The Five 2026 Anti-Trends Professional Services Leaders Need to Hear w/ Brian Sommer

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In this episode of the Professional Services Pursuit podcast, host Banoo sits down with industry analyst and longtime consulting leader Brian Sommer to break down the five critical “anti-trends” professional services firms must confront heading into 2026. Instead of following the overhyped AI narratives dominating the market, Brian challenges firms to rethink how they present expertise, differentiate themselves, and build credibility in an era where clients are more informed and more skeptical than ever.

Key Topics Covered in This Episode:

Why firms must stop selling AI solutions in 2026 the same way they did in 2025
How to “show, not tell” the real art of the possible with AI
Why sharing your firm’s internal AI journey is essential for credibility
The importance of proprietary intellectual property
The need to rethink your firm’s value proposition and commercial model

Banoo Behboodi

Vice President, Success Engineering

Banoo Behboodi is a 20+ year software and services leader with extensive experience executing change initiatives with oversight of Customer Success, Professional Services and Delivery and Consulting functions. Banoo’s earlier experiences with AT&T Mobility, Coca-Cola Company and Ernst & Young leading key transformational and compliance projects, provided the foundation needed to be an effective leader and a change agent with a customer first mindset. Banoo is passionate about driving continuous improvement through sharing best practices and empowering resources through technology and analytics to optimize performance and job satisfaction while driving business outcomes.

Brent Trimble

Vice President, Value Engineering

Brent brings more than 15+ year’s of leadership experience in Management Consulting, Strategic Delivery, Marketing services and product development firms to his technology role at Kantata. As the VP of Value Engineering and the Managing Director of Marketing Service & Agency Vertical, he specializes in identifying process improvement potential, business optimization and key health metrics for alignment and orientation.

With deep business understanding through an operator lens - Brent works with Kantata partner firms to refine intrinsic and extrinsic value drivers - giving firm principals the focus required for adoption, mobilization, value realization and ultimately - success.

Prior to joining Kantata, Brent was a client of the platform and held positions at Interpublic Group, Accenture, WPP, and independent marketing consulting firms.