley to increase your revenue by adding another salesperson. Math gets done. I can hire another salesperson. I'll generate at the same level the last salesperson. I keep adding them, and I get to the revenue that I want. Well, take a step back and really take a look at what you're selling and how you're selling it and just as importantly, how you're delivering because you're missing out on the scale opportunity to grow your business. I've seen companies where we've changed our offering and be able to increase sales by 50% or more without increasing our sales staff. And some cases, generating 25 to 50% more revenue without increasing our delivery staff either. And the reason was we took a fresh look at how we were organizing our services, how we sold them, how we delivered them, and look for strong alignment from offering through sales and delivery. This created scalability in our business. So we can we added revenue, we added profit at a scale much better than just adding incremental salespeople because we have to make sure that we're enabling them with the offer and arm them throughout the sales process with collateral and ways to sell. In one case, up to 50% of our sales efforts were unassisted by any kind of sales engineering or sales support because our offering, our sales enablement was so strong. Same thing happens on the delivery side as well when all that stuff is well structured.
Transcript
Hiring more salespeople won't fix your revenue problem. I've seen this many times over growing six professional services companies. There's a temptation when revenue plateaus or you're hitting a bit of a valley to increase your revenue by adding another salesperson. Math gets done. I can hire another salesperson. I'll generate at the same level the last salesperson. I keep adding them, and I get to the revenue that I want. Well, take a step back and really take a look at what you're selling and how you're selling it and just as importantly, how you're delivering because you're missing out on the scale opportunity to grow your business. I've seen companies where we've changed our offering and be able to increase sales by 50% or more without increasing our sales staff. And some cases, generating 25 to 50% more revenue without increasing our delivery staff either. And the reason was we took a fresh look at how we were organizing our services, how we sold them, how we delivered them, and look for strong alignment from offering through sales and delivery. This created scalability in our business. So we can we added revenue, we added profit at a scale much better than just adding incremental salespeople because we have to make sure that we're enabling them with the offer and arm them throughout the sales process with collateral and ways to sell. In one case, up to 50% of our sales efforts were unassisted by any kind of sales engineering or sales support because our offering, our sales enablement was so strong. Same thing happens on the delivery side as well when all that stuff is well structured.
What Separates $10M Companies from $50M Companies
with Andrew Montz
Are you curious about what drives a business from startup to over $100 million? Discover key insights from my journey with six professional services firms, three surpassing that milestone.
In this video, we dive deep into the secrets that separate the best from the rest. You'll learn about:
- Riding market trends and leveraging industry shifts like the AI boom.
- Establishing strategic partnerships that generate leads and growth.
- Cultivating team cultures that foster cross-functional success.
- The importance of focus and making tough decisions to avoid unnecessary risks.
- How productizing services can enhance scalability and align with customer needs.
Watch now to uncover how these elements helped us scale businesses effectively!
#BusinessGrowth #StrategicPartnerships #MarketTrends
Transcript
What separates one five, 25, and 50 and over a $100,000,000 companies from each other? What's generates the growth and the predictability out of those larger businesses? On my career, I've been part of six professional services firms. The vast majority of them worked their way through each of those stages. Three of them went north of a 100,000,000 revenue. So what was the secret behind that? Well, one of them was there was a market trend. We rode the wave of some sort of technology innovation not too different than what's happening with AI right now. We had strong partnerships. Where we had technology product makers or equipment makers that we really partnered up with during those waves of change. Generally, lots of business together, had lots of leads that were happening, partnering in the field, that sort of thing. There were cultural elements as well. We had some tremendous team cultures that really worked well together cross functionally rather than dysfunctionally, and we worked as a team to get those things accomplished. But there were a couple other things that really were different as well. One of them was we spent time really taking a look at the focus we had in the market, what we wanted to be good at versus not. In some cases, we walked away from 7 figure opportunities that we just weren't well prepared for. It was outside of our wheelhouse. We were ready to scale for it. Whatever it might be, we made those tough decisions in the moment. It's very easy to just react what the market's giving you, what your customers are asking you for. And what you end up doing is burning customer relationships and employee relationships when you pursue work that's outside of what you're good at. You tend to have a lot more failures, and clients aren't happy with you. Finally, when that really strategic client, you get in there, you do something really unusual for them. More likely, you struggle with delivery, you struggle to make money with it. Even your sellers don't earn the commissions they were expecting to earn out of it because it stops short. Why risk all of that? We found that we were able to redefine our offerings, focus in certain areas and certain markets, split practices into two to have more concentration. We found that focus in being close to the service and close to our client needs really made a big difference. So that helped us generate structured offers with value and defined pricing. We had go to markets around those. They acted almost as skews out of a product catalog, which made it easier to bring back to partners and explain what it is we do. We could show them collateral around that. Obviously, we could use resellers. We had one or two companies where we used a lot of resellers around our services, which is pretty unusual in a custom services business because we've defined our offerings where they could look at them. They were prepriced, that that sort of thing. And today with hyperscalers, all of them have marketplaces. And if you wanna be in those marketplaces, you need some productized offerings, things that are predefined predefined value, pricing, deliverables, and aligned with what the customer is looking for. So those were some of the differences that really helped us scale from one, five, ten, twenty five, 50, and beyond. Really spend some time looking at those scale factors and really trying to avoid the dark alleys and just find the shortcuts.
