In this episode, we explore how AI is changing the landscape of industry-first segmentation in professional services. Learn how firms should pivot their strategy to focus on capabilities, not just industry expertise.
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Key Takeaways:
The Shift in Segmentation Paradigms
The Decline of Industry Expertise
Traditionally, industry-first segmentation was a key differentiator for consulting firms. However, as AI technology evolves, industry expertise is becoming less critical for many clients, particularly in greenfield markets like AI. Clients are now more focused on the firm’s ability to solve specific problems, regardless of industry experience.
AI’s Impact on the Buying Process
AI enables firms to get up to speed quickly, reducing the emphasis on industry-specific knowledge. Clients now prioritize results and the capability to implement AI-driven solutions, rather than just industry familiarity. This shift is changing how firms approach segmentation and marketing.
The Role of Results and Expertise
In the evolving landscape, expertise must be tied to tangible outcomes. Clients no longer select firms solely based on their industry experience but are increasingly looking for proven results, especially in complex areas like AI.
The Tension Between Customization and Scalability
While firms strive to deliver customized solutions, AI is pushing them to rethink scalability. Clients want tailored solutions but are also seeking efficiency, speed, and cost-effectiveness—factors that AI helps to deliver. This creates tension between the desire for bespoke solutions and the operational needs of the firm.
Reevaluate Segmentation Strategy:
Consider moving beyond traditional industry segmentation. Focus on the problems you solve and the results you deliver, especially in emerging fields like AI. Adapt your firm’s positioning around capabilities rather than just industry expertise.
Embrace AI-Driven Differentiation:
Leverage AI to enhance your firm’s problem-solving capabilities. Demonstrating proficiency in cutting-edge technologies, regardless of industry, will help your firm stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
Balance Customization with Scalability:
As AI shifts client expectations, find ways to scale personalized solutions. Ensure that your firm can deliver high-impact, customized services without compromising on efficiency or profitability.
Focus on Results-Driven Expertise:
Align your marketing strategy to showcase your firm’s ability to achieve results. This shift from industry-first to results-first thinking is key to capturing the attention of clients in a world where problem-solving ability is the primary differentiator.
Adapt to a Changing Marketplace by Focusing on Capabilities, Not Industries:
The future of segmentation is shifting. As AI and technology redefine what clients expect, firms must focus on demonstrating their ability to deliver results rather than simply relying on industry-specific knowledge. Embrace this new era by prioritizing outcomes and building a brand around solving real business challenges.
Chapters
Jason Mlicki (00:01.71)
So listeners, change it up. So listeners, I want you to know that Jeff is hosting one of his, you know, patented Friends of Jeff events tomorrow. And for the first time ever, he actually invited me. So I want this on the record that he’s hosting one of his patented events where he invites all his friends, of which I’m not one, even though we’ve done, you know, a thousand podcast episodes and we talk every other week or every week for over five years.
Jeff (00:14.047)
Ha ha ha.
Jason Mlicki (00:31.202)
Somehow I’m not on the friends list, but this year I made the cut. So I haven’t decided if I’m going or not though. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. Should I go?
Jeff (00:39.707)
you talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Boy. Now, now all of our listeners will know why I never invite you.
Jason Mlicki (00:44.161)
Hahaha
Jason Mlicki (00:51.749)
That’s totally fair, totally fair. I wouldn’t invite me. All right.
Jeff (00:57.023)
Well, it is not officially a Friends of Jeff, but it is Friends of Jeff. I think it’s gonna be a great event. And it’s gonna be even better when you show up. So.
Jason Mlicki (01:09.294)
Well, I mean, you just have to invite me. Yeah, invite me. So, OK. Well, the topic tomorrow and I won’t do it justice, but essentially is sort of it’s sort of the impact of AI on on what you call the the IC triad, the intellectual capital triad. And, you know, redirect me if I get it wrong, but I think it’s it’s how AI is changing the way firms market, sell and deliver.
and what to do about it. we’re kind of, we’re kind of, guess we’re sort of going to start that conversation today is why I’m saying all that. And you put forth the topic. So, and the topic is the death of industry first segmentation. And I think obviously AI is one of the key drivers of that. And I think the question on our minds for discussion today is,
AI going to destroy that? Is AI going to wipe out the industry first segmentation approach that a lot of consulting firms use? And maybe more importantly, is it going to change buying behavior sufficiently that they say, I don’t need an industry expert anymore. I don’t care about industry experts.
