Getting Started in Consulting by

Alan Weiss

Ten Traits
1. Humour and perspective. Retain objectivity. Humour is a sign
of high intelligence and mental agility.

2. Influence. You have to be able to speak formally and informally

in such a way that you can command a room or persuade an individual.

3. Confidence and self-esteem. The greatest danger to the start-

up venture in this profession is a lack of self-esteem. If you don’t believe
you can help others, no one else will believe it. And if you don’t manifest it,
no one else will see it.

4. Fearlessness. Different from confidence. This is the ability to

walk away from business you don’t want and buyers you don’t like. Nothing
increases credibility (and business) like standing your ground or
disagreeing when you have better information and insights and offer a
differing view.

1. Rapid framing. Is the ability to quickly summarise the issues – not to

propose solutions, which are premature in early meetings – so that the
discussion can focus rapidly on the next steps. Many clients aren’t sure
themselves how to articulate their concerns and needs, and the
consultant who can do so for them becomes a partner and solidifies the
relationship. The best answers can come from within in which case you
are a facilitator to pull it out, keep the project on course, prioritise the
solutions and hold the team accountable to implementation.

2. Value generation. Most consultants make the mistake f zealously

guarding what they consider to be their intellectual property. Provide real
value with from the initial contact that creates a subliminal message “If
I’m getting this much from our preliminary discussions, how much would I
gain if I actually hired this person?”

3. Intellect. Use examples, paraphrase, historical analogies, recognise

weakness in an argument, ask penetrating questions. To be seen as at
least a peer and probably as an invaluable asset.

4. Active listening.
5. Instantiation. Is making abstract examples and concepts tangible

6. Bang-bang responsiveness. Promise 90-minute responses to all

phone calls. Don’t leave it a few days. State that promise on your
voicemail to create an expectation for the caller and a commitment for
yourself. If you only have a few moments, return the call and set an
appointment to have a lengthier discussion. People greatly appreciate the
mere thoughtfulness in getting back to them quickly.

10 Time Investment Tips

1. Integrate your professional life and your personal life. You only have
a single life. Don’t compartmentalise to create standard work days. If you
think of an article idea at 9pm on Sunday evening, go for it. If you have a
family occasion on Tuesday morning, go for it.

2. Use lists to create forward progress. Integrate personal and

professional needs on the list, so that your life and business are moving
forward together, and you’re not leaving one behind to advance the other.

3. Don’t do things that are easily delegated and/or for which you aren’t’
skilled. Eg lawyer, accountants, or a student for research. Place a
premium on your time.

4. Don’t dally over low-priority decisions. Make a decision and move on.
Don’t agonise over the look of your business card. They can always be
change later.

5. Do what feels right at the time. Don’t sit uselessly at your desk and
force yourself to make phone calls if the spirit doesn’t move you. Likewise,
don’t watch TV at 8pm if you have energy to burn.

6. Maintain a sanctum sanctorum. Ensure focused work space.

7. Spend money to maximise efficiency. Call waiting, voice mail, speed

dial, high speed copier, laser printer are all investments and time savers.

8. Be selfish with your personal time. Tell people on the phone that
you’re busy and can spare only a minute. Tell your family you need another
hour to finish what you are doing.

9. Plan your long-term time investment. Start with the deadline and
work backwards to plan large projects.

10. Allow for the unexpected. Build in slack time.

 “Working for yourself is like being in group therapy, with your clients
as the group. They are constantly giving feedback. The better the
relationship with the client the richer the feedback!”

Components of a Press Kit for prospective

clients
1. Presentation folder

2. Results a client can expect. Prospects don’t care how good you
think you are; they care about how they might benefit if they hired you. So
include the heading “typical client results” or “benefits of our
approaches”. State these as client outcomes, not as your inputs. Eg
“Accelerate sales and build business” not “Lead sales training programme”

3. Testimonials. If you don’t have any yet, start by asking everyone you
do related work for, for a testimonial, or do pro bono work.