Transcript
What separates one five, 25, and 50 and over a $100,000,000 companies from each other? What's generates the growth and the predictability out of those larger businesses? On my career, I've been part of six professional services firms. The vast majority of them worked their way through each of those stages. Three of them went north of a 100,000,000 revenue. So what was the secret behind that? Well, one of them was there was a market trend. We rode the wave of some sort of technology innovation not too different than what's happening with AI right now. We had strong partnerships. Where we had technology product makers or equipment makers that we really partnered up with during those waves of change. Generally, lots of business together, had lots of leads that were happening, partnering in the field, that sort of thing. There were cultural elements as well. We had some tremendous team cultures that really worked well together cross functionally rather than dysfunctionally, and we worked as a team to get those things accomplished. But there were a couple other things that really were different as well. One of them was we spent time really taking a look at the focus we had in the market, what we wanted to be good at versus not. In some cases, we walked away from 7 figure opportunities that we just weren't well prepared for. It was outside of our wheelhouse. We were ready to scale for it. Whatever it might be, we made those tough decisions in the moment. It's very easy to just react what the market's giving you, what your customers are asking you for. And what you end up doing is burning customer relationships and employee relationships when you pursue work that's outside of what you're good at. You tend to have a lot more failures, and clients aren't happy with you. Finally, when that really strategic client, you get in there, you do something really unusual for them. More likely, you struggle with delivery, you struggle to make money with it. Even your sellers don't earn the commissions they were expecting to earn out of it because it stops short. Why risk all of that? We found that we were able to redefine our offerings, focus in certain areas and certain markets, split practices into two to have more concentration. We found that focus in being close to the service and close to our client needs really made a big difference. So that helped us generate structured offers with value and defined pricing. We had go to markets around those. They acted almost as skews out of a product catalog, which made it easier to bring back to partners and explain what it is we do. We could show them collateral around that. Obviously, we could use resellers. We had one or two companies where we used a lot of resellers around our services, which is pretty unusual in a custom services business because we've defined our offerings where they could look at them. They were prepriced, that that sort of thing. And today with hyperscalers, all of them have marketplaces. And if you wanna be in those marketplaces, you need some productized offerings, things that are predefined predefined value, pricing, deliverables, and aligned with what the customer is looking for. So those were some of the differences that really helped us scale from one, five, ten, twenty five, 50, and beyond. Really spend some time looking at those scale factors and really trying to avoid the dark alleys and just find the shortcuts.
Your Clients Don't Want a Provider - They Want a Guide
with Andrew Montz
Are you merely providing services or truly guiding your clients? Discover why being a guide in client relationships can be a game-changer for your business. In this video, I share a personal experience that highlighted the importance of not just delivering on projects but also leading clients through their journeys.
Learn why failing to deliver guidance can hurt your credibility, and how you can avoid this common pitfall by proactively sharing experiences and mapping a clear vision for your clients. This shift from service provider to trusted advisor could make all the difference.
Tune in to understand why clients seek guidance over mere service, and how you can better meet this need to exceed their expectations.
