Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

The Art of Follow-On Selling

It’s accepted wisdom among professional service providers that the shortest path to new business is to extend or expand services with existing clients. After all, an incumbent firm with a strong track record should find opportunities as new needs arise for current clients.

Unfortunately, those opportunities can be tough to capture on a consistent basis.

On Monday, March 26, I’ll be leading a webcast to discuss a systematic strategy and specific steps to accelerate success in selling follow-on work. Here’s a link to find out more about this webcast, The Art of Follow-On Selling.

The Ultimate Differentiator

Consultants rely on marketing communications to get the initial attention of prospective clients. If your marketing is working as it should, it helps you open a dialogue with a prospective client. Before you can close a sale, though, you must prove to the client how you are truly different from the rest.

How you create personal differentiation--the ultimate differentiator--is the subject of this month's issue of The Guerrilla Consultant.

Read the March 2007 issue of The Guerrilla Consultant.

The Downside of Being Organized

Do we spend too much time, money, and energy on getting and staying organized? Eric Abrahamson, Columbia University Professor and coauthor of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, thinks that being somewhat messy may be a better deal.

This month in Management Consulting News, Abrahamson says that two-thirds of people feel guilty about being messy, but that the benefits of being neat and organized are overrated.

Read the interview with Eric Abrahamson.

With all the talk about how important people are to organizations, you’d think that HR consultancies would lead the pack with innovative ideas for creating the workforce of the future. But Fiona Czerniawska sees room for improvement in the thought leadership of HR firms.

In his column, “The Writing on the Wall,” Alan Weiss wishes consultants were less enamored with their own methodologies.

Mark Satterfield urges us to think about what can happen if we stay in touch with our contacts, and he has an easy way for you to do it. And Ray Kotcher, CEO of PR powerhouse, Ketchum, gives us five lessons for communicating change.

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.