Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

Tip #4 of 25 - Clients buy, they're not sold

Walk into most auto showrooms and you'll know what it feels like to be sold to. The salesperson and the general manager will work hard to get you into a car before you leave the showroom. So you head into the showroom ready for battle and armed with as much information as possible.

Like car buyers, clients resist hard sell tactics. In fact, three out of four buyers of services hire consultants as a result of their own research, rather than from consultants' solicitations.

Remember, clients turn first to their internal networks of colleagues and friends to find a consultant, and they know a lot more about you than you think before they contact you.

Think of exploratory client meetings as test drives. Don't waste time telling clients how great you are. Get to the heart of the issue they face, and be prepared to prove how you can help them.

Clients are braced for consultants to launch into the hard sell, so surprise your prospective client. Don't tell them about the great services you offer, but show them how you can help by suggesting ideas about project objectives, how to organize the project, and how to get it done.

You'll sell more work by letting clients buy from you, rather than trying to sell to them.

What's the Best Advice You Ever Got?

The editors at Fortune magazine posed that question to 28 business "superstars" in the March 21, 2005 issue. For me, a handful of the responses stood out from the others.

Andy Grove, Chairman of Intel: "When 'everyone knows' something to be true, nobody knows nothin'."

Peter Drucker: "Get good--or get out."

Dick Parsons, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner: "When you negotiate, leave a little something on the table."

Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO of Gereral Electric: "Be yourself."

Doling out wisdom by sound bite is always perilous. But with a great idea, the right skills, and a little luck, you could run a business using these timeless principles.   

Tip #3 of 25 - Share Your Stuff

Some consultants resist sharing their ideas and the products of those ideas (AKA intellectual capital) with clients before they're hired to do a project. They fear that clients will take their work and try to complete the project on their own, or worse, give it to another consultant.

The world is awash in information and ideas. If you're stingy with yours, it will show. Besides, client aren't buying your methodology, tools, or your point of view. They're buying your expertise, and that can't be pilfered by poring over proposed workplans, preliminary recommendations, or your perspectives on how to solve a problem.

It's true that clients have been known to hijack work product consultants develop during the sales process so they can try to complete the project without consultants. But that's the exception, not the rule.

Be generous with your knowledge, not foolish. Qualify every opportunity before bringing forward your best ideas. But don't hesitate once you believe you've got a serious opportunity.

Consulting is an ideas business. Keeping your best ones locked in your head, brief case, or computer will leave a door open for your competitors to walk through.

On Bullsh*t

Harry G. Franfurt, an emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, has penned a short book entitled On Bullshit. The book shot up the Amazon popularity chart (it's #18 as I write this post).

Frankfurt begins by noting that "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." In the businesses of consulting, law, PR, and other professional services, clients accuse service providers of slinging the bull, sometimes with abandon.

The fastest way to aliente clients is to try to bullsh*t them. And, according to Franfurt, that happens "whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about."

Anyone can reduce the level of BS in any client conversation by saying "I don't know" or "Let me get back to you on that."

Look through your Web site, marketing materials, and proposals. Is BS buried in your words? Everyone knows when they're listening to BS and nobody likes it. Has any of it slipped inadvertently into your work?   

Just when I thought I understood Franfurt's perspective on bullsh*t, he ends his book with this quote:

"Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial--notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."

That's an uplifting thought, professor.

Tip #2 of 25 - Keep Proposals Short

Researchers laid a stack of proposals on a table to observe how people would behave when given the task of reviewing proposals. The stack included proposals of different page lengths, from very short to encyclopedic.

The individuals in the study reached for the smallest proposals first, in almost every case.

Clients resent proposals stuffed with unnecessary information, so stick to what's essential. If you feel you've just got to include extra information about your practice, create a separate appendix and include it with your proposal. That will help keep your proposal concise and reader-friendly.

Obviously, your proposals must provide all the facts clients need. But keep your proposals as short as possible, and you'll have better odds of having them read by prospective clients.

Yuk-it-up Clients

In his latest WSJ Startup Journal column on launching and managing a consulting practice, Rob  Levinson writes about his rules for screening potential new clients. In addition to what you'd expect (Are they serious about the project? Will doing this project help my career?) he asks himself if the prospect has a sense of humor. In fact, it's at the top of his list.

He writes that people with a sense of humor are usually smart enough to understand irony and don't take themselves too seriously. They "are rewarding to work with because they can put their challenges into perspective."

I'd like to add that humor helps pave the way for more fluid communication over the course of a consultant-client relationship, even if you're not discussing something funny. It builds a foundation that makes everything -- even the inevitable unpleasant stuff -- easier. And a lot more enjoyable.

Humor doesn't cost anything, and it doesn't add more work. Sure, we can't always pick and choose using this criteria. But when we can, we're lucky indeed.

-Andrea Harris-

Tip #1 of 25 - Send a Lumpy Package

This is the first in a series of 25 posts on ways you can get closer to your clients, win more projects, and be a better service provider. These posts aren't in any particular order, so Tip #1 isn't any more important than Tip #25.

I may not stop at 25, but it's a start.

Tip #1 - Send a Lumpy Package

In the professional services business, small gestures have a big impact. When you land a new client, send a welcome package to your sponsor. Include a personalized letter in the package, along with other items such as firm contact information, a list of upcoming events, relevant articles, or an appropriate book.

Use the opportunity to express your gratitude to the client for engaging you, and to let her know how important the project is to you and your firm.

Send welcome packages by postal mail, not e-mail. You'll be amazed at the strong and positive impression you'll make with this one simple gesture.

If You Use Permission Based E-Mail...

Your clients are likely to use some type of spam filter, whether they buy it or use packages supplied by their ISPs. The deluge of spam, which some studies suggest is as high as 70% of all e-mail, is clogging up the works and making it difficult for legitimate e-mail to get through spam filters. According to Return Path's E-mail Blocking & Filtering report, an average of 22% of permission-based commercial e-mail is not reaching intended recipients.

Here's a rundown of the percentage of permission based e-mail that is blocked by various ISPs.

Percentage of Permission Based E-Mail Blocked by Select ISPs in 2004
Road Runner	36%
Mail.com	34%
Comcast	31%
Yahoo	11%
MSN	10%
AOL	9%
EarthLink	5%

The most effective way to reduce this problem is to require a double opt-in subscription process, and to ask readers to add your name to their address books.

Source: emarketer.com

Memo to HR, OD and Leadership Consultants

In a study of 28 companies, representing almost 1 million employees, Sirota Consulting concluded that the stock prices of companies with high morale outperformed the stocks of other companies in the same industries by more than 2.5-to-1 during 2004.

"Morale" is tough to define but for purposes of the study, Sirota's researchers defined high morale as at least 70% average employee satisfaction.

To put the issue in perspective, Deloitte Consulting estimates that the annual economic costs of disenchanted workers has soared to $350 billion (with a "b") in the US alone.

If you have services to help clients lift the spirits of their colleagues, you should find lots of work on the horizon.

Source: Workforce Week

Wear Shiny Shoes

When I was a new consultant, I approached one of the firm's partner's with a serious, but seemingly naive question, "What's one detail I should always think about as I work with clients?"

He looked down at his shoes, and mine, as he contemplated his answer. The response: "Always wear shiny shoes."

That memory came flashing back when I read The 5-minute shoe shine by Brendon Connelly on his blog, Slacker Manager. In the Converse era, Brendon leaves no stone unturned (complete with pictures) to show us how to achieve the perfect shoe shine.