If you knew a way to become a high-performing consultancy, would you adopt it?
(a stupid question, I guess)
If you knew a way to become a high-performing consultancy, would you adopt it?
(a stupid question, I guess)
A bi-weekly destination for the mid-sized consultancy for insightful articles and compelling social media posts.
Is your consultancy designed to succeed?
Most consultancy owners find themselves entrenched in the day-to-day execution of projects and operate in an 'ad hoc' way, often focused on addressing immediate issues without sufficiently considering their consultancy firm's conscious, long-term design.
On the other hand, high-performing consultancies are intentionally crafted rather than spontaneously occurring. Their foundations are purposefully designed, and their operational framework reinforces their strategic choices.
You can’t win anymore these days with an ‘ad hoc’ approach, going with the everyday firefighting and improvisation.
I help the owner-led boutique consultancy achieve greater efficiency and more robust results.
The ultimate goal in consulting?
Clients come to you!
Unfortunately, consultancies I meet often don’t end up where they had hoped. Their reputation is not strong enough. They struggle to build a reliable pipeline. They aren’t working with the type of clients they envisioned, and the owners or partners have a lot of internal debate about the focus, growth, clients, financials, and the team.
The 5 boutique consultancy high-performance foundations
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1 -
2 Specific to a well-defined audience (the ideal client)
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3 The value proposition is outcome-based (explains achievable results)
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4 Delivered with a repeatable signature methodology, backed by data & research
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5 Rooted in educating and expertise-sharing
About Luk Smeyers
I never had to sell, negotiate or persuade!
With 20+ years in consulting and an incredible journey as a global thought leader in my industry, I am on a mission to turn mid-sized consultancy firms into high-performing consultancies.
Why do clients call me...
Consultancy owners, entrenched in day-2-day project execution, call me when they hit a revenue or profit ceiling, struggle to scale, and need a trusted advisor to challenge current assumptions and operational frameworks.
These owner-led consultancies typically suffer from one or more of these 11 challenges
- Unclear positioning: Struggling to define their target audience and address specific pain points
- Limited thought leadership: Difficulty establishing themselves as leading thinkers with a bold perspective
- Lack of focused expertise: Striving to develop and communicate a specific, expertise-led service offering
- Misaligned co-owners: Struggling to unify a cohesive growth and business strategy vision
- Inconsistent new client acquisition: Experiencing difficulties attracting new clients predictably, resorting to chasing instead
- Inadequate existing client development and retention: Failing to methodically engineer service expansion for existing clients
- Stagnant scaling: Struggling to develop innovative service offerings, programs and delivery methods, avoiding linear headcount increase
- Inefficient pipeline management: Lacking disciplined and reliable forecasting and pipeline management processes
- Weak infrastructure: Insufficient sales and project management systems in place, limiting overall productivity and efficiencies
- Inadequate financial performance measurement: Struggling to monitor core high-performance indicators consistently
- Difficulty retaining key talent: Experiencing challenges in keeping essential team members engaged and committed
My ideal client
The owner-led, mid-sized boutique consultancy firm
with +/- 20 to 125 consultants
and/or €2 to 30M annual revenue
and a minimum of 4 to 5 years active already (no early stage).
FULL BUSINESS REVIEW
A review of the entire consulting business – from positioning to infrastructure to service delivery.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT REVIEW
Refine and amplify the business development efforts of consultancy firms
What clients typically achieve when working with me
- A thorough assessment of their current consultancy's situation, followed by a detailed evaluation that identifies areas of improvement
- A co-created roadmap and a plan for improvement that addresses critical pain points and aligns with the consultancy’s unique goals and vision for success
- My implementation guidance over an extended period of time to provide ‘peace of mind’ for the consultancy owners
If you fit the ideal client profile and you are keen to get help, book a call to discuss.
Consultancies that benefited from my work
And a long list of individual partners, owners, and leaders of consulting firms and practices...
Luk has continually gone beyond the scope of our work, acting as a sounding board and advisor on a variety of topics. Since working with him, we’ve seen increases in our sales and marketing performance, and have had to grow the team because of it. I highly recommend working with Luk.
Nigel Dias
Managing Director, 3nStrategy Consulting
Luk is a true role model. Studying how he grew iNostix, working with him, and following his advice has proven to be the best investment I have made since I started as a consultant 13 years ago. Luk helped me to finally understand what was holding me back for many years. Thank you, Luk.
Vladimir Blagojevic
Founder, Online Marketing Consultancy FullFunnel.io
Working with Luk as our consultancy performance advisor was a game-changer for us. Initially, the idea of cutting 14% of our revenue and narrowing down our services was daunting, but Luk eliminated our fear to narrow down and inspired us to re-commit to our core strengths. The results after 18 months speak for themselves: a 16% profit increase and recognition from our clients as the go-to experts in our field. Thanks to Luk, we’ve improved our financial performance and established a better quality of life for our team, proving that focusing on what truly matters leads to real financial outcomes.
R.L.
Co-owner of a boutique high-performance consultancy (see case study).