Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

The Language of Success

Ask any client about the writing habits of consultants, and you’ll probably hear about jargon-laden prose that needs a translator to decipher. It’s never simple to find just the right words for every business communication.               

So, this month in Management Consulting News, we asked Tom Sant, author of The Language of Success: Business Writing That Informs, Persuades, and Gets Results, for his advice on beating the nonsense out of our writing.

Sant has effective writing tips for everything from proposals and marketing messages to email and memos.      

Read the interview with Tom Sant

Also in this month's issue of Management Consulting News, we’re featuring articles on presentation skills, the state of services marketing, how to qualify any client opportunity, and more.                  

Read this month's issue

How to Influence Change

One of toughest challenges we face is influencing change in a client’s organization. Most change initiatives take longer than planned, bust the original budget, and fail to achieve the desired results. This month in Management Consulting News, our guest, Al Switzler, tells us about a better way to influence change.

Switzler, co-author of the bestselling books Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations, helped change how we communicate at work and at home. In the new book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Switzler and his fellow authors offer a research-based model for influencing personal and organizational change.

Read our interview with Al Switzler.

In his column, “Flying Solo,” Alan Weiss emphasizes the importance of telling a client what you’ll do, rather than focusing on how you will do it.

We’re also featuring articles on the must-haves for every e-newsletter, the secrets of large firm selling, and whether or not to bet that your airplane will land on time. 

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

Companies Have Bad Habits Too

Most of us know someone who needs to break a bad habit. And most people know why they need to change. But that clear understanding by itself isn’t a predictor of success in kicking a bad habit.

David Maister, one of the world’s leading thinkers on the issues facing professional services firms, believes that organizations suffer from the same problem as individuals—they know what they need to do and how to do it, but often fall short when executing their plans.

This month in Management Consulting News, we ask Maister how consultants can close the gap between knowing and doing.

Read our interview with David Maister.

Also in the January 2008 issue, Alan Weiss reminds consultants that the first sale is always to the person in the mirror. We’re also featuring articles on how to use an e-newsletter and a narrow marketing focus to strengthen your visibility, how to sell in a bull market, and the 2007 year-end results for the MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services, which tracks investor sentiment about the professional services industry.

Read this month's issue.

Top 10 Management Consulting News Articles

The archive over at Management Consulting News now contains more than 250 interviews and articles written for and by consultants. If you're interested in what people read most often on that site, here are the ten most requested items from the archive in 2007, in descending order of popularity:

• A Conversation with Philip Kotler
• W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne: How to Make Your Competition Irrelevant
• Flawless Consulting with Peter Block
• Michael Gerber Unravels the Myth of the Entrepreneur
• An Exclusive Interview with Tony Buzan: What's the Brain Got to Do with Business?
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Confidence
• Cliff Atkinson Goes Beyond Bullet Points
• Patricia Fripp: So You're Going to Make a Speech
• Marcus Buckingham's One Thing You Need to Know
• Nick Morgan on the Secrets of Powerful Speaking

Job Misery

77 percent of people in the US workforce say they hate their jobs. That adds up to more than 100 million people, so it’s pretty likely that you know someone who is miserable at work. It's hard to imagine how organizations can create such toxic work environments and remain in business.

Patrick Lencioni, who has written about dysfunctional teams, turf problems in organizations, and the productivity-sapping power of meetings, has turned his attention to a $350 billion problem—job misery. His latest book is The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.

In the December 2007 issue of Management Consulting News, we interview Lencioni and ask him why so many people are miserable at work and what consultants can do to help their clients make the workplace less miserable and more productive.

Read the interview with Patrick Lencioni.

Also in this issue: Alan Weiss bemoans the impact that an artificial sense of self worth has on a consultant’s ability to grow a business; what to do if you think your client is a jerk; what clients say they want from consultants; and strategies for capturing more time for life outside of work. Plus, Jeff Thull gives us some advice on a slight change in mindset that can make selling to decision makers easier.

Read the current issue of Management Consulting News.

Managing a Dip

We’ve all experienced projects that are fun and exciting at the start, but then turn to drudgery. That’s when you might wonder if you are in a temporary slump, or you should give up. Seth Godin calls this “The Dip.” In the latest issue of Management Consulting News, we ask Godin how you know if a dip is worth working through.

Read our interview with Seth Godin.

Also in this issue, we’re featuring articles on selling a consulting business, recruiting in fast-growing firms, positioning your practice, how successful women build effective networks, and more.

And don’t miss the MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services, which tracks investor sentiment about the professional services industry.

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

P.S. The next session in our Path to Profit webcast series is Strategic Interviewing: How to Land Top Talent. We'll cover strategies for understanding how candidates behave in specific situations but, as importantly, how they really think and whether or not they would fit into your organization.

Knowledge-Based Client Relationships

Ross Dawson, author of Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, believes that consultants must make smart business decisions to have a fighting chance of reaching the desired state of client-consultant bliss. Dawson has some advice for how to get that done, which he shares in this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

Read our interview with Ross Dawson.

In his column, “The Writing on the Wall,” Alan Weiss debunks seven myths that can hold any consultant back from enjoying a thriving practice.

In our ongoing series on thought leadership in consulting, Fiona Czerniawska reveals the strides the Big Four firms are making in the market of ideas. And Jeff Thull weighs in with his insights on how “extreme qualifying” can help you win more work with fewer proposals.

Also, Kathy Villella, former presentation specialist at McKinsey & Company, gives you some tips on getting your point across in presentations.

Oh, and don’t miss the debut of the MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services, which tracks investor sentiment about the professional services industry.

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

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.

How Change has Changed

John Kotter, rated the number one "leadership guru" in America by Business Week magazine, wrote the definitive book on Leading Change. This month in Management Consulting News, Kotter tells why he thinks consultants and organizations need to focus more on the front end of change and heat up the sense of urgency.

Fiona Czerniawska offers a follow-up article on thought leadership in the consulting industry. She shares insights from her recent research on who is winning the thought leadership race.

In his column, “The Writing on the Wall,” Alan Weiss beats up on some consultants for “chasing a fly with a battleship.”

We’ve also got the third installment of our series on writing free reports, plus a thoughtful piece on why clients use consultants, and an article on how the history of the industry informs its future.

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

The World's Newest Profession

Why should we bother learning about the roots of the consulting industry? Christopher McKenna, historian and author of The World's Newest Profession, thinks understanding the past will help us respond to the challenges he sees ahead for the industry.

Check out our interview with McKenna in this month’s issue of Management Consulting News. We’re kicking off 2007—our sixth year of publishing—with McKenna’s take on the past and future of consulting.

We also have an article by Phil Rosenzweig, author of the forthcoming book, The Halo Effect, which takes business gurus to the wood shed for their impact on management. He has some advice for reversing the trend toward management-by-fad.

In his column, "The Writing on the Wall," Alan Weiss offers advice for teaching the un-teachable: save your breath.

And Jeff Thull shows us “How to Avoid 11th Hour Negotiations” with clients. We've also got tips for being a pragmatic consultant, a new podcast with Mathew Hayward on the impact of executive hubris, and an article on why all the critics of PowerPoint are off base.

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

Also New in January: Don’t miss our upcoming interactive Webcast, How to Write a Killer Proposal, January 29, 2007, 1-2:30pm ET.