Gary Burnison: Yeah. Bob, I’ll let you, you can answer that.
Bob Rozek: Yeah. I think most of the benefits of the actions we took are already embedded in our run rate numbers that we posted today. For us, as we said earlier, I mean, where we’re going to continue to see a margin improvement is topline growth and then also we’re going to look to drive more — continue to drive productivity so that we’re not adding back headcount as quickly as we may perhaps have in the past as that topline recovers.
Tobey Sommer: Understood. And then from a cross-sell referral, I think, you quoted being in sort of the mid-20s now, do you have any thoughts on sort of the evolution of your approach to driving that? Is it still Marquee account and Marquee sales force focused, or do you have different sort of tools and approaches to trying to drive that higher?
Gary Burnison: No. It is. It clearly starts with a top-down go-to-market strategy, but we also have to make sure that we are doing it bottom-up. And the reality is we haven’t had as much firm-wide push around that as we would like to have or what there’s opportunity to do. And so that is an initiative that we call KF RISE. It’s first and foremost investing in data and being able to do scaled analytics, because I think wherever this thing goes on AI, which we are absolutely trying to incorporate into our business, it starts with proprietary data and insight. Then it’s how do we get that data and insight into our consultants’ hands to differentiate Korn Ferry with our clients. And so that is an active part of the strategy, that scaled analytics, that data around sectors, industries, geographies.
We have to do a better job of getting that into our consultants’ hands across the entire platform to be able to differentiate Korn Ferry and offer more insight into customers. So that is definitely something that has been accelerated for us. I’m not going to say it’s new, but we’ve certainly put a fresh emphasis on that.
Bob Rozek: And Tobey, this is Bob.
Tobey Sommer: Thank you.
Bob Rozek: I would…
Tobey Sommer: Yeah.
Bob Rozek: The only thing I would add to that is, historically, I would say that, we were more opportunistic than intentional and I think it’s part of what the program Gary is talking about, we’re going to become much more intentional. I’ll give you an example. In the past, if somebody was an account leader on an account and we wanted — it was a $10 million account and we wanted 20% growth, we’d say, okay, go get $2 million. Now the KPIs are being built where we’re actually saying we want $2 million, but $1 million of it needs to come from Consulting, a million of it needs to come from Digital, so that we’re focusing efforts where we really see the opportunities and going after it with intent versus, again, just being more opportunistic and taking kind of what was given to us.
Tobey Sommer: My last question has to do with the bill rate growth in Consulting. I know you’ve had some success with some sort of government work in EMEA and I’m just curious if that’s the main driver of the bill rate growth or it’s broad-based, how would you characterize it, larger projects, et cetera? Thanks.
Gary Burnison: Yeah. It is broad, but clearly that’s had an impact, what you’re referencing around governmental work. No question about it. But I also think it’s reflective of the strategy and from going from smaller engagements to bigger, more impactful transformational assignments, that’s how you get leverage. We still have to continue to push towards that, the organizational strategy, organizational design, transformation. We still have to push the firm that direction, but clearly that’s had a big, big impact on the bill rates as well.
Tobey Sommer: Thank you.
Operator: And at this time, there are no further questions. I’d now like to turn the call back to Gary Burnison for any closing remarks.
Gary Burnison: Okay, Greg. Listen. thank you to everybody for listening. We’re very, very excited, obviously, about the future of Korn Ferry. I think this is the beginning. We’ve proven that there’s customer receptivity. In the marketplace, the IP and the data that we have is enormous and we’re excited about the future. Thank you for taking an interest and we’ll talk to you next time. Thank you, Greg.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be available for replay for one week, starting today at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, running through the day, March 13, 2024, ending at midnight. You may access the AT&T Executive Playback Service by dialing 1-866-207-1041 and entering the access code 732-3980. International participants may dial 402-970-0847. Additionally, the replay will be available for playback at the company’s website, www.kornferry.com, in the Investor Relations section. That does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Teleconference. You may now disconnect.
