Blogging For Coffee - Part 2: From Grey Cells to The Coffee Consultants

Whilst I continue to nag my fellow Coffee Consultants for blog material, Chris seems to be more than making up for the others. Here is a picture of Chris and I at a local BNI exhibition and the 2nd part of Chris' "Blogging for Coffee" a short history of The Coffee Consultants



Blogging For Coffee

I had introduced a possibility to the group, an aesthetic medicine practice linked to a clinic specialising in treatments for painful or unsightly veins. Together, we came up with a concept for a seminar which was predicated on the very high failure-rate of practitioners entering the field, usually from the NHS.

We saw the seminar as a template for a future, parallel enterprise to sit alongside corporate consultancy. It happened, and as an exercise in showcasing our complementary skills it was a success – but not enough people attended to convince us we had the right formula.

For about five minutes, we howled at the moon, cursed the ingratitude and stupidity of those who had turned their backs on us and told each other that the breakthrough was only just around the corner.

After that, the professional default kicked in. Viewed dispassionately, we had a proposition for business but it was incomplete. We could teach or help people manage, market, advertise and sell but what about the key discipline of financial control?

I must confess to having avoided accountants for most of my life because they speak a language more complex than Mandarin and seem intent on putting me in the frame for the National Debt. But – and it is a big but – they are the only show in town. Accounts are mandatory, not optional, and there are lessons in the figures only a fool intent on business suicide would deny.

Our problem was that most accounting is historic. It presents a detailed picture of the recent past, and we were seeking for a partner who could make the process of financial review constructive – someone who, like a Roman soothsayer, would fish around in the entrails of a balance-sheet and deduce necessary or valuable changes of direction.

We had a false start with a large regional player. The tax partner we met was at pains to stress that his drive and energy had transformed his firm from a sleeping pygmy to a giant which was beginning to rattle the cages of the nationals. We took him for a man for the bigger picture, but when we presented to him he chose to see our proposition as a request to him to open up his client-list to approaches from us. He could not see that what we were proposing was an equal and mutually advantageous partnership that could create an innovative, fully integrated business development consultancy.

Two other failures followed in short order before we found the partner we should have approached in the first place because he was right under our noses.

Martin Bowe was also a stalwart of BNI, an Oxford-educated tax accountant with an entrepreneurial streak, who had broadened his Probusiness practice to include a management accountant, an HR professional and a book-keeper. Although the synergies were less obvious, the chemistry was there from the start of discussions. Tricia, the HR lady, had a background which located her close on the business GPS to Martin Lambden, but the other Martin and Fiona, his management counterpart, could see reciprocity and added value in a marketing proposition which Nick or Trevor would articulate while they identified the funds and justified the spend.

Without an accountancy partner, in a region without a consultancy culture, Grey Cells were too easily dismissed as an expensive option or overhead; with Probusiness, we were demonstrating exactly the financial responsibility consultants are condemned for avoiding.

New game, new name. We become The Coffee Consultants. Why? The answer to this and other questions will be found in Part 3 of "Blogging For Coffee"

Double excitement at the Starbucks clinic

Chris is on a role at the moment - here are his notes from last Tuesday's session at Starbucks:

Instead of being penalised by Health & Safety we have now been patronised by them! A consultant with huge knowledge, obvious ability but a stuttering practice came in looking for a sales boost. He has embarked on one interesting line of attack – a questionnaire designed to pin-point areas of customer ignorance and omission – but really needs to go back to his basic proposition. Do people understand what an H&S consultant does? Do they know what their obligations are under the legislation? Challenging business owners with the requirement – and the fine for ignoring it – would be one helluva way to kick off a website. Or an advertising campaign.

Next up, our first American client. There is a glorious commercial irony in using a homegrown US concept like Starbucks to attract a smart businesswoman from LA. She turns out to be quite extraordinary – a former White House staffer, a charity fundraiser and advisor to not-for-profit companies, and now a professional business coach and mentor looking to work both sides of the Pond. Depending on how much time she wants to give it, and the readiness of clients to accept “distance learning” by Skype and e-mail, we see some potential in a joined-up approach with therapists and out-placement specialists, but it is a crowded marketplace. Tricia, our HR specialist, and Trevor will be doing lunch with her to explore further

Blogging For Coffee - Part 1: The Birth of Grey Cells

This next installment is from Coffee Consultant Chris Inge



Begin at the beginning, Alice in Wonderland was advised.

Sounds sensible, obvious even, but actually more easily said than done when the subject is the formation of a new and very different business consultancy.

