- Mevin Anenden, Logicalis
Business development feels unnatural to many professional services consultants and, though they're capable of selling, few have been given a foundation that would make it feel natural.
Over time there is often a clear expectation to develop client relationships, generate new work and be seen as a trusted commercial adviser that becomes central to career progression in firms.
What is less clear is how to do all that in ways that feels consistent with being an expert professional rather than a professional salesperson. Sales training, which is typically focused on process, pipeline and persuasion, feels foreign to consultants whose professional identity is built on expertise and client service.
A consultant doesn't need to be outgoing to be a successful business developer. They can be curious about their clients' commercial worlds and be able to engage naturally on a business level with the people who run them. Commercial curiosity can be taught and business development confidence can be consciously and intentionally built. This programme exists to help consultants make good commercial leaps forward quickly.
You will benefit from this programme if any of the following feel true:
> You are expected to develop client relationships and generate new work but find the expectation genuinely uncomfortable.
> You have had business development training that felt more like a sales process than professional advice and found it unnatural to implement.
> You want to move beyond the bounds of delivering expertise into a more genuinely advisory relationship with your clients but are unsure about how to make this happen.
> You feel more confident in technical conversations than in commercial dialogue with senior client stakeholders.
> You have watched more commercially confident colleagues progress faster than you despite them being less technically capable.
> You want to understand your clients' businesses more deeply so that your conversations with them go beyond the matter in hand.
> You want to be seen as a trusted commercial partner rather than a technically excellent consultant who does good work when instructed.
> You find networking events uncomfortable and want a different approach to building relationships that feels genuine rather than transactional.
> You feel there's a gap between your technical capability and your commercial confidence that is wider than it should be and you want to be proactive in closing that gap.
A thought provoking experience
A complete self-contained experience designed to be finished in a single sitting or broken into manageable chunks on mobile.
Short Focused Video Lessons
Stories, practical business teaching, immediately applicable techniques, real-world observations and reflective questions. Each video under five minutes, most under two. Around 2.5 hours total. Mobile enabled. Filmed across multiple locations. Each video either teaches, provokes or challenges.
Live Online Forum With Rob
A group session led directly by Rob Evans where you bring your client situations, your business development challenges and your questions about engaging with senior clients commercially. Direct access to someone who has worked operationally inside 150+ businesses worldwide and understands the commercial dynamics of consulting and professional services from both sides of the client relationship.
Practical Ways Of Thinking
Activity Model Acumen™️ for understanding any client business quickly. Plain language financial literacy. An introduction to PPMCleadership™️ as a lens for understanding the organisations your clients are running. All designed to be simple enough to remember and immediately applicable in client conversations.
A journey, not a sales course.
The content unfolds deliberately. Each stage builds on the last.
Where You Begin
A Different Way Of Thinking About Client Development
The programme begins by establishing a way of thinking about client relationships that is entirely consistent with how excellent consultants already think about their clients. Not selling but engaging in genuine curiosity about their commercial world. A trusted useful partnership, beyond immediate instruction, that develops naturally from shared understanding rather than persuasion. That reframe fundamentally changes how business development feels.
Understanding Client Businesses Quickly
Activity Model Acumen™️
A practical approach to reading any client or prospect organisation quickly. The activity types that shape how different businesses operate, influence what their leaders care about and underpin the ability to ask questions that demonstrate genuine commercial curiosity rather than a scripted discovery process. The consultant who walks into a first meeting with a new client and asks genuinely good commercial questions earns a different kind of trust than one who only discusses technical subject specific matters.
The Financial Foundation
The Language Business Leaders Use
A plain language overview of financial statements, how budget approvals work, how investment decisions get made and how business leaders are assessed by the people above them. The goal isn't to make you a finance expert but to make you comfortable enough in dialogue with senior client stakeholders.
The Relationship Approach
Conscious Business Leader Relationship Building
A simple and practical approach to building genuine relationships with senior business leaders over time. Built around positive engagement, genuine commercial curiosity and a partnership mindset that makes business development feel like a natural extension of excellent client service rather than a separate and uncomfortable activity.
The Business Context
Understanding The Organisations Your Clients Run
A practical introduction to how businesses are organised, how they create value, what drives commercial decisions and how to think about you client's business context in a way that makes every conversation more useful to them. Including a brief introduction to PPMCleadership™️ as a lens for understanding the leadership dynamics of the organisations your clients are running.
The Rest
Stories, Observations & Objective Questions
Much of the programme moves through a series of short focused videos, each one a story with a point, an observation from the real world or a practical technique drawn from more than thirty five years of operational experience across 150+ businesses. Each video ends with one or more questions directed at your specific situation and your relationships with others, internally and externally.
Where You Arrive
Clarity, Challenge & Next Steps
The programme ends with a challenge. What have you concluded? And what are you going to do differently?
A Note On Format
Every video in this programme teaches, provokes or challenges. You can complete the entire programme in a single sitting or in fifteen minute chunks on your phone. When you're done you'll see your role, your organisation and the ways you operate with greater clarity than the day to day allows.
'This isn't training in a traditional sense. It's a structured journey of practical teaching, objective reflection and immediately applicable thinking.'
Clarity Focus
This programme helps you see clearly where you are alongside the teaching it provides. Most development starts with answers, this starts with questions. It helps you understand your current situation, your capabilities and your commercial contribution. That clarity makes everything land with more specificity and usefulness.
