As the co-founder of a consulting firm that has spent years inside boardrooms, C-suites, and crisis war rooms, I’ve learned that the quickest way to lose credibility with an enterprise client is to show up selling services. The quickest way to earn lasting trust? Start with their strategic plan.
What if your best strategic insights didn’t come from consultants, books, or conferences, but instead from your own clients?
When we launched our first Client Advisory Board in 2022, I quickly realized how true that was. The experience reshaped how we make decisions, identify blind spots, and improve our service. Here is what we have learned about building a board that actually works.
The moment your team complains about a client, you’ve already lost. Not because the client hears it—usually they never do. But because the mindset behind those words begins to reshape the way employees see, value, and serve the people who trust them.
Change is hard.
At Intevity we have spent two decades helping large, complex organizations transform; modernizing systems, redesigning processes, realigning teams, and unlocking real business value. We’ve seen firsthand how much friction there is in navigating the old and adopting the new. But we’ve also seen the payoff: agility, scale, and clarity on the other side.
How to shift internal mindsets and client expectations to transition from
hourly billing to outcome pricing.
For decades, professional services firms have relied on the familiar (but flawed) currency of time. Billable hours remain the default across much of the professional services world, yet they are increasingly out of sync with the value clients actually seek. Clients rarely care how many hours something takes; they care about the outcomes achieved.
There’s a truism that’s never changed throughout my career–a satisfied client is the best business strategy of all. It might sound trite, but it’s true, and when you’re focused on improving client retention and lifetime value optimization, keeping client satisfaction as the goal is essential.
Data shows that slow movement in the sales process kills deals – which means saving time in your sales process is an extremely high priority.
Today we are being offered new innovative tools at a rapid rate which means that the burden of choice and then adoption can be overwhelming – so today I’m sharing a way you can accelerate your use of a templated sales proposal and use of your LLM to make proposals even faster without buying more tools.
Why This Matters: When the economy turns, CFOs sharpen their pencils. Discretionary services get cut. Mission-critical services stay. If your firm isn’t positioned as essential, you are at risk.
One of the hardest parts of running a professional services firm is keeping great clients and growing with them. Too often, founders fall into the trap of treating every client the same. That works in the early days, when you are just trying to get revenue in the door. But as your firm matures, that approach stalls growth.
In the world of professional services, consulting, legal, creative, and advisory, delivering real value has never been more critical. Clients today are under pressure to deliver results, not just rack up invoices or slide decks. They’re demanding faster outcomes, deeper insights, and partnerships that help them move forward, not just stand still with a binder full of strategy.