linking

CONTENT
TO REVENUE
IN CONSULTING

Benchmark Report
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in consulting

Table of Contents
Introduction 3

Executive Summary 5

Business Development Agility 7

Technology’s Impact 10

The Role of Content 15

Content Effectiveness Drivers 18

Content as an Alignment Indicator 23

Analyst Bottom Line and Action Plan 26

Acknowledgements 28

Appendix: Survey Background 29

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Introduction
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Introduction
Success for consulting firms is a function of winning clients, retaining
them, and turning them into loyal advocates. When firms can do these
things efficiently, they enjoy higher margins. Efficiency in the consulting
profession comes down to utilization, enabling consultants to stay focused
on the highest and best use of time for their firms.

Pursuing clients and fulfilling their needs is a labor- and content-in-

tensive endeavor. Managing the intricacies of producing content is an
activity that takes away from consultants staying focused on sales and
high, value-add billable work.

However, many consultants find that they must remain very hands-on to
get the content they want, but they pay a price for their involvement in
the form of lower utilization.

Sales enablement is a category of solutions that streamline the process

of creating content. Organizations that embrace sales enablement tech-
nology enjoy better alignment and collaboration between marketing
and business development teams, leading to more effective content
and, ultimately, higher revenue.

Demand Metric partnered with Seismic to conduct this research study to

benchmark how sales enablement technology can impact consulting firms.

The study’s hypothesis was that sales enablement technology improves

collaboration and agility in pursuing clients, resulting in greater content
effectiveness and higher revenue. This report shares key insights from
the study and provides data that is useful for building sales enablement
best practices.
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Executive Summary
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The largest segment of this study’s respondents were in consulting roles. A majority of the firms in this study experienced revenue growth during the past
fiscal year. The nature of consulting work in which participants are engaged included strategy, operations, IT, financial advisory, organizational, and other
types. Over one-third of the consultants in the study are involved in strategy consulting.
Some of biggest findings and takeaways include:
When sales enablement technology is not in use,
73 percent of study participants report having no
or slight agility in responding to client requests.
Sales enablement technology helps business
development teams increase their effectiveness.
When it’s present, almost two-thirds of study
participants say team effectiveness is increasing.
When it’s not present, only half the teams report
increasing effectiveness.
This report details the results and insights from the
analysis of the study data. For more detail on the
survey participants, please refer to the Appendix.
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Almost three-fourths of study participants that
have significantly or completely adopted sales
enablement technology report increasing revenue.
Just over 60 percent of those who have no or slight
adoption also report increasing revenues.
When sales enablement technology is in use, over
60 percent of marketers in the study are able to
curate contextually relevant content, but only 38
percent can do that without this technology.
Increasing the business development team’s effec-
tiveness directly impacts revenue. Over 70 percent
of teams that experienced increased effectiveness
also reported revenue growth. However, almost half
of teams that experienced decreased effectiveness
reported declining revenues.
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Business Development Agility

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Business Development Agility The people in the definition above refers to:

Marketing: traditionally the part

Agility is a much sought-after business characteristic. Sales enablement
of the organization responsible for
has much to do with driving sales success by improving the agility of
building the brand, strengthening
business development teams. A precise definition of sales enablement
relationships, and supporting the
creates context for many of the findings this report shares.
development of content assets.
According to Seismic:

Sales enablement is about people and technology, Business development: (“sales” in

and strategically aligning them both behind a common the definition above) the team that
goal: sales successes. Sales enablement helps supports existing engagements
organizations streamline and shorten pursuit cycles and pursuits using content such as
by improving buyer interactions with relevant sales proposals, pitch decks, engagement
content that is tailored and personalized. When deliverables and more.
executed properly, sales enablement has a measured
impact on time spent selling, win rates, and deal size.”

Clients: the current

or prospective
customers that
consume materials
and are hopefully
influenced by them.
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This study found a strong relationship between streamlining and short-

ening pursuit cycles – agility – and the use of sales enablement tech- The Use of Technology to Enable Business Development &
nology by the business development team. Agility Responding to Client Requests
Figure 1 shows how this technology influences agility in responding to
client requests.
Consultants in the study report that the absence of technology
The organizations that do enable their business development teams hinders an organization’s agility in responding to client requests.
with technology are also far more likely to report moderate to significant
agility in responding to client requests (48%).

The data in Figure 1, however, tells a more powerful story on the nega-
tive side of the technology ledger: almost three-fourths of those who do
not enable their business development teams with technology report
having no or slight agility.

This finding validates a major productivity benefit of sales enablement

technology.
48% 29% 23%

9% 18% 73%

Moderate/ Some agility No/slight

significant agility agility
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Technology’s Impact
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Technology’s Impact FIGURE 2

Conventional wisdom is that the lack of technology to enable business

development teams will impair their ability to respond, be agile, and
collaborate.

If true, the introduction of technology should remove barriers to produc-

tivity, creating better aligned teams that collaborate effectively and grow
revenue as a result. As intuitive as these assumptions are, one goal of
this study was to confirm that sales enablement technology investments
are linked to revenue growth.

Using data from the study, we were able to test this assumption. First, the
correlation between technology and business development team effec-
tiveness was explored, as shown in Figure 2.

While it’s not impossible for business development teams to improve

their effectiveness without the assistance of technology, Figure 2 shows
that technology makes improvement more likely.

Half of the consultants in this study report that organizations that are
not enabling their business development teams with technology are
experiencing flat or declining team effectiveness.
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