Doing business online with consultants - #7

With so many clients to serve and so little differentiation in the product, peanut brands must make it very easy for consumers to buy their products. Yet, it is very costly to be present in all of the approximately 40.000 grocery stores in de US[i]. Plus, smaller peanut butter brands can't always serve the more prominent retailers, or they stock only a small subset of their entire product range—all the more reason to operate an online sales channel.

Peanut butter brands offered direct links to their retail partners' physical and online stores or operated an online store themselves. Nothing fancy. Select a product, order, pay, and wait for delivery. Yet, you know precisely what it costs and when it will arrive, itemized and all.

That's what consultancy firms didn't do. No cost indications whatsoever, not even indicative numbers, nor orders of magnitude, let alone any itemization. That could be explained by friction assumption #1 (see page 18) that "every client is unique." Not keeping statistics makes it difficult, if not impossible, to give estimates. But indicative numbers combined in a business case (so, not only the costs but also the benefits) shouldn't be too difficult to make.

But what else could consultants put in their webshop? Well, services like:

Order-a-Consultant. Skype or Zoom for an hour with a consultant. Clients book an hour that's convenient for the consultant and pay in advance by credit card. Of course, an hour is never enough, so more hours and eventually, a project is likely to follow. In essence, the consultancy firm gets paid to select their best prospects.

Research. Firms often present market research reports to their larger clients for free and present at conferences. The story is in a digital format, so additional costs are none. Just put it online and sell it.

Paid webinars. With Masterclass.com ("Learn from the best in the world"), you get instructions from tennis ace Serena Williams, Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer or Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren. Why not get a similar masterclass from that ace in process mining or that super specialist in innovation?