So that’s the essence of it.
Jeff (02:29.877)
So that was a pretty good summary. That was a quintessential Jason Malicki coalescing of
data into an articulate summation. I think you were really good on that front. You did it justice. To help others understand that, I’ll link to the white paper that I just wrote on, it’s called the CEO’s Guide to Differentiation, Growth and Scale. And I talk about the IC triad in there. That’s just Jeff’s fancy.
fancy air quotes for those who can’t see us, way of talking about this integration of sales, marketing, and delivery, or as we’ve talked about on the show, the thinker, seller, doer phenomenon that’s in organizations or professional services firms.
Jason Mlicki (03:31.628)
I never thought of those two things in unison as those mapping to each other. I never thought of those two things in unison as mapping to each other, but it makes sense that they do. I never made that logical connection that the thinker-cell-doer model is loosely mapped to marketing, sales, and delivery.
Jeff (03:36.512)
What’s that?
Jeff (03:50.941)
It is if you’re in the growth school, it’s not if you’re in the productivity school. Maybe we should do a whole episode on that. We’ll do an episode on that. Write it down. so we’re getting, okay. I’m writing it. TDS episode. I just wrote a white paper on our blog on that one is as well. link to that too.
Jason Mlicki (04:01.644)
I have nothing to write on.
Jeff (04:16.743)
So the thinking around this topic is, is industry still relevant given that you can get up to speed so quickly on AI? I would argue that this is a chicken and egg phenomenon and it’s not the, can get up to speed as a consultant on an industry.
As much as it is the buyer’s perception as the importance of industry anymore, which is interesting twist because buyers traditionally have been the ones who said, I want a consultant who understands my business. right. I don’t want to explain my industry to a consultant. That’s a waste of time and effort. And it annoys me. bet you.
Nine out of 10 buyers would probably say something like that.
But there’s another data point, Jason. And I didn’t notice this when I wrote the white paper, but I used the data in the white paper from Source Global. And I shared it with you, and it talked about what are the key attributes that drive choice. And you and I had an exchange over number one. But one of the lowest ones on
that list, and this was 2024 research, was sector expertise. If the numbers served, if I remember, it was 6 % of buyers chose that as one of their top three drivers for choosing a firm. And I think there were probably 10 or 15 attributes above that one. And I thought that was really
Jason Mlicki (05:54.84)
Yeah.
Jeff (06:20.125)
interesting because I would have thought that would have been much higher.
Jason Mlicki (06:24.502)
Yeah, it’s funny, you and I actually had a back and forth chat on that, that text chat that I almost wish we could expose for listeners about because what it started with was the the fact that methodologies were quite high and you were kind of questioning that and asking me why that would be. And I didn’t surprise me at all. The comment, the quote you just put doesn’t surprise me either. And it all comes back. It comes back to the same thing I said in that text chat, which is that all comes down to the wording of the question.
in the research design. And the wording of the question was choice. So you think about the fact that, and this actually kind of comes into the loose outline you built for this episode. For most problems that clients are trying to solve, I would say right now, we’ll get to those, there’s certain problems that they definitely can’t solve. But a lot of business problems they’re trying to solve, they have plenty of industry.
people with industry expertise or industry experts at their fingertips. So, you know, when they get down to the selection set, the firms are choosing from all probably bring kind of industry parity, industry expertise and industry experience parity. And so that’s not a choice driver anymore. Now it probably was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and that showed up in your outline where, you know, 10 years ago, it’s like, gosh, I’m so tired of working with people who just don’t get it. They don’t get me. They don’t get my
business. And so they’ve made a conscious decision to prioritize that in the searching process. And then of course, when you get to selection, it’s no longer a differentiator.
So that doesn’t surprise me. I’m way off the outline here. bring us back, bring us back.
