Many firms have spent years spinning their wheels in the pursuit of business advisory success. While educational benefits abound for firms on the journey taking the leap to strong commercialization of advisory services with great client outcomes requires long-term dedication.

Let’s look at a typical business advisory journey for a professional service firm and what’s involved at each stage of performance. Then we’ll explore four tips to accelerate through the stages to deliver strong business advisory revenue growth.

Four Tips to Accelerate Business Advisory Revenue Growth

1. Find the right internal champions

Identify several internal champions who lead the charge towards building advisory revenue streams. Possessing the right ‘Advisory DNA’ these people have the desire, curiosity about business, and business acumen to take the lead. These champions will slowly foster an advisory mindset across the wider firm, encouraging skill development, demonstrate capability (that drives both internal referrals and external new business) and encourage strategies that free up capacity for those interested in offering business advisory services to clients.

2. Embrace an advisory evolution, not a revolution

Evolving clients’ (and internal teams’) perception of the firm as a trusted source of business advice in areas such as problem solving, strategy, change, growth and profit involves building the authentic capabilities, track record and confidence of internal champions by way of an evolution not revolution. It’s not going to happen overnight, and there are no magic bullets, rather a strong commitment is needed for taking time to practice, staying the course and getting early wins. Start slowly and build strong foundational capability, early wins from referrals and refine your service offering before marketing heavily to your wider client base.

3. Be facilitators, not consultants

Clients all have unique circumstances and goals; their businesses don’t work to a script. To add higher value and become more of a trusted advisor to a mature client’s business, you’ll need to act more as a facilitator rather than a consultant helping them solve problems, develop strategies and go after root causes not symptoms. You don’t need to have all the answers, rather leverage insights from where they are now and where they want to be in the future to help them devise a plan for how they will get there.

4.Keep the offering simple

To productize your business advisory solutions into a clear model simplicity is the key. A base line of offerings such as a business health check, paid problem solving, strategic planning and implementation support are a great start.

Discover a Path For Your Firm – Get Your Complimentary Advisory Success Plan

Complete Mindshop’s professional service firm diagnostic here to receive a heatmap of your advisory skill gaps, the barriers holding your firm back and a fully customised one page plan for your next steps forward for business advisory success.
For more information about Mindshop, visit their Partnership page here.