#ClientSuccess #LeadershipInBusiness #BusinessGuidance
Transcript
While back, I got one of those calls that you really don't wanna get. A client that wasn't happy with our services and wanted to talk. And your hope is that you can recover the situation, recover the relationship, and maintain the client. So I reached out to the client to have a conversation about it, find out what was going on, and we had a great conversation. Always start off with listening to what their situation is, their perspective on what went wrong, and what we need to do to move forward. As we kinda talk through that, what he had to say really resonated with me in several ways. We were helping migrate some of their systems as part of a recent acquisition that they had. Just so happens in the role that I was playing, I was in the process of merging two teams together, a 150 plus a 150 for a total of 300 people. And we're going through some of the same challenges from a technology, a team, and a directional strategy kind of perspective, and so we had a really good conversation about that. Things seem to be going really smoothly in this recovery conversation until he finally took a pause for a minute. And I've learned over the years, you know, let let the pause happen. Let them come out with whatever they have to say. And then he hit me with it. He said, you know, Andrew, you guys are the experts. I really expected y'all to be the guide for us, and you weren't. I felt like we had to step in and tell you guys what to do. We had to make the big decisions without your guidance. He said, really hurt your credibility in our eyes. It really changed the relationship. So we began to do is treat you as a provider, as a commodity, and just tell you what to do, and we ran tasks through your team. We huddled together within our internal team and made the key decisions. And a step back from that call after helping lay out a plan of action on what was next and really kind of thought about what was going on there. I thought about, you know, my years of experience in working with clients through these kind of difficult situations. And I what I began to realize was the number one thing I used to hear about, across thousands and thousands of engagements over many years was we just failed to deliver. Right? Pretty fundamental. Could be the technical part, could be a schedule, could be a budget thing, but just a failure to deliver overall. Number two on the list of reasons that clients became unhappy with our services was some form of what I just heard from this client. We failed to be a guide. We didn't get out in front of the engagement. We didn't plan ahead. We didn't share our experiences that we personally had. We didn't share enough stories about what other clients have gone through. We didn't create a smooth vision for where the client was gonna head and help them through that over time. So as I look forward in in trying to help you with your business, I wanna emphasize, really spend some time stepping back with your team and thinking about how you can be a guide rather than just a service partner. Your clients aren't really looking for just a provider or a service partner. They're looking for a guide in most cases. And when you do that, you really deliver above and beyond their expectations because you deliver well in the project. You're a guide. You made the whole experience smooth. You made something that was hard seem easy, and that's where the magic lies.
Transcript
While back, I got one of those calls that you really don't wanna get. A client that wasn't happy with our services and wanted to talk. And your hope is that you can recover the situation, recover the relationship, and maintain the client. So I reached out to the client to have a conversation about it, find out what was going on, and we had a great conversation. Always start off with listening to what their situation is, their perspective on what went wrong, and what we need to do to move forward. As we kinda talk through that, what he had to say really resonated with me in several ways. We were helping migrate some of their systems as part of a recent acquisition that they had. Just so happens in the role that I was playing, I was in the process of merging two teams together, a 150 plus a 150 for a total of 300 people. And we're going through some of the same challenges from a technology, a team, and a directional strategy kind of perspective, and so we had a really good conversation about that. Things seem to be going really smoothly in this recovery conversation until he finally took a pause for a minute. And I've learned over the years, you know, let let the pause happen. Let them come out with whatever they have to say. And then he hit me with it. He said, you know, Andrew, you guys are the experts. I really expected y'all to be the guide for us, and you weren't. I felt like we had to step in and tell you guys what to do. We had to make the big decisions without your guidance. He said, really hurt your credibility in our eyes. It really changed the relationship. So we began to do is treat you as a provider, as a commodity, and just tell you what to do, and we ran tasks through your team. We huddled together within our internal team and made the key decisions. And a step back from that call after helping lay out a plan of action on what was next and really kind of thought about what was going on there. I thought about, you know, my years of experience in working with clients through these kind of difficult situations. And I what I began to realize was the number one thing I used to hear about, across thousands and thousands of engagements over many years was we just failed to deliver. Right? Pretty fundamental. Could be the technical part, could be a schedule, could be a budget thing, but just a failure to deliver overall. Number two on the list of reasons that clients became unhappy with our services was some form of what I just heard from this client. We failed to be a guide. We didn't get out in front of the engagement. We didn't plan ahead. We didn't share our experiences that we personally had. We didn't share enough stories about what other clients have gone through. We didn't create a smooth vision for where the client was gonna head and help them through that over time. So as I look forward in in trying to help you with your business, I wanna emphasize, really spend some time stepping back with your team and thinking about how you can be a guide rather than just a service partner. Your clients aren't really looking for just a provider or a service partner. They're looking for a guide in most cases. And when you do that, you really deliver above and beyond their expectations because you deliver well in the project. You're a guide. You made the whole experience smooth. You made something that was hard seem easy, and that's where the magic lies.
