From ‘Doing’ to ‘Thinking’: Why the Shift Matters Now
Recent years have seen agencies and B2B solutions providers across various categories adopt a more consultancy-based model.
This is not a new phenomenon – at Scaled we have helped many clients develop and embed their consultative offering.
There has been a gradual pivot towards thinking over doing throughout the industry, but now that transition is happening in a faster and deeper way than ever before.
Consultancy-centric models and offerings for agencies and B2B solutions providers are no longer merely a trend; it’s a business-critical imperative.
As the impact of AI takes hold, now and in the future, the consultancy-centric approach becomes an urgent necessity for many agencies and service providers.
Consultancy-Centric Agencies Have the Advantage
The reasons are simple but definitive: solving major client problems is highly valuable.
Agencies who help clients overcome strategic barriers, who can connect their solutions and work to business performance, strategic and shareholder value, have a distinct advantage.
These are the challenges and opportunities that hold interest at the highest levels of a client organisation. They are on the board and C-suite agenda.
Therefore, agencies that can solve those problems and link their solutions and the resulting outcomes to those categories of pains, needs and wants of their clients are inherently more valuable.
Those agencies will tend to be able to leverage longer-term and higher-value relationships with clients.
And, they will also have a competitive advantage in an era set to be defined and shaped by AI.
Because their incomes are more directly linked to high-level business outcomes and less dependent on time spent delivering services.
Services can, are, and will continue to be (to some extent at least) commoditised by AI. These services will be perceived by clients as less valuable and incomes related to these activities will come under increasing threat – clients won’t want to pay for them.
Building the Skills for a Consultancy-Led Future
The transition from a ‘do for me’ model to a ‘think for me and with me’ model, or at least a combination of both, will become an imperative that reaches all categories of agency and B2B solutions providers.
Gravitating towards a consultative model can be challenging. It requires a particular set of skills and capabilities. Most fundamentally:
The ability to connect propositions and work with client business challenges and goals.
But the benefits are clear. A consultancy-centric model offers security and potential prosperity against the headwinds of automation, commoditisation of services and the threat to existing income models.
