Luk Smeyers-1

My story, and 'what I do'

It has never been so easy to get started in consulting, but at the same time, it has never been so difficult to build sustainable business development success in consulting. Success doesn’t come from sharing a few articles on LinkedIn or speaking at a few conferences. The game has changed. Dramatically.

The consulting world is changing fast. The Internet, social media, technology, and the rise of specialization have transformed the buyer’s journey. Research shows that 90% of professional service buyers always check out a consultant’s and consultancy's expertise online before making a decision. Buyers do their homework. 

Today’s buyers expect an ‘easy to find’ 5-star rated expert profile, Amazon-like. Unfortunately, 80% of potential consultants and consultancies immediately put themselves out of the picture because of their poor reputation as experts. Consulting is a 'trust business'.

Typically, my prospects suffer from too much 'ad hoc', entrenched in the day-2-day project work, and are keen to become a consciously designed consultancy. 

These sobering numbers and this changing world prompted me to change my approach to business development in the past years. It’s a journey that has taken me from one man in a sea of good consultants to having a global reputation that fuelled my People Analytics consulting start-up, iNostix (acquired by Deloitte in 2016).

I help mid-sized, owner-led consultancies become high-performing, distinguishing themselves in the competitive consulting marketplace.

After 5 years as the European CHRO at Nielsen Consulting, 8 years of start-up life at iNostix, and finally 4 years of scale-up life at Deloitte, I found my ultimate calling in 2020: helping mid-sized consultancy firms to transition from a reactive approach to a more proactive and organized one that supports long-term growth and profitability. 

'The intentionally crafted consultancy rather than the spontaneously occurring'.

In working with consultancies all those years, some of the pain points seem to persist: lack of clarity in market positioning and target audience, low reputation and visibility of owners in their market, inconsistent new client acquisition, substandard existing client development, unpredictable pipeline, undifferentiated expertise, misaligned co-owners, inadequate measurement systems, or struggles with retaining key players.

These are just some of the challenges that boutique consultancies face in today's hyper-competitive consulting world. 

That's why I have bundled 20+ years of consulting experiences, expertise, know-how, research, reading, successes, and struggles into my advisory business and have specialized in diagnosing areas where these mid-sized consultancies can improve their overall success in the crowded consulting market.