We Lost a $250K Deal By Making It Too Easy to Customize
with Andrew Montz
Learn from our costly mistake: losing a $250,000 deal due to over-customization. In trying to satisfy every client request, we created an overwhelming process that frustrated our client, leading them to seek alternatives. Our competitor capitalized on our mistake, offering a faster, simpler solution.
But what can you take away from this?
Don't complicate your customer's journey. Provide clear guidance and simplify their decision-making process. With so many complex choices in business, your role should be to offer straightforward solutions, making it easy for them to decide in your favor.
Remember, being a valuable partner means reducing confusion and increasing clarity. This approach not only helps retain clients but also accelerates the path to closing deals.
#ClientRetention #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth
Transcript
We lost a $250,000 deal by making it too easy to customize. How'd that happen? Well, in the spirit of customer service, we were going through rounds of scoping and estimating for this engagement. We wanted to make sure this client got exactly what they were looking for. Near the end, they asked for one small change. Well, our team went through yet another round of scoping and estimating. This frustrated client after spending weeks with us in this process began to talk to some other competitors and before we knew it they went dark and we had lost the business. In essence we gave a gift to our competition. Our client went to the competitor complaining about how slow we were and why it was taking all these rounds of doing these scopes and estimates. The competitor took advantage of all that information and quickly turned around a proposal that was really close, and they moved forward and signed the contract with the client. You don't have to overwhelm your client with customization and lots of choices. Your client really needs a guide and they need simplicity. They need easy decisions to make. They have plenty of complexity and difficult decisions across all the other things we're doing in the business outside of working with you. So be the difference maker and really simplify what your client is wanting to do and make it easy for them to make the decision to choose you and do so quickly.
Transcript
We lost a $250,000 deal by making it too easy to customize. How'd that happen? Well, in the spirit of customer service, we were going through rounds of scoping and estimating for this engagement. We wanted to make sure this client got exactly what they were looking for. Near the end, they asked for one small change. Well, our team went through yet another round of scoping and estimating. This frustrated client after spending weeks with us in this process began to talk to some other competitors and before we knew it they went dark and we had lost the business. In essence we gave a gift to our competition. Our client went to the competitor complaining about how slow we were and why it was taking all these rounds of doing these scopes and estimates. The competitor took advantage of all that information and quickly turned around a proposal that was really close, and they moved forward and signed the contract with the client. You don't have to overwhelm your client with customization and lots of choices. Your client really needs a guide and they need simplicity. They need easy decisions to make. They have plenty of complexity and difficult decisions across all the other things we're doing in the business outside of working with you. So be the difference maker and really simplify what your client is wanting to do and make it easy for them to make the decision to choose you and do so quickly.
Your Best Consultants Are Secretly Hurting Your Growth
with Andrew Montz
Is your reliance on top consultants unknowingly hindering your company’s growth potential? Instead of letting your best consultants act as everyday heroes, leverage their expertise to create repeatable and scalable services. This video reveals how you can turn these skilled individuals into innovators who develop standardized solutions.
When you focus on building repeatable processes, you take the pressure off individual consultants and create a scalable model that benefits everyone. Learn how to harness your top talents’ full potential and drive sustainable growth.
Discover actionable insights and begin the transformation of your business model from dependency on heroic intervention to scalable excellence.