One of the most important drivers was the joining by some of the eventual partnership of a business networking organisation called BNI. From early in 2004 we would meet every Thursday morning in a Wells hotel, at a time when respectable sparrows were still asleep, grapple with overly baked beans and guess-the-content sausages, and regale each other with stories of our business prowess.

Speaking purely personally, the breakfasts were a therapy, a stepping-stone on a slow, painful road back to some kind of normality after a heart operation which went badly wrong and almost killed me with MRSA. Having lost all my clients simply by not being around to service their needs, I was desperate to meet those who had some and might perhaps help me to re-stock my cupboard.

I should explain that BNI is fundamentally non-competitive. Each “chapter” recruits only one of a kind so there was no other advertising copywriter to queer my pitch or trump a rare announcement of business gained. I could therefore concentrate on the job definition and business ambitions of my fellow members and aim selflessly to fulfil the BNI mantra (a variant on Dumas’ “all for one and one for all” philosophy) that invited speakers to say what business they wanted and listeners to refer them to likely prospects from their personal database or opportunities randomly encountered on the road.

The key part of the BNI format was a round-robin of one-minute presentations during which a member presented his or her business, explained its key benefit to mankind and asked for contacts or ideas in a particular area of potential – plumbers, estate agents, sex therapists, whatever. The climax of the meeting was a 10-minute presentation which allowed each of us in turn to explain in grater depth the approach and irresistible sales appeal of what we did.

But the procedure we followed at these breakfasts was less important than the synergies we discovered and the trust we built up with people we might not otherwise have met. As a copywriter, I had become used to occupying just one niche within the marketing spectrum and not concerning myself over-much with what happened over the metaphorical wall either side – in sales, say, or finance.

For a year, I listened with regret as well as mounting interest to a management consultant called Martin Lambden and a sales trainer called Trevor Lever. Marketing I understood and courted as a copywriter, but the thought that these other disciplines could be complementary and presented as such to clients who typically purchased them separately was a Eureka moment.

I would like to claim it as my own but the truth is that all of us had been thinking along similar or parallel lines. We bolted a marketing guru, Nick Webbe, on to our nascent group, which we called Grey Cells – grey for the knowledge and reliability that comes with age, and cells because they are a metaphor for intelligence.

We refined the raw concept of “consultancy without walls” in a series of evening discussions, which served to flush out obvious problems like availability and the need for seedcorn capital to develop and market what could easily be damned as a loose cooperative. Additionally and serendipitously, they had the effect of bonding us as a group and driving us to look beneath the surface and answer the key question: could we work together and convince a corporate client to buy our combined services in a departure from the culture of inefficient, separate purchase?

The a priori case was strong because the personalities had convincing CVs. I was an award-winning copywriter who had worked successfully outside the agency honeypot in London for a spectrum of well-known clients from accountancy to wine, and from bedlinen to the rarefied business insurance products of a Lloyds underwriter. Nick was a natural fit – a former account director at Young & Rubicam who had managed the budgets of blue-chips like Heinz and Bass. Trevor Lever was a doctor of analytical chemistry, no less, but also an IT guru, ACT consultant and sales trainer who could sort out an under-performing department or help its managers with issues of personal development and presentation. Martin Lambden, meanwhile, had taken his business development training into BT and seen it through privatisation and beyond. With his partner, he had developed an elastic version of the balanced score-card which he could deploy in SMEs as well as mega-clients like Yorkshire Water.

You could almost reach out and touch the synergy as we talked but there was an underlying frustration that grew as the months passed. We got out there; we networked; we articulated our message; everybody said “good idea” but nobody actually bought it...

(to be continued)

From plans to products

Later tonight, after the regular Starbucks session, all of The Coffee Consultants are getting together to talk about how we can turn some of our ideas and arm-wavings into products. A few weeks ago we did a presentation / workshop for the local Chamber of Commerce. Besides putting ourselves in their shop-window, we also wanted to use the opportunity of doing a little bit of market research into what the local business people thought of "Consultants". Besides the usual cliches like "they borrow my watch, tell me the time and then charge me" there were a few common themes from their feedback 1) What, exactly do consultants do? 2) Can they prove their effectiveness before I sign-up? and 3) What accountability is there if things don't work out? All very vaild and reasonable points.

Our repsonse to this feedback is to try and develop some "products" that define how we work that should be able to address many, if not all, of their concerns.

I am also on Starbucks duty tonight and looking forward to this as well. You never know what type of business may turn up or what their questions may be.

Here is a picture from the opening night of The Coffee Consultants at Starbucks:


Find out more about us by visiting The Coffee Consultants web site