Turning Risk Expertise into Results: How Oldorff Consulting Transformed Leads into Long-Term Revenue for a Global Risk Consultancy

A major global risk management consultancy asked transformed its sales performance by shifting from ad-hoc selling to a structured, KPI-driven approach co-designed with Oldorff Consulting. Within months, the firm moved from low

conversion and short-term projects to stronger win rates, deeper multi-department penetration, and growing retainer-based revenues.​

From Strong Lead Flow to Stalled Growth

The consultancy was not suffering from a lack of interest. Highly capable practice leaders generated a steady stream of opportunities across Operations, Consulting, and Intelligence, but only a small share converted into clients and even fewer into long-term partnerships. Most engagements were one-off projects, cross-sell between departments remained rare, and there was no common language or framework for managing strategic accounts.​

Together with executive management, Oldorff Consulting summarized the core issues as: low conversion from opportunity to customer, predominance of project-based work instead of retainers, weak leverage of existing clients for cross-/upsell, inconsistent sales methodology, and the absence of structured account planning.​

Co-Designing a KPI-Driven Sales System

The starting point was a management-level diagnostic to understand how sales was actually happening in each practice. Through workshops, the joint team mapped the sales landscape, quantified conversion, deal velocity, and client utilization in HubSpot, and identified both operational strengths and methodology gaps. This led to a light but consistent KPI framework that linked day-to-day sales activities to leadership priorities and growth targets.​

Four design principles guided the work: focus on behaviors that directly drive revenue, differentiate KPIs by role, keep monitoring rhythms simple, and give management clear visibility for coaching rather than policing. Practice leaders and consultants agreed concrete activity metrics such as weekly discovery calls, opportunity mapping within a few days, and a minimum share of proposals presented with a retainer option.​

Building Consulting-Led Sales Capabilities

To move away from “pitching services” toward advisor status, Oldorff Consulting designed a targeted capability programme around four pillars.​

• Customer understanding and buyer profiles: Teams learned to map user, economic, technical, and coach buyers in each account and tailor value messages accordingly.​

• SPIN-style, needs-based discovery: Refresher training on situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff questions helped consultants structure discovery conversations and quantify business impact.​

• Retainer-based consultancy models: Rather than scoping only projects, proposals started to include ongoing advisory and monitoring packages that matched clients’ continuous risk exposure.​

• Account management, cross-selling, upselling: A simple account planning tool was introduced to track stakeholders, current services, gaps, and concrete cross-/upsell actions by department.​

Crucially, these elements were embedded into existing routines: preparation for key meetings, pipeline reviews, and quarterly business reviews with strategic clients.​

Strategic Account Planning as Growth Engine

The new account planning approach turned existing clients into the main growth engine. For each priority account, teams documented the current service footprint, a stakeholder map with buyer profiles, and specific upsell and cross-sell plays—for example upgrading from basic event security to 24/7 monitoring, or combining consulting-led risk assessments with continuous intelligence reporting.​

Plans were treated as living documents, revisited in cross-functional sessions bringing together Operations, Consulting, and Intelligence. This broke down internal silos and encouraged joint pitches rather than parallel, uncoordinated contacts with the same client.​

Management Governance and Measurable Outcomes

Because the KPI framework was designed with leadership, it became a real governance tool rather than an administrative burden. Weekly pipeline reviews focused on a few leading indicators—discovery activity, opportunity mapping, and retainer proposals—while monthly and quarterly reviews tracked conversion, deal size, and client lifetime value across practices.​

While specific numbers are confidential, the consultancy observed clear trends: more opportunities progressing beyond discovery, higher win rates driven by better stakeholder coverage and needs-based proposals, and a growing share of revenue coming from multi-department and retainer-based engagements. At the same time, managers gained a clearer view of where to coach individuals and where to adjust go-to-market priorities.​

What This Means for Insurance and Risk Firms

For insurers, assistance providers, and security or risk management firms, this case underlines that lead generation alone is not enough. Sustainable growth comes from a consulting-style sales approach: understanding buyer roles, asking the right questions, structuring offers as ongoing partnerships, and managing accounts with clear KPIs and shared ownership between leadership and front-line teams.​

Oldorff Consulting helps organizations in insurance, assistance, and related sectors design and implement exactly this kind of KPI-driven, advisory sales system—balancing practical tools, management governance, and hands-on capability building.