#ConsultantGrowth #BusinessScaling #ServiceInnovation
Transcript
Your best consultants could be secretly hurting your growth. Why is that? Well, your best consultants are very difficult to find. They're hard to develop. You've gotta find the combination of technical skills and consulting skills and people that really have a passion around building your business and serving your clients and developing other team members. It's hard to find people at the center of that Venn diagram of all those different intersections. So when you have them, you really lean on them. I was once in a company where we had seven different MVPs nationwide. Each of these was the top 50 in their field. We really leaned on these experts. They were critical to marketing. They were critical to what we sold and certainly how we delivered and the rest of our business. The problem is is that sometimes your best consultants are the heroes. They step in when you really need them. And what tends to happen is the team around them gets built around these heroes. They begin to depend on them. That dependency only increases when you're offering a lot of custom services because you really need the expertise of your most senior consultants to deliver well for your clients. Everything is unique. It's a unique journey. It's a unique solution, a unique client. The team probably hasn't worked together. You're putting new people together, and it takes these heroes to overcome the final hurdles of the day and deliver well for the client. Well, that sounds like a great novel, but it isn't great when you're building your business around an epic journey that could result in failure, which is what tends to happen in custom services, and you're not leveraging your heroes the way you could. You leverage your best consultants to help you build your services in new ways that were more repeatable. They now become the innovators, and that becomes a repeatable thing in your business because they're building better repeatable services that your business can be built around and deliver and sell over and over again. Reality of that is is that those folks become the full leverage across the business, and it becomes much more scalable because of the nature of repeating their expertise and knowledge across your business in these repeatable services than they ever could be as the hero stepping in. When you get to tens of people, hundreds of people, even thousands of people, you don't have enough heroes to go around. You can't move them fast enough. You can't bring them the problem in the right way. You're better off building something repeatable out of their expertise. Bring their expertise to every client in the way that you designed your services and make them consistent across your organization. That's how you get scale of your best consultants. And the team becomes less dependent on your best consultants, they become a model for your best consultants as well because they get good at the repeatable service that they are delivering.
Transcript
Your best consultants could be secretly hurting your growth. Why is that? Well, your best consultants are very difficult to find. They're hard to develop. You've gotta find the combination of technical skills and consulting skills and people that really have a passion around building your business and serving your clients and developing other team members. It's hard to find people at the center of that Venn diagram of all those different intersections. So when you have them, you really lean on them. I was once in a company where we had seven different MVPs nationwide. Each of these was the top 50 in their field. We really leaned on these experts. They were critical to marketing. They were critical to what we sold and certainly how we delivered and the rest of our business. The problem is is that sometimes your best consultants are the heroes. They step in when you really need them. And what tends to happen is the team around them gets built around these heroes. They begin to depend on them. That dependency only increases when you're offering a lot of custom services because you really need the expertise of your most senior consultants to deliver well for your clients. Everything is unique. It's a unique journey. It's a unique solution, a unique client. The team probably hasn't worked together. You're putting new people together, and it takes these heroes to overcome the final hurdles of the day and deliver well for the client. Well, that sounds like a great novel, but it isn't great when you're building your business around an epic journey that could result in failure, which is what tends to happen in custom services, and you're not leveraging your heroes the way you could. You leverage your best consultants to help you build your services in new ways that were more repeatable. They now become the innovators, and that becomes a repeatable thing in your business because they're building better repeatable services that your business can be built around and deliver and sell over and over again. Reality of that is is that those folks become the full leverage across the business, and it becomes much more scalable because of the nature of repeating their expertise and knowledge across your business in these repeatable services than they ever could be as the hero stepping in. When you get to tens of people, hundreds of people, even thousands of people, you don't have enough heroes to go around. You can't move them fast enough. You can't bring them the problem in the right way. You're better off building something repeatable out of their expertise. Bring their expertise to every client in the way that you designed your services and make them consistent across your organization. That's how you get scale of your best consultants. And the team becomes less dependent on your best consultants, they become a model for your best consultants as well because they get good at the repeatable service that they are delivering.
Stop Asking Clients What They Want
with Andrew Montz
Are you asking your clients what they want and hoping it ensures satisfaction? Think again.
In professional services, asking open-ended questions can sometimes backfire. Discover why this method might not work in two typical scenarios:
1. **Custom Development:** Clients are not always aware of what they need in custom projects. This can lead to ambiguous requirements and missed targets. Position yourself as the expert to guide them through decisions.
2. **Repeatable Offerings:** Your experience with multiple clients should inform the process. Instead of asking what they want, provide structured options based on proven results.
