To Acquire Clients At A Hare’s Speed, Move At A Tortoise’s Pace

Growing up in a pedestrian, garden-variety working class family in communist Hungary, hunting for bargains was a daily task for every family member, but mainly for my mom, as on most days she did grocery shopping on her way home from work.

Whenever she found some chicken “back-and-backside" packages in the store, she would buy a few bags.

And when she heard from hear colleagues that there were some bargains in some other stores, after her arrival, she would send out either my brother or me to buy some before it would be too late. Then she would cook some and freeze most of the stuff for future use.

You may not know it, but chicken back-and-backside, although it was very dirt cheap, had very little meat on it. If I say it was 95% skin and bones, I’m very generous.

But with meticulous search, we always managed to find some scraps of meat too.

The parson’s nose is still my favourite chicken body part, and I’m more than happy to exchange it for boneless, skinless chicken breast on any day.

I’ve decided to mention this mind-bogglingly interesting factoid from my years of growing under the oppressing yoke of the Soviet Union (Hey, my home town and all the schools I attended were named after some pretty nasty mass murderers.

Well, at that time, they were regarded as national heroes), because when we look at many consulting firms’ client acquisition processes from the buyer’s perspective, the process reminds me of chicken backs and backsides.

Pitching and persuasion representing skin and bones, and the scraps of meat, including the parson’s nose, of course, representing the parts of business development that buyers actually enjoy.

 And this is the topic that we put under the magnifying glass in this month's mummifyingly electrifying episode of Commando Consulting, entitled, To Acquire Clients At A Hare’s Speed, Move At A Tortoise’s Pace.

Enjoy!