The Big Question
Questions I get from consultants. And my answers.
The consultancy’s website is one of the most discussed topics in my work with consultants and consultancies. I probably receive 2-3 questions about it per week. I decided to add my point of view here by writing about an ‘old vs. new' comparison. Fasten your seatbelts.
Most consultancy and advisory websites suck. Sorry to say. I am struggling with such poor professionalism. And to be honest, most of you are underestimating the criticalness of a website to succeed in consulting. What do you think buyers of consultancy services do when evaluating candidate consultancies (or their consultants)?
Exactly, they check out the consultancy or the consultant/advisor. And hopefully, the consultancy's website shows an abundance of expert evidence. Without easy-to-find social proof and immediate evidence of profound knowledge, the risk-averse and impatient buyer will skip to your digitally savvy competitor. No mercy.
Consulting is a competitive, trust-based business. You need to have a darn good website with the proper structure, unparalleled proof of expertise, and influential educational content. And most of all, it should organically generate demand for the (focused and publicly announced) expertise.
Here's what I see in, say, 97% of the cases when I evaluate consultancies and their websites. I see ‘the old', and you should get rid of it quickly.
‘The Old’: Websites are self-centered, with a pure inside view, looking like ‘the big we-we-we show’
● Almost all of them say: ‘Here’s what WE do…’ (this is the inside view or the we-view, the outside view would be: ‘here’s what clients say we’ve achieved’)...please get rid of your ‘what WE DO’ forever!
● Here’s what WE do: they immediately start with a laundry list of services (impossible to have all that deep expertise - and educate about it, btw);
● The last update of the website was before Corona, 2 out of the 10 (!) services show 404 broken links (I am not exaggerating, I see this every week);
● These websites are still in HTTP (instead of HTTPS), totally unsecured. OMG, think cyber security. Wake up!
● It’s unclear whom they are talking to, who’s the target audience or the buyer/user? There’s no information about their point of view, approach or process used;
● The vision: they love to brag about their (copied from other websites) bold vision: “We are passionate, result-oriented, team-focused, innovative, unique, 20 years of collective experience…”, bla bla bla;
● The references, here’s how they look: “They are nice consultants, easy to work with” (maybe you could try to get a reference explaining you love giving discounts, heck);
● The About: another inside-driven self-love section, no attractive information about this history of the expertise, nothing related to real achievements in the context of the prototypical problem of the target audience (because there’s no target audience);
● The blog: the last blog post was from 8 months ago, written in the context of the second Corona wave. Visitors don’t read old junk;
● The contact form: this is really old school (as the one and the only way to get in touch), and I guess the follow up happens after 6 days, if at all;
● I always check out the traffic to these websites: close to zero, a sad story. And when I ask Google: the tremendous unknown consultancy, on search page 27
‘The New’: Websites have a strong outside view, with persuasive social proof, looking like ‘the big client-client-client show’
● They start with precise positioning: ‘Here’s 1) the problem we solve for 2) this specific audience with 3) this specific approach/methodology. It’s not possible to get it wrong, and what they can achieve (early disqualification);
● It’s followed by: ‘Here’s an overview of the prototypical problem(s) and challenges of our clients that we have discovered the past years’;
● Followed by: ‘Here’s our (bold) point of view regarding these client problems', setting the context for everything they do;
● The references, here’s how they look: “Here are prototypical outcomes and results that we delivered in organizations X, Y, Z - case study based - testified by the client, if possible (nobody cares you are friendly people to work with);
● The about: how did it all start, where’s our expertise coming from (re specific audience problems), how do we achieve project ‘home runs’, how do we engage your stakeholders, how do we improve our expertise on an ongoing basis, etc. All inspiring stories about the expertise-legacy of the consultancy. Trust-building, you bet;
● The blog: (bi)weekly updates, straightforward (specific) problem-resolution advice, educating clients to discover improvement opportunities, understanding the hidden cost of status quo, picturing ‘the promised land’, explaining ‘old vs new’. And the blog content gets repurposed in social channels consistently;
● The FAQ (yes!): an incredible overview of all sorts of prototypical client questions and even objections (to gain immediate non-ideal client disqualification, see below in PS1);
● The contact form: it's still there, but the focus is on ‘booking a call’ straight into the agenda of the expert (and all of the above website sections are 100% pre-qualifying information, they hardly ever get calls from non-ideal prospects);
● Traffic to the website: organically growing week by week, consultancy becomes top-of-mind in the market for their capacity of solving specific problems for a specific audience, driven by their educational power;
● When I ask Google: on page 1 with their core article about essential trends in the industry (try with me: “Trends in consulting” 🤓 ).
So, what are you waiting for? Delete your old-school website. Tomorrow. Nobody cares anyway. And Google doesn’t know you.
PS1: did you ever think about this: success in consulting is also about ‘fast disqualification’ of non-ideal clients!
PS2: I wrote a lot about inside vs. outside thinking in consulting in this article.