Learn how to use your expertise to create a streamlined, efficient service delivery that better meets client needs.
Explore these strategies further in the video and improve your approach to professional services today!
#ProfessionalServices #ClientSatisfaction #BusinessTips
Transcript
It sounds like great customer service to ask your clients what they want. Right? If you ask them what they want, then you deliver what they're looking for, and you've got a happy, satisfied client. Well, that works in some industries. It may even work in professional services from time to time. I'm gonna cover two common scenarios. One scenario is you're doing something for your client that's a bit more custom in nature. Well, having been a client before in that situation and someone was asking me what I wanted to get on the back end of this custom development project, it was difficult for me to articulate what it was. I could sure. I could describe the results I wanted. I could describe some things about the solution that I wanted, but I didn't have a clear vision of it. Why? Because I've never built it before. So when you ask your client when you're doing something custom what they want, they're probably not well armed to answer that question. You're the expert. They're probably gonna defer to you. So why start with the open ed question? Scenario number two is you have a service that you actually deliver on repeatable basis. You have something that you do over and over again. You might have done it 10 times. You might have done it a 100 times. Why would you start off with asking, what do you want? You've worked with 10 clients. You've worked with a 100 clients. You know generally what the market's looking for. Why not start off with these are the types of things other clients have asked for. Here's how we've organized that into our offering and our journey that we'll go through with you, and here are some simple choices to make based off of things we've done with other clients. You're putting the client in a position to make some really limited quick decisions rather than the big open ended question that frankly puts them on the defensive, and they wonder why you're even talking to them. Do you have the credibility? Why aren't you bringing the answer to them as part of that service? So at the end, asking them what they want doesn't work well for either one of those two types of services, which frankly make up the vast majority of professional services.
Transcript
It sounds like great customer service to ask your clients what they want. Right? If you ask them what they want, then you deliver what they're looking for, and you've got a happy, satisfied client. Well, that works in some industries. It may even work in professional services from time to time. I'm gonna cover two common scenarios. One scenario is you're doing something for your client that's a bit more custom in nature. Well, having been a client before in that situation and someone was asking me what I wanted to get on the back end of this custom development project, it was difficult for me to articulate what it was. I could sure. I could describe the results I wanted. I could describe some things about the solution that I wanted, but I didn't have a clear vision of it. Why? Because I've never built it before. So when you ask your client when you're doing something custom what they want, they're probably not well armed to answer that question. You're the expert. They're probably gonna defer to you. So why start with the open ed question? Scenario number two is you have a service that you actually deliver on repeatable basis. You have something that you do over and over again. You might have done it 10 times. You might have done it a 100 times. Why would you start off with asking, what do you want? You've worked with 10 clients. You've worked with a 100 clients. You know generally what the market's looking for. Why not start off with these are the types of things other clients have asked for. Here's how we've organized that into our offering and our journey that we'll go through with you, and here are some simple choices to make based off of things we've done with other clients. You're putting the client in a position to make some really limited quick decisions rather than the big open ended question that frankly puts them on the defensive, and they wonder why you're even talking to them. Do you have the credibility? Why aren't you bringing the answer to them as part of that service? So at the end, asking them what they want doesn't work well for either one of those two types of services, which frankly make up the vast majority of professional services.
The Biggest Mistake in Professional Services Is Killing Your Growth
with Andrew Montz
Feeling overwhelmed by constant business challenges? Discover why treating every client engagement as unique can harm your business and how shifting to a productized service model can bring stability and growth.
In today's video, learn how consistency in service offerings can transform your business. Say goodbye to feast and famine cycles and delivery chaos. Instead, embrace repeatable services for predictable revenue and stress-free growth.
Grow quickly and sustainably by understanding the benefits of repeatable services over custom work. Join us as we explore how successful companies have simplified their models for better financial success and streamlined operations.
Don't let complexity hold your business back. Embrace simplicity for better scalability and long-term success.
