The relationship arms race

Interviewing people for our recent report on strategy consulting, I was struck by this phrase. Coined by Muir Sanderson at Booz in London, he was referring to the way in which consulting firms, particularly strategy ones, have been escalating their attempts to build and keep client relationships in recent years.

Obviously, I’m quite tickled by the image of consultants in silos, training missiles marked “alumni network” at each other. But there’s a serious point here as well. Consulting firms have invested huge amounts of time, money and effort in their relationships, to a point where it’s hard to find anyone that isn’t doing everything everyone else is. Everyone’s got an alumni network; everyone has key accounts which they follow closely; everyone is producing articles and white papers which provide an excuse to stay in touch. However expensive all of this gets, no one can stop because the remaining firms would win: it’s the consulting equivalent of mutual assured destruction.

Perhaps there’s someone out there with a new weapon, one that creates a genuine competitive advantage, at least until other firms have replicated it for their arsenals too, but it seems unlikely. There’s only so much you can do with clients, and so much they’re willing to do with you.

And perhaps it’s not a moment too soon to recognise this. After all, what kind of industry is it that puts so much emphasis on relationships? There are consulting firms out there which will tell you that they’re relationship-based before they explain what they do. Clients, meanwhile, don’t buy relationships: they’re buying services, benefits, solutions and so on. However much we like and trust our doctor, we want a cardiologist to look at us when our hearts go wrong. Relationship and “content” go hand-in-hand, even if they’ve been unequal recipients of investment in recent years.

19th May 2010