Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

Put Clients Second

It's axiomatic that your firm puts the client's needs first, right? Promotional material, Web sites, and mission statements certainly proclaim that clients are the highest priority. But the way to achieve consistently profitable results is to put your consultants first and clients second. Whether your practice has two consultants or two hundred, their talents and skills are more critical to your long-term success than your roster of clients. It is, after all, great consultants who drive the profitability of your practice.

Consultants must be responsive to their client's needs, even to the point of working long, crazy hours. Realistically, though, good consultants are tougher to replace than clients.

If you lose a client, it may produce an immediate financial impact. If you lose a great consultant, you lose a lot more than money. You lose a portion of your ability to sell and deliver work; you lose your investment in training; and you lose the client relationships that the consultant built. And don't forget the high cost of recruiting and breaking in a replacement.

What is worse, a departing consultant can create a cascade effect that causes others to leave the firm, compounding your losses. Or your ex-colleague can become your competitor, and steal your secrets, clients, and staff.

Turnover is inevitable in professional services firms. Minimize the brain drain and take the sting out of a very demanding business by providing a collegial and supportive work environment, offering challenging opportunities and paying people what they are worth.

Make sure your consultants know that they come first in the practice and they, in turn, will make sure clients are their first priority.

Has Your Paradigm Shifted Today?

Last Thursday, my friends at 800-CEO-READ let me host their blog for a day. Here are links to seven of my posts.

Has Your Paradigm Shifted Today?

Nine Books Every Consultant Must Read

What’s the Brain Got to Do with Business?

Should You Fire a Client?

Make It an Even Ten

Standing Out in the Crowd

Management of the Absurd

 

When Words Get in the Way

"There's something I've been trying to say to you/But the words get in the way" - Gloria Estefan

When a client offered me a peek at a competitor's proposal, I couldn't resist. Anticipating a fine piece of competitive intelligence, I spread the proposal across the desk, adjusted the light and began to plow through it.

I lost track of the proposal's thread on the first page when I read that the project would result in a "5% positive revenue increase." Well, a negative increase would sure defy the odds.

I continued reading.

The proposal went on to describe that the team would work on "two parallel paths." I was confused. Would that be two concurrent activities, or four? Okay, so maybe I was being hypercritical because it was a competitor's work, but two parallel paths?

The rest of the proposal was more of the same--littered with phrases that, while not incorrect, drained the life out of its ideas.

Here are four other clumsy bits:

• Based on our short, five-minute conversation

• The newly created process

• Funds will be specially earmarked

• Your satisfaction is our main priority

Over the next few days, I went back through some of my own writing and was humbled to find similar gems. So, I cracked open and reread my dusty copy of William Zinsser's classic, On Writing Well. In the book, Zinsser calls clutter "the disease of American writing" and says that we are "strangling in unnecessary words."

Redundant words creep into consulting prose like vines in the rainforest. Be vigilant or they will take root. With a fresh eye and Zinsser's book at your side, you could get the words out of the way and realize a 'positive increase' in the impact of what you write.

Your New Buyer

What follows may not be earth shattering news, but it could change how you think about your prospective clients.

In a study done by the Wharton School's Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the authors found that in Fortune 100 companies, corporate executives are more likely to be younger and female, and less likely to be educated at Ivy League schools than was the case 20 years ago.

The trip to the executive suite is now faster and has fewer stops along the way than in years past. And Fortune 100 companies are more inclined to hire externally rather than automatically promoting from within, which means many new executives gained their breadth of experience in other organizations before landing that top job. These trends are likely to be even more prevalent in organizations that are less conservative than the Fortune 100.

So, what does this mean for consultants?

• Keep an open mind about who might be the rising stars in your clients' organizations. They might not come from where you expect. Remember--they're more likely to be women, relatively new to the company, and responsible for strategic initiatives.

• Forge relationships with new executives as they're likely to be tapped for bigger and better things down the road.

• Be aware that merit and accomplishment, not title or where they went to school, will push your prospective clients into positions of influence.

Confidence

For years, Rosabeth Moss Kanter has been an authoritative voice on business strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. She's a professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and the bestselling author of sixteen books, including her latest, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End.

Professor Kanter is on the Thinkers 50 list of the most influential business thinkers in the world, and she's on the list of the "50 most powerful women in the world."

I talked to Professor Kanter about how the intangible attribute we call confidence can make the difference between winning and losing, for businessses and consultants. You can read that interview in the January 2005 issue of Management Consulting News (MCNews), our companion zine to The Guerrilla Consultant.

Click here to read the interview.

How to Sell While Serving - The January Issue of The Guerrilla Consultant

Whether you’re an individual practitioner or part of any size firm, you’ve faced the consultant’s conundrum: how to successfully complete the project you’re working on and market other services to the client—without appearing to be just another salesperson.

The January issue of The Guerrilla Consultant discusses how to strike this balance without striking out.

The Aim of Marketing

The number of business books that hit the shelves every month is staggering. If you want to pick one gem, tryThe Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

If anything, the book is like a harcover blog containing easy-to-read insights from Drucker's decades of work.

In his excerpt on marketing, Drucker reminds us that, "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits her and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. We may be a long way from this ideal.  But consumerism is a clear indication that the right motto for business management should increasingly be, from selling to marketing."