Hypotheses for management consulting

Management consultants sell judgment. So the first email has to show some.

That's harder than it sounds. A strategy firm's outreach often reads like a capabilities brochure. Operating model design. Cost transformation. Growth strategy. Every firm says the same nouns. The buyer can't tell you apart, so they don't try.

A sharp hypothesis is a small sample of the judgment you're selling.

What makes consulting different

Technology services firms can point at a system. Management consultants usually can't. The problem is organizational, strategic or financial, and the buyer may not have named it yet.

That's an advantage, if you use it. A good consultant spots the problem before the client does. The opener is where you prove you can.

But it cuts the other way too. A vague guess about growth challenges tells the buyer you haven't looked. A senior executive gets a dozen of those a week.

Where the misery shows up

Start with the public record. 10-Ks, 10-Qs and earnings releases are full of what management consultants solve. Margin pressure. Restructuring charges. A segment that's underperforming. Integration of an acquisition. Guidance cut twice in a row. Read the management discussion and the risk factors, then read the earnings call commentary.

Then the people. A new CEO, COO or business unit president is the strongest moment. They're expected to bring a plan, and the plan often needs outside help to build or to sell internally. A CFO posting about disciplined capital allocation is telling you what the next board meeting is about.

Then the market. A competitor just announced a reorganization. A peer cut costs and the analysts rewarded it. The buyer is being compared, whether they like it or not.

An example opener

Say a mid-size industrial company reported a restructuring charge last quarter and a new COO started shortly after. Job posts show they're hiring a head of transformation office.

You came in as COO right after the restructuring charge, and you're now hiring a head of transformation. My guess is the board approved the savings target before anyone mapped how the work actually changes, and the new office will spend its first months building the plan the charge assumed already existed. Is that close, or is the harder problem somewhere else?

It's a point of view. It's specific. It might be wrong. And a COO who reads it knows in ten seconds whether you think like someone she'd want in the room.

Be willing to be wrong in public

Consultants hate being wrong. It's the profession's quiet fear. So they hedge, with openers about challenges the buyer may be facing in some general area. No COO answers that.

Commit to the guess. A wrong guess from someone who clearly did the reading gets a correction. The correction tells you the real problem, in the buyer's words, before you've had a meeting. That's the best discovery you'll ever do.

Write for the committee

Management consulting deals involve a sponsor, usually the CEO, COO or business unit president. They involve a champion, often a chief of staff, strategy lead or head of transformation. And they involve finance, who'll ask what the fee buys.

Write each a different misery. The COO's misery is the gap between the savings target and the plan. The head of transformation's misery is being handed an office with no mandate and no team. The CFO's misery is a charge already taken with savings not yet visible.

Same research. Three hypotheses. For the CFO version, read writing for the CFO.

Don't lead with the framework

Every firm has a methodology. Buyers don't care about yours yet. Lead with their problem, earn the correction, and bring the framework once you know it fits.

The same goes for credentials. Your partners' pedigrees and your firm's alumni network matter later, when the buyer is choosing between finalists. In the first five lines, they're noise.

Judgment is what you sell. Show a piece of it before you ask for anything.