4. Biographical Sketch. A brief description of who you are, not a

resume. Keep it simple, honest and relevant. Don’t be afraid to use some
humour. It will also double as an introduction when you speak, and/or can
be distributed to people in your meetings and presentations.

5. Position Papers. Aka “white papers”, are a powerful marketing tool

for beginners. It’s your firms’ position on an issue in an area about which
you consult.

6. References. Use character references when you are new. Fill up one
piece of paper with references including all contact details. The more
references you provide, the less likely the prospect is to call any of them.

How to Network
1. Learn who will attend, create a target list of prospects.

2. Begin casual conversations during the gathering to identify your

targets and to learn who else could be of help to you.

3. Introduce yourself to people without describing anything about your

work and simply listen to them.

4. When one on one, offer something of value based on what you’ve

heard. Eg suggest a book or a website or promise that you’ll send an
article by email on the subject, or ask permission to give their name to
some people that might need their services.
5. If you’re asked what you do, provide succinct responses. Eg “I assist
clients in improving their marketing strategy so they get more
customers”. If they ask for more or ask how, turn it back on them and ask
them “Well, if you tell me something about the issues you are facing, I’ll
show you how the approaches may apply specifically to you.”

6. Exchange cards. Write what you promised on the back

7. Immediately (the next morning at the latest), deliver what you

promised.

8. In a week or so follow up to see if the value you provided them with

worked out. Ask if there is anything further along those lines that might be
helpful. Summarise or reaffirm your offer of further help.

9. In a few weeks, send still more value

10. If the other party replies with a thankyou, then get back to them and
suggest a brief meeting. Simply say that you’d like to learn more about
what they do and also get their advice about what you do

“Offer a specific service to a predetermined-sized market (i.e. based

on revenues). Don’t offer everything to everyone and burn out, stick
with 1 or 2 areas of specialisation”

Pro Bono Work

Confine pro bono work to nonprofits, never for profit making
organisations. Otherwise it will stereotype you as a desperate
consultant who will work for nothing for exposure only, and will
present difficulties if you ever want to bid on a project with them.

Volunteer for tough jobs like fund-raising and seeking corporate

sponsorship so you will have the opportunity to meet more potential
buyers.

Tip for writing content for listings:

Don’t talk about how good you are, demonstrate how clients will
benefit eg “Our clients are able to deliver their message crisply and
powerfully to potential customers and the media.” Instead of “We
provide superb presentation skill coaching”
 Marketing Methods
1. Website

2. Commercial publishing in books or magazines for a fee or royalty

3. Self publishing

4. Media interviews for print, cyberspace, radio & television

5. For print: suggest to your local newspaper or trade association

newsletter that you have an interesting story to tell (Like how I quit my job
to start consulting). Think of their readers. Provide an angle or slant that
the editors will look on as novel.

6. For radio and television, talk shows are thirsty for topics and
personalities. If you are told that “It’s not something we can use right
now”, ask what topics are of interest, so that you can adjust your
approach

7. Public speaking. Start with associations whose membership and

meeting themes are relevant to your work. Write to the executive director
in a letter and enclose your press kit. Suggest why your topic and
techniques would be of immense help to the association membership.
(Tape your presentations for use as marketing aids later)

8. Newsletters. Should not be blatantly promotional. No one is

interested in taking their precious time to read about how good you are,
what clients you’ve worked with, where you’re speaking, or your latest
merit bade. What people want to read about is how they can improve,
personally and professionally. Write 3 or 4 in advance. Cite other books,
articles, websites and useful resources. Encourage readers to write with
letters, questions and comments, and include the pertinent ones in future
issues.

“It takes money to make money. If a $500 ad creates $10,000 in

business, you’ve done better than the stock market”

Initiating the sales process and acquiring

business
Selling consulting services is about creating relationships, not
about making sales calls.

