What drives client perceptions in the Gulf?

By Fiona Czerniawska

You know your clients.  You know what they think about you.  But do you know why think what they do?

Let me pick a couple of the many statistics from our new report on how executives in the Gulf region view the consulting industry.  54%: that’s the proportion of people we surveyed (around 130 CXOs and senior managers, across a representative range of sectors and geographies) who describe the quality of consultants’ work as high or very high. 38%: that’s the proportion who describe it as average, which we interpret to mean they’ve been underwhelmed.  Not bad, but not exactly stellar.

More interesting than what people think is why they think it.  We know from previous research lots of things have some bearing on this – overall reputation, quality of people, tools/techniques, innovative thinking, reports/presentations and results delivered.  Quality of people of course matters hugely – and is particularly important in a region where everyone, clients and consulting firms, compete for the same, very scarce resources.  But before you rush to send out all those brochures claiming that your people are the best, you need to know that there’s something which is even more important: results.  Even executives in the Gulf region, still an immature market in consulting terms and certainly one in which demand is outstripping supply, want evidence of what consultants have delivered.

But the factors which influence a person’s perceptions, it turns out, vary depending on their relationship with a firm, whether they’re an active client (someone who has hired and worked with the firm in the last 12 months) or someone with a more remote relationship, some who may used a firm before, have seen the firm in action, or been an employee of the firm.  The latter group still have opinions about the quality consulting firms delivered (opinions they were happy to share with us and no doubt their colleagues) but these are more likely to be coloured by overall reputation and thought leadership.

That produces some telling differences.  Take HR consulting as an example.  You’d expect results to have a big impact on active clients, but the gap between the two is huge: 87% of current clients say that results have a big impact on their perceptions, compared to 63% of ‘non-clients’ (as we’ve defined them); 93% of clients think their opinions are strongly influenced by reports and presentations, while only 42% of non-clients do.  The lesson from this is that every consulting market is two markets.  Focusing marketing expenditure on active clients is a waste of money – what matters is delivering outstanding presentations and, at least if you’re an HR firm (other segments face different challenges), making sure you articulate the results delivered.  Thought leadership, by contrast, needs to be targeted at non-clients.

Knowing your clients isn’t enough: you also need to know your non-clients.