Jeff (08:19.477)
So that we can be efficient in the use of our listener’s time. How about if I outline my hypothesis on why this could potentially happen?
Jason Mlicki (08:22.264)
Yes.
Jason Mlicki (08:30.669)
Yes.
So you’re not saying this is happening. You’re saying this might happen. This is something to be have on your radar.
Jeff (08:37.845)
this.
Yes, yes. I am seeing it anecdotally in clients and I am seeing it anecdotally in peers and others that I’m talking to in the industry about what their business and marketing strategies look like. And they say, you know, if you have enough anecdotes, you get data. So I feel like we’re kind of on the front
end of this, I could be wrong. but I’m starting to see it more and more. But when I first thought about this, I was like, there’s no way. And I will, I will go on the record of saying industry segmentation will never disappear. What I will say, it will be less important for the foreseeable future.
And here’s why. think there’s a couple of reasons. First, industry segmentation is a mature industry marketing strategy, right? It’s textbook. As you begin to get a much more competitive market, you try to differentiate yourself. Industry expertise is a logical…
way of doing it for all the reasons that we just said. I think that’s what’s happening is we are entering a new epic of consulting around AI in its application, both internally and externally in firms. So to some degree, we’ve switched from a mature market to a greenfield market.
Jeff (10:38.825)
And when you’re operating in a greenfield market, the industry is not going to be as important as the capability behind this new consulting epic. If you look at .com, nobody cared what your industry expertise was. What they were concerned about was your ability to digitize a business and take it online. When the re-engineering phenomenon happened, right?
All they cared about was your ability to cut out cost and redo process among from a functional perspective. Industry maybe played a little importance in that, but not much. think AI is the same way right now. There are so few experts in AI. If you’re an expert in AI, nobody’s going to care what your industry is or industry expertise is. They want to know that you can apply it and make it work to accomplish a result.
that people want. And most of the results that people want right now is efficiency and taking costs out of the system. And most of that cost is labor cost. So I think that’s one of the number one reasons. We’re moving from a mature industry to a new epic. And it’s Greenfield. Industry is not going to be as important.
Jason Mlicki (12:04.172)
Yes, I a couple of things. One is this doesn’t sound to me like it’s a shift in segmentation. It’s just the next emerging opportunity. It’s the next emerging business issue that that firms can go after. And it’s a space that’s less, you know, in that sense. List well trodden ground, hence to your point, clients are saying, well, you know, I don’t care if you’ve worked in.
retail, if I’m a retailer, if I’m looking for you for guidance on AI, but AI is not the only business issue that clients face. Right. So there’s plenty of other business issues where, like you said, you know, cost out, taking cost out, right. if that was the objective and you said, you know, I want to drive more efficiency in my production environment. Well, am I going to turn to someone who’s never walked into a production environment before? No, probably not. Probably not going to do that. You know, so,
I come back to your concept of the performance envelope, that AI is at the fringe of the performance envelope and their industry expertise may not be as relevant as it was, but everything that’s at the heart of that envelope, I think of it like idea of this big arc and there’s this kind of core in the middle. I think that’s unchanged, but you’re still selling into the same environment where the client expectation is you’ve been inside of a business like mine and you’ve solved this problem before.
successfully in organizations like mine. Now, there’s some caveats to this that I want to throw on later, but that’s my first thought is that you’re just talking about the edge of the performance envelope. So that doesn’t seem to me that it would force a sea change in how particularly a larger diversified firm approaches the marketplace. does imply
a change in expectations of the buyer for this particular capability and this particular problem. Because they recognize that what you’re asking of them is to solve a problem that probably no one’s really totally solved yet. So I’m probably not going to find someone who’s already solved it for a company just like mine.
Jeff (14:17.575)
It’s funny that what you just described there, in the white paper, when discussing the performance envelope, I was talking about the cost of expanding the performance envelope. And I actually used a fan as a metaphor. And when we look at segmentation kind of categorization that we can use in a professional services firm,
Jason Mlicki (14:20.493)
Yeah.
