Monthly Archives: March 2008

I’ve been telling people forever (well, since June 4, 1992, but I’m using metaphor here) that being in independent consulting is actually being in the marketing business. There are many highly competent consultants who are starving because they can’t market; many mediocre consultants who are prospering because they can market; and a few extraordinary success who are both superb consultants and superb marketers.

Are you listening?

One of the essentials of effective marketing is to diversify your targets. That’s why “specialize of die” is such an insult to my intelligence. Why would you deliberately limit your potential buyers when you’re in a profession in which processes are trans-industrial, trans-cultural, and trans-hierarchical? I’ve always thought the specialists were those who felt that they couldn’t do very much and thought they’d be better off in tiny little microscopic corners they could completely control. (And of course, there are the “experts” who give this advice but have never consulted successfully themselves.)

If you don’t want a technological innovation, or a huge competitor, or a single geography’s economy, or a particular buyer’s departure to yank the rug out from under the living room of your life, then you’d better diversify your target markets and buyers. You control that. You can do it.

In a technologic age this is easier than ever. If you’re not at least exploring global work (in person or remote) you’re not being very aggressive as a marketer. (Look for my book, Global Consulting: How to Make Seven Figures Cross Borders, in the fall from Wiley.)

Here are some admixtures to ponder:

• Move the processes you’re already proficient in to other markets (e.g., decision making is a process independent of the content of the decision).
• Ask clients for referrals outside of their business, especially among friends and business acquaintances.
• Embed your intellectual property into products that can be purchased by a wide range of people on a corporate or individual basis.
• Make sure you are a force nationally and across close borders (e.g., Canada to the US—which is easy, don’t listen to those who claim the requirements are too tough) and end the prelapsarian mentality that you charge more for clients to whom you must travel.
• Try to enter clients from the upper strata, so that you can work at executive level and cascade down as needed. It’s almost impossible to enter at bottom levels and be taken seriously in the upper atmosphere.
• Focus on economic areas that are “recession proof” to some degree: pets, children, health care, recreation, and so on.
• Never turn down business in good times. I’ve heard from too many consultants anxious to know how to turn down new business gracefully because they are “booked” for the next several months. If being independent doesn’t allow you to free up time to accept new clients and store them in the bank vault, then you’re working for a worse boss than you did in the corporate grind years ago.

To consult, you must acquire clients. To acquire clients you must successfully market. To successfully market you must adopt the correct mental framework. And to do that, begin reading again at the top

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Note: I’m posting an article which I’ve recently posted on my private web site, Alan’s Forums. I thought it would be of interest here, and I also wanted to demonstrate the kinds of issues debated there 24/7 globally. If you’re interested: www.alansforums.com.

Why do some people go through realtors instead of just selling their homes themselves and avoiding a near-universal six percent commission?

Because the feel the realtor provides value in access to buyers, negotiating, suggestions for maximizing price, and so forth. It’s basically the same reason that a lot of us prefer to work through a literary agent than directly with acquisitions editors, or through brokers instead of directly with insurance companies.

But the operative word is “value.”

In consulting, if you believe for a nanosecond that this is a relationship business, you can’t be successful working through middlemen, whether they promise to provide leads, or use you as a subcontractor, or wax your car. This business is about buyers finding your expertise attractive. A peer who recommends you can certainly do that, but not a mass leads generation firm that is the equivalent of a 20-mile trawling net being towed through the north Atlantic.

The same generally applies to people who will get your article in front of a hundred editors for possible publishing, or a speakers bureau setting up a “showcase” (read: meat market) of 20 speakers auditioning, or a trade association newsletter with a “special edition” featuring 50 consultants who all paid to be listed as “featured consultants in the special edition.”

You can see that franchises sell hamburgers and coffee, price-sensitive commodities which are boosted by centralized marketing and mass purchasing. But franchises for consulting, or recruiting, or coaching are just insane, and make only the franchise hawker rich. There is no H&R Block model for speaking, nor is there investor interest in “Consultants R Us.”

The “easy” way to be successful in this business is non-existent. The intelligent way to be in this business—and successful, not lying to your reunion class and relatives—is to work at creating demonstrable expertise around your value through intelligent marketing gravity and “reach out” activities. There are no short-cuts, no economies of scale created by paying someone $40,000 for “proprietary” OD tools and use of their “R&D factory.”

Fortunately, the model to individual success is well established and you can see examples of those practitioners all around you in this community. But if you want to cut the line, be aware that you’re in the wrong line to begin with.

Don’t follow the middlemen. By definition, they’re not at the front, they’re in the middle. Or, perhaps, in the muddle.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.