5 key principles for acquiring business:

1. It’s totally dependent on building solid relationships, not making
sales

2. Relationships are with people, not with organisations

3. Build the relationship by placing yourself in the buyers shoes and

think from the outside in

4. The buyer doesn’t care how good you are; they only care what’s in it
for them, so focus on business outcomes, not methodology

5. Trust is the key to strong and healthy relationships. Engender trust

by demonstrating that you have their best interests in mind

Find the right buyer

 What is the value-added that you bring to clients?

 Who is likely to write a cheque for that value?

 How do you reach that person?

 The economic buyer is not always identifiable by hierarchical title.

 It is self-defeating and futile to attempt to develop long-term

relationships with non-economic buyers, no matter how friendly,
promising, or likable they may be (a chronic mistake of new consultants)

Gatekeepers:

 Gatekeepers can be wonderful people. However, they see their jobs

as shielding the buyer, and your job is to get to the buyer

 Convince the gatekeeper that it is unfair of you to allow the

gatekeeper to serve as your marketer, and that the two of you should
devise a plan to approach the true buyer.

 You have to be certain that the buyer is not expecting things that
you can’t deliver, and that the buyer is clear on the degree of support,
sponsorship, and resource commitment required internally.

The attributes of your relationship with the buyer:

 Honesty and candour. You and the buyer feel comfortable

disagreeing
 Peer-level perception. You are a peer who is jointly evaluating with
the buyer whether a business relationship will be mutually beneficial.

 Patience to develop. Sometimes you can hit it off immediately,

sometimes it takes months

 Respect. You can agree to disagree, you respect the buyers value
and intent, and the buyer respects your approach and professionalism

 The aforementioned trust

Questions to ask to gain conceptual

agreement
1. What are the objectives to be achieved through this project?

2. How will we measure progress and success?

3. What is the value or impact to the organisation?

Only by obtaining the buyers assessment of the value to the organisation
of the objectives being met can you generate:

 Leverage to guarantee the buyer’s continuing sponsorship

 The commitment of organisational resources

 The proper priority among other client activities

 Justification for your fee

“If you don’t work with the prospect to determine the worth of the
project, you have no basis upon which to establish value-based fees.
If you charge by the hour or time unit as a consultant, you’re an
amateur who will never be very successful in this profession.

Questions to establish value

 What would be the impact or result if you did nothing at all?

 What would happen if this project failed?

 What does this mean to you, personally?

 What is the difference for the organisation/customers/employees?

 How will this affect performance and productivity?

 Who will this affect profitability/market share/competitive

advantage?

 What is this currently costing you annually, and what might you save
or gain?

 What is the impact on return on investment/equity/sales/assets?

Create a succession of small “yeses”

 A series of small closes are a series of small “yeses”

 Never attempt to sell a project, service, product, or approach over

the phone. Sell the initial meeting. Get a small yes. At the meeting get
some agreement on basic values, the beginnings of a relationship, and the
willingness to meet again on more substantive issues. Several small
“yeses”. At the next meeting get conceptual agreement, and then
agreement to entertain a proposal.

 To accelerate you way through the process and small yeses, provide
value to the prospect early and often. You want them to think “If I’m
getting this much value from this consultant already, what would I get if I
hired him?” Some consultants feel that they should share virtually nothing
unless they are paid for it. Wrong. Predispose them to formalising it.

How to provide value early in the relationship

 Provide experiences similar to the buyer’s from elsewhere

 Offer suggestions (not solutions) from experience, reading, research

 Refer books, articles, websites of relevance

 Provide contacts or references who have experienced similar issues

 Provide a concise description of what you’ve heard, with analysis

 Ask questions to help clarify the issues and problems

 Provide reactions to what the buyer is already doing well.

 The nine steps of great proposals
1. Situation appraisal

 Reminds the buyer of the nature and urgency of the issue to be

addressed, and gaining a connection with your prior conversations and
conceptual agreement

2. Objectives

3. Measures of success

4. Expression of value

 It’s vital for fee acceptance that the buyer be intimately and
emotionally connected with the benefits to the organisation (and to the
buyer) so that the fees that appear later in the proposal are seen as
appropriate and even a modest investment for the perceived value
return. Otherwise, the fees will be seen as costs and will be attacked
to try to reduce them.

