“Our goal now is to figure out what the rest of the industry is doing that our client isn’t to grow sales.” — Victor Cheng Goals Copy Share Image
“At this point, it makes sense to switch to the business situation framework to understand qualitatively why sales volume in China has… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“Disaggregating Costs You need to break down (segment and isolate) cost into its component parts, and you can do this in many… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“(In practice, most consultants will try up to 20 segmentation patterns and discover the most insightful one only through trial and error.)” — Victor Cheng Trial and error Copy Share Image
“If an understanding of the product isn’t relevant to the core issue for the client, I skip this section.” — Victor Cheng Learning Copy Share Image
“(sometimes it makes sense to buy a competitor in order to shut it down) as a way to boost industry prices.” — Victor Cheng Customer Copy Share Image
“Integrating micro-recommendations into the company’s big-picture vision and providing supporting facts and analysis for those micro-recommendations allow the consultant to instill greater… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“If customers are more concentrated, then the customers can demand (and get) big price discounts. If suppliers (the client’s company and its… — Victor Cheng Customer Copy Share Image
“Once you understand the company’s distribution channel mix (the percentage of sales from each channel), you typically will want to compare it… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“consumer demand is strong, growing, and likely to stay that way.” Depending on the case interview format your interviewer uses, you will… — Victor Cheng Customer Copy Share Image
“Once you have enough insight to state a refined hypothesis, you’ll want to do one of two things: (1) Work through the… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Interviewers highly value candidates who can think and communicate linearly (as opposed to jumping around in a scattershot way). They like candidates… — Victor Cheng Interview Copy Share Image
“the consultant’s process was the exact process consulting firms value. It was linear, logical, and based on facts (and reasonable estimates of… — Victor Cheng Consultant Copy Share Image
“Candidate: Aha! Interesting. So industry growth is really being driven by a single segment that is offsetting flat and declining sales in… — Victor Cheng Growth Copy Share Image
“An interesting problem arises with brand-new first-year consultants, who often contribute negative value to an engagement team. More-experienced consultants must double-check at… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“After you analyze each company independently, you’ll run a third analysis of the two companies combined, which will provide you with qualitative… — Victor Cheng Analysis Copy Share Image
“The preferred method uses the following structure: What client should do Why client should do it—Fact #1 Why client should do it—Fact… — Victor Cheng Communication Copy Share Image
“If your client can’t beat the competitor in its area of strength, one strategic option is to refocus your client’s business on… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“Candidate: This is a pretty broad problem, so I’d like to start with an arbitrary hypothesis. Because the client wants both sales… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“What does the product do? Why do people buy it? Why is it useful? Basically, I want to see how the product… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Having personally entered markets in which there supposedly was no competition, I can tell you that lack of direct competition doesn’t mean… — Victor Cheng Customer Copy Share Image
“The single biggest nightmare of partners at the top firms is some first-year consultant shooting off his or her mouth, saying something… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Product Analysis In the product branch of the framework, you look to understand the product at a qualitative level. I use this… — Victor Cheng Analysis Copy Share Image
“The Business Situation Framework The business situation framework is useful for developing a conceptual and qualitative understanding of a client’s business, market,… — Victor Cheng Investing Copy Share Image
“I was able to get to this much more specific point in a minute or two just by asking some of the… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Sometimes there’s more than one type of customer, so you need to identify not only the customer but also the key customer… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“If your case or hypothesis necessitates a better qualitative understanding of your client’s company, you might use the section of the business… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“If you isolate the problem exceedingly well, usually the answer is extremely obvious, so stating your recommendation is just a formality, because… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“This structure synthesizes what you know, indicates what else you need to know, and lays out your plan to address those remaining… — Victor Cheng Approach Copy Share Image
“This entire process, convoluted as it seems, exists in large part because first-year consultants have not yet proven their ability to solve… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Hypothesis: Introducing XYZ product makes sense. Favorable customer factors Favorable competitive environment Favorable company operations factor Favorable aspects related to the product” — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“Because the profitability framework won’t give me the additional information I need about customers and competitors, I’ve officially exhausted its usefulness. My… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“About 50 percent of the time, I don’t finish the entire business situation framework. By the time I’ve worked through part of… — Victor Cheng Business Copy Share Image
“Hypothesis: Client should enter the XYZ market. Consumer demand is strong, growing, and likely to stay that way. Client has a strong,… — Victor Cheng Competitive advantage Copy Share Image
“Hypothesis: The client should enter one segment of the XYZ market. One segment of the market is growing and attractive. Client has… — Victor Cheng Competitive advantage Copy Share Image
“Once this happens, no matter where I am in the framework, I immediately synthesize, revise my hypothesis, and determine what is the… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“In consulting, you always pick and choose your words carefully, because you need to be able to back up anything you say.… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“Because we spent so much time on it, I thought it deserved a mention in the synthesis. Obviously I was wrong; the… — Victor Cheng Big picture Copy Share Image
“Consultants use four tools to solve clients’ biggest problems. You can use the exact same tools to tackle any type of case… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
“This process-of-elimination approach ends once you’ve proven every branch of your issue tree (which may have been revised several times) and can… — Victor Cheng Copy Share Image