Real Approaches From Real Operational Experience
Every technique in this programme is drawn from direct experience and observation across 150+ businesses worldwide. Activity Model Acumen™️ and PPMCleadership™️ are not borrowed models given new names. They are original and developed from identifying the recurrent ingredients in successful individuals and teams and observing where people often come unstuck.
Designed To Be Genuinely Enjoyable
Short sharp videos filmed across multiple locations. Personal stories, practical techniques and reflective questions throughout. Around 2.5 hours total. Mobile enabled and consumable in fifteen minute chunks. The more enjoyable the experience the more likely it is to positively change how you actually lead.
Direct Access To Rob
Every programme includes a live online forum with Rob Evans directly. A live group conversation where you bring your questions and challenges to someone who has been in the room with many businesses worldwide and will engage with your specific reality rather than a generic answer.
- Chris Griffiths, Travel A La Carte
- Mark Graham, The Counselling Foundation
Real World Operational Focus
Rob Evans has spent more than 35 years working operationally inside 150+ businesses. He has worked with and within professional services firms, consulting practices and many other kinds of business. He understands the commercial dynamics of client relationships from the side of the business leader being engaged as much as from the professional services provider doing the engaging.
The perspective of understanding what business leaders are actually thinking when a professional services provider is in the room is what makes this programme helpful for consultants who want to develop client relationships more naturally and more effectively.
Based on 35+ years working inside 150+ businesses worldwide, its not theory. It's what Rob observed working and where he saw people come unstuck.
- Yvonne Chin Irving, CET
- Extract From Corporate Stock Exchange Announcement
- Mark Graham, The Counselling Foundation
For consultants and professional services leaders who want to be as commercially confident as they are technically capable
This programme works whether you are early in your professional services career and want to build commercial foundations at the outset, or established in your role and aware that technical excellence alone is no longer sufficient for the progression you want.
> Consultants who are expected to develop client relationships and grow fee income as they progress in their career.
> Experts engaged in professional services delivery who want to develop trusted advisor relationships with clients that go beyond the immediate instruction.
> Consultants who have had sales training that felt uncomfortable or ‘too salesy’ and want an alternative that is grounded in genuine business understanding rather than deal motion progress.
> Any customer-facing professional who wants to understand their clients’ businesses more deeply and engage with senior stakeholders more credibly and more confidently.
> Directors and partners of consulting and professional services businesses looking to develop their teams.
You'll find our work guiding you to comprehensively examine how you think about your role, how you equip yourself, how you approach your work with prospects and clients, how you operate internally, how you communicate and how you adapt. Our material is designed to facilitate your considered and candid reflection. We share the lessons of our experiences and reflections illustrated with personal stories, examples and other relevant commentaries. We help you relate this material to your situation through our use of carefully crafted questions. Our goals are to provoke thought, to help you analyse your situation, to help you find ways to enhance your commercial and operational contributions and to equip you with tools and methodologies you can apply throughout your career.
You proceed at the pace that suits you best. Within the material many questions are posed for reflection relating to how you approach your career, work and professional development. You take whatever time you wish to devote to reflection on each question as your value comes from utilising the programme as best suits you.
We want you to succeed and success comes from action. All of the material is immediately available on purchase and remains accessible to you for 30 days. We encourage you to commit to moving ahead with your programme as soon as practicable after you've made the decision to participate. Your value from the programme will come from the steps that you take arising from the thoughts that emerge and decisions you make as you engage with the programme. The sooner you engage the sooner you will realise the benefits for you.
Yes. Every month we hold a live, invite only, one hour, online Q&A forum to provide you with the opportunity to raise any questions you have on the material. You will be invited to three monthly sessions scheduled following purchase. We will send you the invitations via the email address that you supply on purchasing your programme. We vary the times and days of the week on which forums are held to allow you the maximum opportunity to attend at least one of the three sessions to which you will be invited.
Yes. Our programme is business focused and every organisation is in business. Business principles apply whether you work for a 'for profit' organisation, a public sector body or a 'not for profit'. Each has investors, customers, employees, suppliers and other partners and stakeholders. Each organisation has to deliver some blend of experiences and solutions to its customers and in so doing it is seeking to deliver a return to its funding providers, a return that could be in a financial form or in the fulfilment of obligations.
We have developed the tools and methodologies we share based on the lessons of our own operational experiences. We have intentionally developed them to be straightforward and memorable for your day to day use. The tools we share include Activity Model Acumen™️, B2BcxoSelling™️, PPMCLeadership™️ and a range of other practical operational aide memoires. All are designed to be simple enough to remember and are immediately applicable in your role.
Everything included. We find participants who engage quickly get the most from the programme and the forum access is structured to support this.
Around 2.5 hours of short focused video lessons
Mobile enabled, watch in chunks of 15 minutes
Practical business teaching and immediately applicable techniques
PPMCleadership™️, Activity Model Acumen™️
A practical conscious approach to business leader relationship building
Reflective questions throughout to personalise the learning to your specific situation
Action oriented - 30 days to complete videos before forum
Live online forum session led directly by Rob Evans
Direct answers to your specific client development situations and questions
If you are looking to develop a team, a dedicated group forum session with Rob Evans can be added for no extra charge for cohorts of five or more