 Costs are always subject to attempts at reduction, but

investments are almost always justified if the return is perceived to be
significant and proportional.

 The value that the organisation will derive from the successful
completion of this project will include but not be limited to:

 Decline in overheads and admin expenses through xyz

 A growth in the customer base of x %

 Additional revenues because of xyz, at a growth rate of x

%

5. Methodologies and options

 Provide the buyer with an overview of the varying ways you

may address the issues (not deliverables). Present 3 options. Explain to
the buyer that there are several ways to achieve the objectives, that all
of them will work, but that some options provide more value than
others. Offer the buyer a choice of “yeses” in the form of increasing
value, to migrate them up the value chain to more expensive fees.

6. Timing

7. Joint accountabilities
  One of the most frequent causes of a consultant’s being
accused of not doing a good job is that the client actually didn’t
support the project as agreed or didn’t supply resources in a timely
manner. Stat what is the clients responsibility. State your
responsibilities. State joint responsibilities.

8. Terms and conditions

 You want to prolong the head nodding in agreement right

through the fee section. Cite the fees clearly and in an unqualified
manner. Cite expense reimbursement policy in the same way, also
stressing what is not gong to be billed.

 “One-half of the fee is due upon acceptance of this proposal,

and the balance is due 7 days following the completion of the project”

 “We do not bill for fax, courier, administrative, work, telephone,

photocopying, or related office expenses.”

 Conditions: The quality of our work is guaranteed. Once

accepted, this offer is non-cancellable for any reason, and payments
are to be made at the time specified. However, you may reschedule as
your business needs may unexpectedly dictate without penalty and
without time limit, subject to mutually agreeable time frames in the
future.

9. Acceptance

Don’t provide the initial proposal in person if you can avoid it, to give
the buyer time to read it and think about it.

If the buyer says that your fees are too high – for all of your options –
do not offer to lower fees. Instead, offer to reduce value. All buyers
want to reduce fees, but they seldom want to reduce value.

How to handle Scope Creep: “I’ll be happy to add that, but since it’s
not within our current scope, I’ll get a new proposal to you tomorrow
which will cover that.”

Fees
 Always work on a project fee or value-based fee.

 Always demonstrate to the client that this arrangement is in the

clients best interest.
 Charging by the hour is ethically questionable and a direct conflict
of interest, because the more you work, the more you get paid, and there
really is no impetus or benefit to resolving the client issue rapidly

Ways to increase fees

1. Establish the fee collaboratively with the client. Work through the
objectives, measures, value sequence so the fee in the investment

2. Base fees on value, not tasks. Don’t’ specify how many of each task
you will perform

3. Never, ever use time as the basis of your value

4. Don’t stop with what the client wants, but pursue what the client
needs.

5. Think ahead to the fourth sale. Don’t be overly greedy.

6. Engage the client in the diagnosis – don’t be prescriptive. Don’t

confront the client with set solutions, pigeon-holed responses, and off-the-
shelf products.

7. Never voluntarily offer options to decrease fees. Be confident in

your own work, don’t undermine your fee and your credibility

8. If forced to reduce your fee, reduce the value

9. Provide options every time

10. Always provide an option that is comprehensive and over their

budget

11. Ask the questions that guarantee higher fees: “What are your
objectives?” Always begin with end results that can be equated with a
value and demonstrateable return to the client

12. Broaden the objectives as appropriate to increase value

13. Ensure that the client is aware of the full rang eof your services. Not
a laundry list of options, rather provide examples of how you have worked
(or a capable of working) with other clients.