Jeff (14:45.867)
You know, we can use industry, we can use client size, we can use function, technology platform, geography. There are a number of different ways that we could segment, but the number one way I think is issue. The issue that you want to own or the result that you want to deliver for that issue.
So when you have those combination of segmentations, you create a number of permutations.
Jeff (15:25.899)
of markets that you can attack. And in order to attack them, you have to have permission to play. Right. So you have to demonstrate the three brand preference drivers, expertise, and how are we defining expertise? We’re not saying expertise is just AI or just industry. There’s a lot of different ways to demonstrate expertise. What we’re saying is the second brand driver results.
is being elevated that you need to focus on what result are you delivering? And I’ll talk about why that’s so important in just a second. And then third, know, Simpawtica doesn’t change, right? You got to make it easy for people to buy and work with you and you have to have a worldview that they like. But that fan that you just described managing the performance zone creates complexity for your sales, for your marketing and your delivery team.
Jason Mlicki (16:20.76)
Yeah.
Jeff (16:24.979)
because it makes makes your firm more complex. So as you said, a large firm, this probably isn’t as big deal because they built out that fan. And it’s just another segment in there. But if you’re moving from a small and mid-size and all of a sudden you’re adding a new capability and a couple of industries or issues that you’re going to attack, you’ve all of a sudden tacked on six, seven different
kind of market segment that now your marketing sales team has to go attack. That’s not effective. That’s not effective. So I digress, but this is how you need to think about why industry is or is not important as you expand this performance envelope and go after the AI greenfield space.
Jason Mlicki (17:17.624)
assuming that’s what you want to do, right? Yeah, no, it makes sense to me. I guess I’m almost questioning the choice of the word segmentation, because segmentation implies this is how you’re going to break down the marketplace and how you’re going to approach it. But when we’ve talked about this so far in this episode, I think it’s been more talking about how clients think about it, how clients are thinking about this issue.
And I don’t know if they’re the same thing, really. I I think they’re mirrors of each other, but they’re not perfect mirrors. So I don’t know. Because I can also make the argument that it’s like some of how I choose the segment is a function of the issues I choose to own, the problems I choose to solve. Right? So it’s not like it might so be that, know, grocers are more likely to have the issues that I solve. Hence, I should focus on grocery. Right?
Jeff (18:05.309)
Exactly. Exactly.
Jason Mlicki (18:17.294)
And so it’s not, it’s sort of like, which way do you pick that may not be super important at the end of the day. You might make the business decision, man, we are the world’s leading consultant to grocers. What are their biggest issues today? So you just, you went about it the opposite way, but you get to the same outcome. And, um, yeah.
Jeff (18:35.465)
And you know why that is, Jason? Generally, I have found that happens depending on the age of the firm. When you’re young, you’re going to market with a capability. You don’t care where the industry is. You’re going to, you know, hand to mouth, take whatever. And if it happens to be the grocery industry and all of a sudden you’ve got 30 clients in the grocery industry, and now that’s your specialization, that it just unfolds that way.
Whereas if you’re, you know, a big four firm and you decide to enter into the grocery industry because it has consolidated and there are essentially four behemoth grocers, that’s a different strategy. So I think you hit the nail on the head there with the way you described it. But you said something even more important is, should we be thinking this from a firm perspective?
or from a buyer perspective, and you said they’re mirrors, I would say you’re exactly right. And my second reason why I think this phenomenon is happening is these changing perspectives that are wrought by AI. So if we look at a buyer’s perspective, you’ve already said, you know, hey, I can get up to speed. I can learn stuff as a buyer.
Jason Mlicki (19:38.595)
Yeah.
Jeff (20:05.683)
I can find out a lot of things about solutions through AI. And one of the things I know as a buyer is AI enables these firms I’m hiring to do a lot of things as well. And I don’t want a generic solution. I want something personalized for me. And I think this is critical. And this was a lesson I learned at Anderson when we had our
global account program. And it was just like, it just like blew my mind. It’s such a simple concept, but it’s so powerful. When we approach the telecom market, for example, we did not treat AT &T and Verizon as the exact same telecom companies. We had this concept of a market of one.