#BusinessGrowth #ServiceModel #FinancialSuccess
Transcript
One of the biggest mistakes in the professional service industry is treating every client and every service as unique opportunity. When you do that, what tends to happen is everything that flows from marketing to sales to delivery to finance is unique. And everyone along the way is really dependent on each other to make sure that they capture all the unique nuances of each engagement and every client's needs so you can deliver to it. Well, you're basically become artisans and craftsmen in that model, and that can be a lot of fun in terms of the challenges that you encounter and the uniqueness of each one that you move along. However, that makes for a lot of complexity in your business, and frankly, the failure rate is a lot higher. There's a feast and famine cycle in your sales process that frozen flows into delivery challenges and finally, financial difficulties. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You can target more of a productized or repeatable service that's something you can sell over and over again. There's consistent expectations with your client and for your delivery team. They tune into how to deliver those types of services in the best possible way over time. And then finally, from a financial perspective, you have very predictable repeatable revenue, and you can start making profit completely separated from how many hours you build. You're gonna price off of the nature of the value of the service. So it's a very different game to play. And I've seen companies grow quickly with both, but I also see when you're more custom, you tend to hit a ceiling. There's a challenge of getting to the next level of growth or that next accelerator or hypergrowth. You can do that with repeatable services much easier and much less stress.
Transcript
One of the biggest mistakes in the professional service industry is treating every client and every service as unique opportunity. When you do that, what tends to happen is everything that flows from marketing to sales to delivery to finance is unique. And everyone along the way is really dependent on each other to make sure that they capture all the unique nuances of each engagement and every client's needs so you can deliver to it. Well, you're basically become artisans and craftsmen in that model, and that can be a lot of fun in terms of the challenges that you encounter and the uniqueness of each one that you move along. However, that makes for a lot of complexity in your business, and frankly, the failure rate is a lot higher. There's a feast and famine cycle in your sales process that frozen flows into delivery challenges and finally, financial difficulties. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You can target more of a productized or repeatable service that's something you can sell over and over again. There's consistent expectations with your client and for your delivery team. They tune into how to deliver those types of services in the best possible way over time. And then finally, from a financial perspective, you have very predictable repeatable revenue, and you can start making profit completely separated from how many hours you build. You're gonna price off of the nature of the value of the service. So it's a very different game to play. And I've seen companies grow quickly with both, but I also see when you're more custom, you tend to hit a ceiling. There's a challenge of getting to the next level of growth or that next accelerator or hypergrowth. You can do that with repeatable services much easier and much less stress.
Your Margins Suck Because of This (Not Your Pricing)
with Andrew Montz
Discover how to revolutionize your service pricing strategy and achieve remarkable profit margins in your business. Traditional strategies like simply raising prices or increasing team workloads often fail to address the core issues of compressing margins.
Learn how to set yourself apart in a market crowded with commoditized services. By becoming a 'market of one,' you can break free from the limitations of billable hours and embrace value-based pricing models that resonate more with your clients.
Explore effective techniques such as framing your offerings in 'good, better, best' tiers to emphasize value over time spent. By focusing on unique service delivery, you can reach near product or software company margins, achieving over 70% margins.
Elevate your strategy, redefine your offerings, and watch as your business flourishes.
#ServiceBusinessGrowth #ValueBasedPricing #InnovativeStrategies
Transcript
Over my career in professional services, we were always looking for a better, easier way to grow and faster and higher profit margins. Well, if you're really struggling with how to get your margins up, the traditional thinking is, well, let's get our prices up or let's get our team busier. Those are rarely the core issues. What it often has to do with is your margins get compressed, the more your services are commoditized. And what I mean by that is when you're offering something by the billable hour, when you're offering a service that there's a lot of competition with, you're competing against a bunch of other companies and price becomes the factor that differentiates. Sure. You can have certifications. You can have great stories and case studies. You can build a great relationship. If you're selling a commoditized service, there's kind of a limit on what you're gonna be able to charge for that. You're not doing anything to differentiate the service. You're focused in a really crowded market. Look. You step back and take a different look at it. You can come up with a service and a focus where you become more of the concept of the market of one, where you differentiate yourself by who you're talking to, the market you're focused on, and the service you offer. You also have an opportunity to begin to separate the concept of pricing from billable hours and start shifting the pricing based off of the value of the client's receiving. Could be as simple as not charging a dollar per hour, maybe charging some dollar amount per server that you migrate, or it could be you start putting your service plans together in a good, better, best kind of option with price separation between them. Things that are valuable to your clients may not necessarily cost you a lot more in terms of billable hours. When you price off of billable hours, you're really limiting how your client measures value by the time you're putting into it. If that's the case, then your revenue and your costs are gonna be linear together, and it's gonna be very hard to grow your profit margins. So really take a look at the strategy of the services you offer, the nature of how you're packaging them and pricing them, and look for opportunities to create outsized margins. You can create near product company margins, near software company margins, 70 plus percent margins in your service business when you start adopting those kinds of approaches.