14. Subcontract minor parts of the proposed project beyond your

competence, talent or interests
15. Ask yourself “why me, why now, why in this manner?” If you are
virtually alone in your ability to provide a service due to unique talents,
experiences, timing etc, you are much more valuable

16. Determine how many other quotes the buyer is getting

17. When the buyer insists on nailing down rates to a daily rate, respond
“I don’t know. In your best interest I don’t have a daily rate. I can’t provide
you with an estimate of costs until I learn more”

18. Raise your fees as your value, experience increases

19. Find out what consultants are charging and what clients are paying.
Decide your level: low-end, mid-range, high-end.

20. Psychologically, higher fees create higher value in buyer’s

perceptions

21. Vlaue can include subjective as well as objective measures. Eg

“Higher moral would be priceless to me”

22. Introduce new value in existing clients to raise fees within those
accounts

23. At least every 2 years jettison the bottom 15 percent of your

business. They hold you back from growing, don’t pay well, tie up time

24. Start with payment terms maximally beneficial to you every time.

25. Never accept payment subject to conditions to be met upon

completion. They will find something wrong, and since you’ve already done
the work, you will have no bargaining chip at all.

26. Focus on improvement, not problem solving. Anyone can solve

problems.

27. Provide proactive ideas, benchmarking and best practices

28. Practice stating and explaining your fees

29. Always be prepared to walk away from business

The ideal project is one after which the buyer says “that was a
bargain” and you say “I was well compensated”
 Never stop marketing. The creating of a long-term successful
practice is dependent on marketing, not delivery. Schedule it in to
every week.

How to Generate Passive Income

 Obtain ISBN numbers for all products and make sure they are
carried by Amazon.com and other internet providers and others. (For
newsletters ISSN)

 Take pains to create and maintain timeless products. Don’t use

examples with dates, or examples that can easily be dated.

 Include product catalogues as a normal part of your press kit,

speech handouts, client info, and other packages

 Be contrarian. Stand out from the crowd with different points of

view. Challenge the potential buyer

Investing in longer term potential

 Become a trade association leader

 Publish a column. A column will provide credibility, leads, reprints,

exposure to additional publishing opportunities, the core material for a
book, introduction to people in the media, and very high visibility.

 Develop into a professional speaker. Clients don’t want to educate a

lot of people about their business. One person who can do many things is
that much more valuable and economical to them.

Paid to learn
 The wonderful thing about the profession of consulting is that you
are paid to learn, which make you more valuable to the next client, who
will pay you even more to learn still more

Working for Retainer

Retainers are simply variants of project fees. Never guarantee a
number of days for a retainer relationship. Simply promise to be
available as a resource. Minimum of 90 day retainers. 30 days before
the end, talk with the client to determine whether to extend it for
another similar period.
 How to get your first clients
 Make a list of everyone you know, no matter how distantly or
casually: colleagues from old jobs, alumni, past clients, store owners
you’ve patronised, extended family, professionals you employ, friends
locally and removed, professional association colleagues, neighbours,
sports colleagues, elected representatives.

 Contact every one by email, or phone, or mail. They really don’t know
what you do, so tell them.

 “I’m writing to you because… my purpose is to provide small

businesses and nonprofits with marketing that they simply don’t have time
for. If I can be of help to you directly, contact me, in addition if you know of
anyone who could benefit from the value I’m delivering, I’d greatly
appreciate your passing on those names to me… learn more on my
website… I’ll be in touch again as I increase my customer base and add
new services… thanks in advance”

Target 12 dream customers. Write a letter to

them with the following components:
 Focus on clear and high value need “my impression is that you are
facing unprecedented challenges…”

 Include specific techniques and help “enclosed is one of our position

papers…”

 Cited a specific contact point “I will call you at 10…”

 Use very little time and ask for very little time “…to determine if the
position paper is helpful…”

 Suggested additional resources and value “… and if you would like

additional resources sent, and how we might best pursue the discussion”

“Create a list of the ideal prospect traits. This will ensure that you
focus on the most promising areas of potential business, and that
you are selecting and not settling for your prospects.”