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A reminder to all consulting firms currently seeking business development support: Make sure you get your setup right before it gets expensive... See, Luk Smeyers and I see plenty of firms that got poor results from marketing agencies and lead-gen service providers (usually, due to faults of their own)... ... which is why I thought I’d shine a bit of a light on the patterns we see, given the many firms which, under pressure from weaker pipelines and the rise of AI, seek to intensify their go-to-market efforts. It’s a “more from more” kind of play - and I’m not against it as such. But the truth is: “More content, more outreach, more follow-up” won’t help if a firm’s proposition and offerings aren’t properly designed and tested for relevance and compellingness... ... and most firms simply aren’t. Whether they’ve never been designed in the first place (most consultancies continue to be “capability-led,” promoting vague promises around what they could do instead of clear-cut issue-resolution-programs), or have fallen out of relevancy due to external pressures (hello, AI solutions!) - The uncomfortable truth is that no agency or lead gen expert, no matter how capable, will be able to really succeed if a firm’s offer is, effectively, some vague commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. Which is why we really, really recommend reviewing, revising, and significantly improving your firm’s promise to the market, segmentation, and initial offers (ideally connected to a fully defined journey) before spending a bunch of money on GTM plays which won’t do nearly as much for you as they do for a firm that has done its proposition homework. Because those firms - firms which go to market with a very clear promise to solve a very specific issue for a very well-described group of ideal clients - can get a LOT of incremental traction from intensified marketing and business development (it’s another thing we see weekly here in our work). But they have what so many consulting firms lack - ✅ a sharp proposition. ✅ well-tested “sub-propositions” (prop. variants specific to key client contexts) ✅ a clear-cut ideal client profile. ✅ validated entry-offers, directly linked to a client success journey ✅ a fully built-out proposition story, complete with content themes. 📦 And, of course: Service packages and delivery systems to back up all of the above! So, to repeat myself: If you’re under pressure to stabilize or grow revenue against strong market headwinds: yes, absolutely explore intensifying GTM efforts and your market presence... but do it AFTER you sharpened your firm’s or group’s proposition. The principle of “strategy first” is still very much in play (and perhaps more important than it’s been for a while) ... ... and you’ll ignore it at your budget’s peril 😉. So, in short: Strategy before intensification. Especially now... Hope this helps!

There’s one thing that almost everyone overlooks when it comes to positioning... And that’s CATEGORY awareness. I’m not talking about the five stages of awareness concept. (I don’t think that people move linearly through those, but that’s a topic for another day) I am talking about whether people know the category exists, know what it does, know why they’d want it, etc. Those people need to be sold to fundamentally different than to people who do NOT know the category exists. Each of these strategies requires a completely different GTM. They BOTH have their own five stages of awareness starting with “problem unaware” - the people who have the category already may not be aware that that category has an issue at all. There have been plenty of companies who have primarily gone to market for either the category-aware side or the category-unaware side. I’ve provided some examples in the carousel below. | 67 comments on LinkedIn

€100K+ pipeline in 6 weken. Eén dag om het op te zetten. Een tijdje terug drie growth marketeers gesproken die pipeline nodig hadden voor Q1. Twee van de drie waren bezig met een lead recycling systeem op autopilot. Scoring, segmentatie, geautomatiseerde flows, het hele plaatje. Mijn advies was: stop daar even mee. Da’s eigenlijk het grootste probleem dat ik zie in RevOps. En ik ben er zelf ook schuldig aan. Die perfecte systemen bouwen waar je aan de bar over kan opscheppen tegen je maten. Ja, dat is een beetje triest. In plaats van weer een “project” hebben we iets geadviseerd dat in één dag live ging. 1️⃣ Grote deals (>€20K ARR) Korte, persoonlijke mails vanuit het profiel van de CEO naar 50 tot 100 ideale klanten, veel daarvan closed lost in de laatste 12 maanden. Verwacht 10 tot 20% reply rate. 2️⃣ Kleine deals (€2-5K ARR) Geautomatiseerde sequences om de duizenden contacten die in HubSpot liggen te slapen opnieuw te activeren. Korte berichten, waarde toevoegen. Verwacht 1 tot 5% reply rate. 3️⃣ Alles ertussenin Signal-based handoff via het Lead Object naar sales. Kan je lead scoring bij doen, maar houd het simpel. Route in een aparte Lead Pipeline en dan gewoon bellen. Verwacht 5 tot 25% connect rate. De 20% die 80% van het resultaat oplevert. En als je het een paar keer gedraaid hebt.. → Dan bouw je v1 van dat perfecte systeem. Niet eerder.