The issues that AT &T was wrestling with as a mature global company versus a Verizon that was younger and coming up, I may have gotten their histories wrong, but they were very different. One was debt laden. One was not, you know, one was growing through acquisition. One was not. I mean, they were just very different, but they’re both in telecom. It doesn’t make sense to approach them that way.
Jason Mlicki (21:16.312)
Yeah.
Jeff (21:30.057)
But if you go in to talk to either one of those, you better know what a cell tower is and have a fairly strong understanding of regulatory bodies that limit certain things you can do. But I think that’s kind of one perspective. And then the flip side is from the firms is
Sure, I want customized solutions for my clients. And I even market that, Bespoke, customized. You see these words all the time in marketing, but they’re really not. They’re like a 90 % solution with a 10 % change. It’s the exact same templates and what have you. And there’s a tension that exists between the buyer who wants customized solutions
Jason Mlicki (22:08.022)
the time yeah yeah
Jeff (22:27.068)
And the firm who wants to deliver something at scale, you can’t scale 100 % customization.
So those are always in tension with one another. And AI is really changing that equation or should be. And I think this is going to be one of the fundamental things that we talk about at this meeting this week is what does that look like in the market in terms of how your clients defined value?
Jason Mlicki (22:49.463)
Or could be.
Jeff (23:08.457)
Right? What do they expect in an AI world? And they want something faster, cheaper, higher ROI. And what do firms want? Right? They want something scalable and profitable and sustainable. Right? I don’t want to cannibalize my own business. And that’s going to be a tension and they need to be reconciled.
Jason Mlicki (23:25.464)
Yeah.
Jason Mlicki (23:29.77)
It’s funny, Jeff, I was thinking about you and I did a thought experiment. This was a while ago and around this IC triad, this idea of again, marketing, selling and delivery. So these three activities of a firm, guess, right? And the thought experiment was, it was just a discussion we were having was, could you take AI and eliminate any one of those three things? So could you have a firm that was made of nothing more than a marketing engine,
great sales prowess and the entire delivery was AI. In verse, could you have a firm that was all delivery and all marketing was AI? There was no marketers at all. You were just, I guess, the managing partner and you were interacting. Could you have a firm where AI was the sales engine? That one, I think, would be the hardest.
The other two seem feasible. You could mind map that and say, actually, I think that could be done in certain areas. And I don’t know where I was going with this. Other than, I do think to your point that there is a lot of change. There’s a lot of change that firms are facing. And there’s a lot of pressure that they’re getting on the business model that AI has brought to the table.
Anyway, I want to go back though. I want to go back to something that you said about expertise and results in Sopartico, something you talk a lot about. And I want to relate that to the buyer. I’ve come to this, as we’ve been outlining this topic and talking it through, even before we hit record, I sort of came to this conclusion that the rise of industry specialists and the rise of industry segmentation programs
It wasn’t like results never mattered. And it wasn’t like clients here were like, oh, I’m just going to hire an expert. don’t know whether this works or not. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Now, I think clients ever thought that way, but they just saw expertise as a proxy for results. So whether or not the firm could articulate their past success as well, or could articulate the results that they’re going to deliver for this particular engagement, the client took comfort in saying, well, you’ve worked with all my peers. Hence, you’ve clearly had successful outcomes or you wouldn’t be here.
Jason Mlicki (25:53.122)
And I think now the expectation from the buyer is no, I need you to go one step beyond that. You need to prove to me that that expertise is valid and will yield outcomes. And if you can’t do that, I’m probably just going to keep this internal and do it myself. I’d rather build it than hire it.
Jeff (26:17.979)
I think you’re, I think you’re right. That’s my bias generally anyway. So I’m, I’m bobbing my head, but as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, these various consulting epics and you know, I was my karate kid time was in Anderson in Anderson was one of the early firms with an industry program.
And it was, it was industry specific for a very particular reason. They were auditors and auditory audit, audit. It needs, yeah. Strategia needs a deep understanding of the industry. And that’s like a one-to-one. get that. But then the next epic for.
Jason Mlicki (26:58.06)
Auditoring?
