Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

It had to happen sooner or later.

Two employees at Citywatcher.com, a video surveillance company, have embedded RFID tracking chips inside their arms. The pair are thought to be the first humans in the US to have tracking technology surgically implanted in their bodies.

The company is experimenting with RFID tags for keeping track of peope who have access to the company's vaults where confidential, client data is squirreled away.

Citywatcher CEO Sean Darks also had a tracking chip placed in his arm as a goodwill gesture to the volunteers saying he "wouldn't ask somebody to do something I wouldn't do myself."

This goes way beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-four. Big brother is watching indeed.

Are Consultants Trusted?

The gurus at Edelman PR published the 2006 Annual Trust Barometer, which measures levels of consumer trust in government, businesses, and other institutions. Of eleven industries tracked, professional services ranked in the top five in terms of trust in the US, Europe, and Canada. That's good news for consultants in those areas of the world.

The story is different in Asia and Brazil, where professional service firms are close to the bottom of the pack.

Overall, the most trusted industries in the study were the retail and technology sectors, while the energy industry is being battered in most parts of the world.

Edelman's study found that if people lose trust in a company, they are highly likely not do business with that company--no surprise. What's intriguing is that 33 percent of dissatisfied customers are spreading the word widely about their opinions: they are now posting their views on the Web.

Tip #16 of 25 - Be Accessible

It would be easy to conclude that being accessible to clients is a simple, universal truth in the consulting business. After all, a consultant can't be helpful without being available when a client calls.

But place a call to a consultant and test the result. Often, you receive a cryptic voicemail greeting that encourages you to leave a message and expect a return call "at my earliest possible convenience."

Granted, the consultant may return the call in a short time, but the client doesn't know what to expect, other than the consultant will return the call when it's convenient. A simple change in your voicemail greeting, indicating when you will return calls, would clear up that uncertainty.

It's not unusual for consultants to attend day-long events that make it tough to remain accessible to clients. But shy away from having an assistant or answering service tell a client that you're "out of the office all day and can't be reached." Remember, your client really doesn't care what you're doing. The caller wants to hear from you.

Rather than telling a client that you're out of the office, in a meeting, or nursing a cold at home, just tell the client when to expect a return call. Forget about the extra information--it doesn't help.

Running with Scissors

Once you've got a Web site up and running, it's tempting to look for ways to boost its popularity with search engines like Google, MSN, and AOL. After all, why have the site if it doesn't help with lead generation?

In an ideal world, a consultant's Web site would emerge at, or near, the top of the list when prospective clients enter a relevant term in their favorite search engines. But for most of us, search engines are a black box, particularly when it comes to understanding Web site rankings and popularity.

And that's why it's possible to get less than your money's worth. Some search engine optimization (SEO) companies make extraordinary claims with less than stellar results. Signing up with them before you know the facts is like running with scissors--not advisable.

In this month's isssue of The Guerrilla Consultant, we asked Jill Whalen, a highly respected SEO expert, how a consultant can get the most from search engines without taking out a second mortgage.

Read this month's issue of The Guerrilla Consultant.

Avoiding PowerPoint Overload: A Free Webinar

Ever felt like dozing off during a presentation? Well, research suggests that it’s not your fault. The conventional bullet-point approach to presentations can overload our ability to understand information—and that causes us to hit the snooze button.

But you can grab and hold an audience’s attention by using a few simple strategies and tools. Cliff Atkinson, author of the bestseller Beyond Bullet Points, is offering a complimentary Webinar to help you transform a ho-hum PowerPoint presentation into a lively and persuasive presentation.

The one-hour Webinar will be held on Thursday, March 23, 2006, at 9:00AM Pacific Standard Time. Register for “How to Prevent PowerPoint Overload.” You can learn more about Cliff Atkinson by reading his Management Consulting News interview.

Write a Book?

“Do it…Do it now.” So say researchers at RainToday.com, who interviewed 200 professional services providers to get their views on the business impact of writing and publishing a book.

96 percent of the respondents reported a positive or extremely positive business impact from having a published book. The research answers many questions that consultants ask when considering a jump into authorship, such as:

Should the book be self-published?—No. For the best results, find a major publisher.

How much marketing should I plan to do personally?—Virtually all of it. And plan to become a master of Internet marketing to help push your book out into the world.

If you’re thinking about writing a book, Jerry Weinberg, author of more than 40 books and 400 articles, has just published an entertaining reference for writers, Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. It’s a great resource for new and veteran authors.

You may also want to read an interview I conducted with consultant and author, Andrew Sobel, who has written two books on succeeding in professional services.

Do We Need Another View on Leadership?

Have the pundits written and said all there is to say on the subject of leadership? You might think so, but maybe not. Aubrey Daniels, author of Measure of a Leader, says we’re missing the boat on this critical aspect of business success.

In the March 2006 issue of Management Consulting News, Daniels points out that, “Although leadership has been dissected and written about for hundreds of years, the failure rate for American business leaders is 50 to 60 percent. Clearly we still have a problem.”

Daniels thinks we’re looking at all the wrong things when we evaluate our leaders. “More often than not,” he says, “the leaders who are held up as role models are charismatic people. Leadership is not a personality trait. But charismatic profiles tend to make people believe that’s all there is to it.”

Daniels says that to evaluate the success of a leader, we must examine the behavior of followers. He also says that we should measure the effectiveness of leaders using quantitative methods, rather than relying on judgment. He provides specific predictors of leadership success and a method for applying them in any organization.

Have a look at the interview with Daniels.

The March 2006 issue of Management Consulting News also includes:

• How to sign up for a free Webinar on improving your presentation skills

• Retirement Planning for Self-Employed Consultants, by Frank Armstrong

• Results of a new study on the effectiveness of marketing professional services

• Four Ways to Stop Margin Erosion, by Jeff Thull

• Six Tips for Coaching Success, by Omar Khan

• Are Performance Appraisals Useless?

• CIO Spending Trends in 2006

Read the March 2006 issue of Management Consulting News