Je team is NIET lui. Je hebt het alleen verkeerd uitgerold. Ook bij jouw agency is er heus een dik kerkhof van tools waar niemand meer naar omkijkt. (Ja hé? Moge zij rusten in vrede. ✝) Die Notion-kennisbank die je in Q1 hebt “ingericht”. Die sales tool die je vorig jaar kocht voor de outbound-push. Die AI-seats waar je nog steeds per maand voor betaalt. Allemaal voor mensen die ‘m één keer hebben geopend. Herkenbaar? Logisch. Want zo gaat het meestal. Je koopt iets nieuws, plant een trainingssessie, deelt de slides na, en wacht tot ‘t landt. Drie weken later zit het halve team weer in z’n good old Excel. (Niet kapot te krijgen, het ONKRUID onder de software!) De conclusie is dan: ze willen niet mee. Lui, eigenwijs, weet ik veel. Onzin. Een tool sneuvelt zelden op de techniek. Het werkt heus wel. Het sneuvelt op adoptie. Mensen die niet snappen waaróm, of het simpelweg niet willen. En dat train je er niet in. Daarom zit adoptie bij ons standaard in élk klantproject. Vanaf dag één, niet als trucje ná go-live. We hangen elke implementatie op aan ADKAR. Klinkt als zo’n consultancy-afkorting waar je meteen van wegklikt, ik weet ‘t. (Is het ook.) Maar de kern is doodsimpel en geldt net zo hard voor je eigen tent. Een training regelt kennis en kunde. Wélke knop, in welke volgorde. Prima. Maar daarvóór zit het stuk waar bijna iedereen overheen walst: snappen waaróm het er is, en het zélf willen. Sla je dat over, dan rol je iets uit waar je team geen zin in heeft. En dan verlies je het. Van een Excelletje. (AU!) Niet beginnen bij de knoppen, maar bij het waaróm. Wat verandert er morgen concreet in iemands werk? En waarom is dat beter? Pas als dát staat, komt de tool in beeld. Geldt ook voor die nieuwe manier van werken die je je eigen team door de strot probeert te duwen. Een tool aanschaffen kost een middag. Je team het laten wíllen gebruiken. Dáár zit het werk.

Good B2B messaging is all about TRANSLATION. Because in B2B, different teams speak different languages. And more importantly… They care about different things. Different teams, with different workflows (use cases), trying to achieve different goals (outcomes). That means you can’t use the same value prop for everyone - even inside the same company. - - - Take Vanta for example. (see image) Notice how the use cases and outcomes shift dramatically by role. The Security Director (champion) and the sales team (user) actually use the product. So your message to them should focus on: → What they’ll do with it (use case) → How the use case is addressed (capability) → What product-level outcome they’ll get In this case: • The security team spends less time on security questionnaires • The sales team gets faster responses to unblock deals Now contrast that with the CFO or CEO. They don’t touch the product. They don’t care about features. They don’t even have the use case the product addresses. So you have to translate those product-level outcomes the champions care about, into the business-level impact these executives might care about. “Faster questionnaire turnaround → deals move faster → more deals closed.” And then translate again for the CFO - because they prefer hard numbers, not qualitative abstractions. “1 extra deal per quarter = $500K ARR annually.” Different language. Same product. Different stakeholder. Different value story. If you don’t understand and apply this principle, there is a good chance your “universal value proposition” won’t actually resonate with any of the stakeholders in your target accounts. #valuepropositions #messaging #b2b | 13 comments on LinkedIn

To all the doom writers announcing the end of consulting every week: Consulting powerhouse Roland Berger just published its 2025 numbers. 5% growth to $1.01 billion. Best profitability in the firm’s history. And no talking about AI agents replacing 1,000s of juniors. Hurrah! See. Consulting is not dying. Yes, AI is reshaping the industry at high speed. Yes, parts of the traditional consulting model are under pressure. But dead? No way. What many articles completely miss is that consulting was never just about slide decks and analysis. The real work happens in complexity, transformation, leadership alignment, organisational friction, and high-stakes decisions under pressure. That’s exactly why I wrote this manifesto: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴... 1. Defining the real problem. Consulting starts in ambiguity. Competing executive agendas. Political tension. Conflicting interpretations of reality. AI can process information, but it cannot uncover the real issue beneath the symptoms, nor define the business value at stake and the outcomes that truly matter. 2. Reading the room. Consulting is built on human nuance. The silence in the boardroom. The clash of styles between leaders from different backgrounds. The unspoken dynamics that decide whether a recommendation survives the meeting or quietly dies the next day. AI doesn’t read that. 3. Bringing lived authority. Executives listen because consultants carry scars. They’ve guided transformations across industries, cultures, and continents. They’ve seen initiatives fail, recovered from mistakes, and learned what works under pressure. That lived experience is what gives advice weight. AI has no such credibility. 4. Applying proven approaches in context. Most business problems are not unique. The underlying challenges repeat across industries. What matters is applying a proven problem-resolution approach in the right way for the client’s context, considering timing, leadership dynamics, organisational maturity, culture, and resistance to change. That is part of the craft of consulting. 5. Creating movement and buy-in. Consulting is about moving people forward. Persuading sceptics. Aligning fractured leadership teams. Building momentum when resistance appears. AI cannot walk into a tense executive session and earn the trust of people with conflicting interests rooted in years of organisational history. 6. Making the high-stakes call. At the heart of consulting are decisions no algorithm can own. Which market to exit. Which acquisition to pursue. How to restructure a failing business. These decisions balance risk, trade-offs, culture, ethics, and long-term consequences. AI can model scenarios. It cannot stand behind the recommendation when the stakes are real. So, no, consulting is not dead. It is evolving. Fast. Stop the doom nonsense. Thanks, Daniel Nerlich, for sharing. Congrats to Roland Berger and CEO Stefan Schaible. Well done!

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