Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Not long ago, I spotted an error on an Amazon.com product page and sent the company an email describing it. The response was so pathetic it made me laugh. Here’s a quote from the canned email response, including the fractured grammar:

“As Amazon is a retail website whatever listed on our website will be correct information only.”

That clears it right up for me.

As I read that email, I wondered what my correspondent thought before hitting the send key. The response was akin to telling someone that there’s nothing wrong with a stalled car because it’s a car.

This type of “service” ratchets up Amazon’s cost of service because if I respond, another person will have to take time to help me.

Sometimes, no response is better than a poor one—especially when the company pays for that response in cash and squandered goodwill.

You Don’t Know Anything, But I Prefer You Anyway

No one really likes to work with a jerk, at least not when they have a choice. Researchers at Harvard Business School may not win any awards for that insight, but they have also learned that people prefer to work with a lovable fool than with a competent jerk.

After examining 10,000 work relationships, researchers concluded that being liked is often the most important factor in getting hired, promoted, or placed in project leadership roles. People are willing to trade the overhead of working with a jerk for the ease of working with a likable person who needs help to get things done.

The preferred personality: the lovable star.

If you want to advance in your career, or in your business, you might want to consider losing your inner jerk.

An Elevator Speech on Elevator Speeches

When a potential client asks you a standard question such as “Tell me what you do,” you need a ready, engaging response so you don’t babble on. You need an elevator speech—a brief spiel that tells the listener who you are and what you do.

Sadly, most elevator speeches are confusing, boring, or worse—they make the listener want to run the other direction. The main problem with most such spiels is that they focus on the speaker, not the listener. And that can be an express trip to oblivion for a consultant hoping to shine in a personal marketing moment.

This month’s article in the Guerrilla Consultant points out why you may not get past the lobby with a standard elevator speech, and gives you some ideas on how to put together and deliver your introduction so it moves a client conversation in the right direction.

Read the article.

A Compelling Offer?

One consultant offers to:

“…help clients identify, design, implement, and evaluate the business structure and  processes needed to optimize internal efficiencies and leverage external opportunities.”

Most clients would read this phrase and think, "huh?"

Sadly, too many of us fail to create compelling and understandable descriptions of what we actually do for clients.To keep options open for serving a wide range of clients--across industries and business processes--consultants risk a loss of clarity in their marketing. The result: no one knows what they do.

Almost any service offering can be strengthened once it's viewed from a client's perspective. And most clients will respond favorably to services that score high on a list of eight service attributes:

1. Differentiated service
2. Strong value-to-fee ratio
3. Flawless delivery
4. Mitigates risk
5. Creates client capability
6. Demonstrable
7. Results, not process-based
8. Specific

It's not impossible to appeal to many clients, but it's also simple to confuse them all.

The Future’s so Bright...

That’s according to over 300 consultants polled by M Squared, a California-based provider of independent business consultants.

Asked about their outlook for 2006, 70% of the consultants forecast an up-tick in business. The high level of optimism is a result of a perception by more than 60% of the respondents that clients are launching new projects which need consulting assistance.

This increased demand helps explain why more than 40% of the consultants expect to raise their rates this year, though changes are expected to be in rates--not pricing strategies. Less than 10% of the consultants plan to shift from the hourly rate to project-based billing.

The M Squared survey respondents were largely based in California, and included consultants practicing in many areas of the industry.

A Client is Not "Just a Wallet with Legs"

Charles Green, author of the new book, Trust-based Selling®, insists that “Trust-based selling is not an oxymoron." In an interview in the April 2006 issue of Management Consulting News, Green challenges the conventional wisdom about selling complex services.

Green says trust must take center stage in such sales. Trust-based selling, Green tells us, is “about relationships and not transactions. Trust is built on the personal: You must connect with others as individual human beings. You should not view a client as just a wallet with legs.”

He also disagrees with the usual advice to avoid quoting price early on. He feels you should “get price out in the open sooner rather than later. From a trust perspective, price is the biggest bugaboo—the topic we’re all afraid of broaching.” Green believes that avoiding the subject of price “causes more damage to the creation of trust than the mention of the number itself.”

Green also tells us why selling shouldn’t be viewed as a business process and why elevator speeches should be sent to the basement.

Check out the interview with Charles Green.

The April 2006 issue of Management Consulting News also features:

• The Best and Worst Ways to Create Trust in a Business
• Why Executives Leave Their Jobs
• Hot Topic in the Boardroom: Measuring ROI for Technology Investments
• How to Design a “Talent Market” for Employees
• Why Nobody Seems to Care about Executive Compensation
• Extreme Makeovers for Businesses Recommended by CEOs

Read the April 2006 issue of Management Consulting News.