Mistakes to avoid when selecting marketing consultants in Asia

How to choose your marketing strategy consultant in Asia? Usual mistakes to avoid

I am often asked to recommend marketing strategy consultants in Asia.
Beyond the obvious criteria we are all reviewing (brand, years in
business, services, client, pricing, positioning, reputation,
experience, etc.) here are a few more success factors from within to
help you to make the right choice.

Check the project consultants’ experience, not the company’s

When engaging a marketing strategy consultant, clients acquire
experience and know-how from a consultant team. Past projects handled
by the company 5 years ago are irrelevant. Most of the team that has
worked on projects 5 years ago are likely to be gone and the learning
with it. Flashing experience  and long client list earned a long time
ago by different team members is misleading. The know-how is no longer
there. Expect a steep learning curve  from  the team and you will
actually pay your consultant to learn.

Do they have any staff at all?

Many marketing strategy consulting firms in Asia have flashy websites.
However when you click the “about us” section you are more likely to
find uninteresting verbiage just to fill page content or the profile of
the most senior staff. This is too often because this is not a proper
company with staff on payroll staff but a sole freelancer, or a
“suitcase company” with indeed no staff. Google is full of these firms
in Asia.

Full time staff versus interns and contract staff

Who will do the work is the key question. Most marketing strategy
consultants in Asia are poorly staffed. You will be presented with one
or two senior staff engaged in the sales process but who will disappear
during project execution. So ask yourself who will really work on my
project. Most small marketing strategy consultancy will then engage
interns and contract staff to work on your project. Remember you are
buying experience and specific know-how: wrinkles, and some white hair
as opposed to green university crowd. Check on Google if your preferred
marketing strategy consultant is recruiting interns and contract staff
all the time. This is a clear sign of poor staffing from which your
project will likely suffer.

Stay away from marketing strategy consulting firms using freelancers in Asia

Levering on previous point… Some marketing strategy consulting firms
even borderline lie about their own internal staffing with claims of
armies of consultants available at a snap. These are freelancers;
that’s all. In Asia, no one with skills and local knowledge aspires to
be a freelancer in the medium to long term. Sadly, to be freelancer is
perceived to be like being unemployed and a strong social circle
outcasting factor pushing freelancers back to the job market. Sure,
there are some outstanding personalities who will bridge personal
situations with some side-line freelancing but overall the crowd of
freelancers in Asia is made of people who are unable to get a full time
job (which differs a bit from the Western “free / rebel without a
cause” freelancer mindset). In this optic, do you  really want to have
your corporate strategy project executed by freelancers? Freelancers
are no employed by your marketing strategy consultant partner but are
just outsourcers. There is no legal control possible on freelancers.
NDA are not enforceable, confidentiality breaches cannot be brought to
court, late delivery can only be apologized for.  Beyond
confidentiality, quality is also an issue. You will usually not be able
to speak to the freelancer directly which you will agree, puts some
serious reliability clouds on the findings.

Check the consultant’s Asia Pacific coverage

Many marketing strategy consulting firms will claim to have offices all
over Asia. This is not true. Either little dots on the maps are placed
to mislead you, were part of a failed grand plant, or the company
forgot to remove them after closing its offices. Red dots in Korea or
in Thailand? Check again, and you will possibly see that there are no
local offices and no local team, an outsourcing  “partner” at best.
Leveraging on someone else’s presence is not going to deliver any value
to you. Integrity is absolutely key in consulting. If the website and
brochure are misleading you can assume the rest will be of the very
same standards.

Check the staffing turnover rate

Marketing strategy consulting firms with a high staff turnover are
indicative of something wrong at the core. You do not want to allocate
a large part of your budget to a firm trying to fix its own problems.
Ask around, word of mouth is usually a pretty good indicator of the
firm’s ability to retain its talent. Has the company lost half of its
team recently or repeatedly over time? Again, if it can’t retain
talent, you are likely to be faced by a young, inexperienced team which
you will have to guide throughout the engagement at your own expenses.
Have a quick Google and Linkedin search and discover reality behind the
curtain. Companies with a turbulent history do not offer the best
alternative.

I have good connections…

Have you ever heard a consultant in Asia claiming anything else but to
be “very well-connected in the business community and the political
arena”? Well these are just claims and will remain claims. Don’t be 
fooled by the connection claim. To be well-connected in Asia is no
different than to be well-connected in US. you are typically from a
top-tier US business School, you have family members in politics, you
seat on the board of a few large companies, you have a lot of white
hair, you have been interviewed multiple times on TV, you are socially
engaged through charity circles,  you are very wealthy and drive a big
black car. In Asia when you are indeed “well-connected” you are not a
marketing consultant with staff of five to ten.

You have been warned. Enjoy!

Damien Duhamel

Managing Director Asia Pacific

www.kae.com