Jeff (27:15.045)
Anderson was moving into the technology and accounting software in particular. So it wasn’t so much industry, although they had that as a base, it was now functional expertise, right? Accounting and technology. I don’t need, you know, a production person, technologist coming in and helping me with my accounting. And I want an accountant helping me with my accounting technology.
Jason Mlicki (27:31.864)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff (27:45.033)
Right. And we just keep building kind of on the shoulders of giants, if you will, of these segmentations. And that’s why I say segmentation is a, maturity event. but sometimes we get this reset and it’s not to say that if, if I’m in a competitive RFP situation and I have deep AI capability and I have the functional and industry expertise.
I may rise to the top, but that’s not necessarily so. I’ve had clients who have lost in industry specifics and they were Una industry and Una technology and lost because others had cross industry expertise.
And the client liked that phenomenon because they felt like they were getting outside thinking coming into the solution and not the same old same old.
Jason Mlicki (28:50.284)
Yeah, I’m gonna, this was the one thing I wanted to kind of give a shout out to. And I actually think that our friend of the show and client of ours, Dave Petniak from Jump Associates has written about this better than anybody I know. And he talks a lot about their whole firm is baked around this idea of they’re not industry specialists. They are by design, not. They are the exact opposite of this whole topic we’ve been talking about.
And the reason being that he always talks about this idea that if the problem you’re trying to solve is a problem that your peers likely solved before, then you hire an industry expert to get you to parity with your peers. But if the problem you’re trying to solve is one that your peers have never solved, or maybe your peers are terrible at, the last thing you want to do is be at parity with your peers on an issue that they stink at. Best practices are worst practices.
So he talks a lot about this idea that it’s the nature of the problem that matters that defines the type of firm you should hire. And then he also talks about a lot about the time horizon of the problem. So if it’s a problem that you’re going to solve in the next one to three years, well, then industry specialists are kind of like the gold standard here, right? But if it’s one that you’re going to solve in next five to seven years, because it’s a really sticky problem, they may not be your guys.
And so we’ll put a link out to his, he wrote a piece on this recently and did a podcast on it recently. I think he speaks about that better than anybody in terms of understanding the nature of the relationship between the nature of the problem and the types of firms that are best tool to solve it. And that there’s no one simple answer to this. Every firm’s difference, I think is really what it comes down to because the nature of the problems that they’re designed to solve are different. so anyway.
I wanted to, before we lost track of it, wanted to make sure I gave him a shout out because I do think he’s done a really nice job of helping clients think about this. So anyway.
Jeff (30:53.429)
Jason, that is, I love that. And I love Dave’s thinking. And it’s an important idea our listeners should take away. And I’m gonna tie it back to our segmentation in industry is if you’re gonna be effective at what Dave says you should do, and it’s brilliant thinking, you need to do some important things.
But the most important thing is, or two important things, is understanding what issue you’re solving.
Jason Mlicki (31:31.138)
Yes.
Jeff (31:32.115)
Right? Is it, is it the one that’s the short term one, or is it the longterm one? Is it the big sticky one or is it more turnkey? This is why our methodology always talks about what issue do you want to be known for? An issue isn’t just one dimensional, it’s multi-dimensional, right? Right? Right. You got to think about the issue from who’s solving it.
Jason Mlicki (31:55.699)
Well, yeah, yeah. We’re never so fortunate, right? Yeah.
Jeff (32:00.319)
Who should be solving it short term, long term, strategic, tactical? mean, there’s a lot of different ways of looking at that issue. But the second is who’s buying that solution and do they see it as strategic or do they see it as tactical or do they want an industry expert? Is that their bias or is there bias for a non industry expert? Because you’re not going to convince them differently.
And with your point of view, you’re going to attract and repel. And this is why we’ve talked so much about the importance of a strong point of view. You need to be clear, you need to attract, you need to repel. And this is like the quintessential example of where that plays out in real time.
Jason Mlicki (32:49.998)
Yeah, no, 100%. All right, I want to take us to wrap and I want to take us to wrap in this way. I want to get your take. Is industry segmentation, industry first segmentation really dying? Is it a canary in the coal mine kind of a thing? Like that this is going to be irrelevant in the future and or not.