Transcript
Over my career in professional services, we were always looking for a better, easier way to grow and faster and higher profit margins. Well, if you're really struggling with how to get your margins up, the traditional thinking is, well, let's get our prices up or let's get our team busier. Those are rarely the core issues. What it often has to do with is your margins get compressed, the more your services are commoditized. And what I mean by that is when you're offering something by the billable hour, when you're offering a service that there's a lot of competition with, you're competing against a bunch of other companies and price becomes the factor that differentiates. Sure. You can have certifications. You can have great stories and case studies. You can build a great relationship. If you're selling a commoditized service, there's kind of a limit on what you're gonna be able to charge for that. You're not doing anything to differentiate the service. You're focused in a really crowded market. Look. You step back and take a different look at it. You can come up with a service and a focus where you become more of the concept of the market of one, where you differentiate yourself by who you're talking to, the market you're focused on, and the service you offer. You also have an opportunity to begin to separate the concept of pricing from billable hours and start shifting the pricing based off of the value of the client's receiving. Could be as simple as not charging a dollar per hour, maybe charging some dollar amount per server that you migrate, or it could be you start putting your service plans together in a good, better, best kind of option with price separation between them. Things that are valuable to your clients may not necessarily cost you a lot more in terms of billable hours. When you price off of billable hours, you're really limiting how your client measures value by the time you're putting into it. If that's the case, then your revenue and your costs are gonna be linear together, and it's gonna be very hard to grow your profit margins. So really take a look at the strategy of the services you offer, the nature of how you're packaging them and pricing them, and look for opportunities to create outsized margins. You can create near product company margins, near software company margins, 70 plus percent margins in your service business when you start adopting those kinds of approaches.
Scope Creep Isn't a Client Problem - It's a You Problem
with Andrew Montz
Scope creep is more about your processes than your clients.
In this eye-opening video, we explore why scope creep occurs and how it's often a reflection of the service delivery rather than the clients themselves. Have you defined the client's journey clearly? Have you set crystal-clear deliverables? Are you escalating issues promptly and communicating effectively?
Discover the key insights from analyzing thousands of client engagements and learn how to manage scope creep from within. Step ahead of potential pitfalls, redefine your service delivery, and establish strong boundaries that lead to successful outcomes. Don't let scope creep undermine your client relationships.
Tune in to find out how you can be the solution!
#ScopeCreep #ClientSuccess #ServiceDelivery
Transcript
Scope creep isn't a client problem. It's a you problem. After looking at thousands of engagements over the years with clients and what they were happy with and what didn't go well, scope creep was a common factor in the equation. How well did we manage it? How well did the client stay focused? How well did we get to results quickly? Well, if you're seeing scope creep, look in the mirror. Did you define the journey that the client's on? Did you set clear expectations of what the deliverables were gonna be and what they needed to do? Did you make sure that things were getting done on their behalf? Did you quickly escalate? Did you communicate clearly? These are kind of the symptoms that I used to see a lot with troubled engagements. So step in front of the problem, Be the solution. It's not a client problem. It's the way you're delivering your services and setting expectations of your clients.
Transcript
Scope creep isn't a client problem. It's a you problem. After looking at thousands of engagements over the years with clients and what they were happy with and what didn't go well, scope creep was a common factor in the equation. How well did we manage it? How well did the client stay focused? How well did we get to results quickly? Well, if you're seeing scope creep, look in the mirror. Did you define the journey that the client's on? Did you set clear expectations of what the deliverables were gonna be and what they needed to do? Did you make sure that things were getting done on their behalf? Did you quickly escalate? Did you communicate clearly? These are kind of the symptoms that I used to see a lot with troubled engagements. So step in front of the problem, Be the solution. It's not a client problem. It's the way you're delivering your services and setting expectations of your clients.