Jeff (33:17.259)
I’m gonna give a consultant answer.
Jeff (33:23.109)
It depends on what industry, but I think it will not go away. It will be there. But if you have limited resources and you’re building brand or you’re marketing and trying to, you know, generate demand or leads.
You have to prioritize your investments.
And if I had limited budget, I might pull some out of the industry and put it elsewhere. If, if my solution is, is significantly impacted or playing in the AI space, right? If industry, if you’re in audit and you’re still competing among telecom firms in audit and you need that differentiation because of that maturity.
then yes, you would allocate to that. But to the green field stuff, this is a way to be thinking about how you allocate your investments.
Jason Mlicki (34:35.778)
Yeah, I personally don’t think it’s ever going away. I think everything we’ve talked about today to me is all about the performance envelope and it’s an emerging new issue. It’s emerging new technology still. And as a result, there’s just the relationship of issue slash industry expertise that intersection on it. I always talk about the intersection on a spreadsheet is not really there yet. So clients haven’t.
made that next leap that says, not only do I need you able to solve this problem, I also need you to have industry experience. When it gets to point where that’s the case, then you’ll start to see that request. Say, well, yeah, you’ve done a of good AI work, but what have you done for firms like mine? Companies like mine. That’ll show up once it gets to the heart of the, out of the edge and into the core. And I also think at the end of the day, I just don’t see a world where
where clients don’t always ask that question is, yeah, but have you ever worked with a company like me? And that’s often, it may not be a final choice, but it’s often, there’s a reason. I said this at the onset, I went to top firms and I went to their websites and I looked at how they structure the nav. Cause that’s the very first place I would go to think about how they’re segmenting the world. And usually it’s industries and capabilities. It starts in those two areas. And that’s.
To me, logically, because that’s how buyers think. The first thing that they go is like, well, I’m looking for what you can do for companies like mine or for these types of problems. And so I just think that that’s a early stage way for buyers to help figure out whether or not you can help me. so to me, I just don’t see it going.
Jeff (36:26.827)
Which brings us somewhat full circle to the data that I provided from source and our text exchange and why methodologies as it was worded was at the top of that list. Any buying decision that a B2B buyer is going to make is going to try to
Maximize or minimize three core things. Speed. I’ve hired you. I got to fix this problem. The faster I fix it, the better. So get me to my result fast. Two. Cost. I don’t want to spend more than I have to. I want an ROI on this. So value for fees is really important.
I don’t want to go with the low cost person. want one that’s going to give me, you know, the highest return on what I have to put into this. And the third, which ultimately encompasses the others is risk. I want to make as a smart decision as I possibly can and minimize the risk of failure on the project to the business and to my career. So.
That’s why methodologies are so important. They give me relief that you’re going to have speed, cost, effectiveness, and reduce risk. That’s whole thing. And AI is impacting methodologies. That’s the whole crux of this. The methodologies for solving the problem are changing as a result of AI. And things are going to be faster.
They should be more cost effective and they should have less risk with AI and buyers know that.
Jason Mlicki (38:31.308)
I’m only laughing because our listeners don’t know, but the text interaction, you’re just, you’re parroting back what I said in our text interaction in which you questioned the value of methodologies and I explained it to you and now you’re explaining my own thinking back to me. But the,
Jeff (38:38.879)
No way. No way.
Jeff (38:44.563)
No way. What you said was just complete ignorance and stupidity. What I just articulated was brilliant and primary.
Jason Mlicki (38:53.134)
Okay, okay, good. Thank you for consuming my IP as your own. Thank you, China. Thank you, China. I appreciate your contribution to the global economic order. So let’s take it to wrap. I’m just laughing. So, all right. So listeners, I wish you were live because I would take a poll right now and you can tell me whether I should go to Friends of Jeff tomorrow or not based on this discussion. Should I go?
The United just sent me the message that I have to check in for my flights. I got to decide now. I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. All right, man. This is fun. This is a good conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Jeff (39:26.379)
You
Jeff (39:35.637)
See you tomorrow, buddy.
Jason Mlicki (39:37.24)
See ya.
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