Here’s how you schedule time to get things done. Let’s say you want to write an article or position paper.

1. Choose the audience you seek to influence, probably those most appropriate for your value proposition. (5 minutes) [Bank lending officers]

2. Choose a topic that will be provocative and timely. (10 minutes) [Identifying the best candidate for safe loans and repeat business]

3. Choose a working title, not something for all the ages. (5 minutes) [Behind the Interview: The Prospect Within]

4. Select 4-6 key points. (10 minutes) [1. The lessons in the first greeting; 2. How to assess behaviors in an interview; 3. The key questions to ask to appraise the business proposition; 4. The key questions you want to be asked.]

5. Write an edgy opening paragraph. (10 minutes) [Why do lending interviews reveal so little about the customer and so much about our own fears? If the objective is to increase business, then we should first increase our own probabilities of identifying and welcoming high potential prospects. That's not usually done with a shaky wooden chair and a bare lightbulb overhead.]

6. Write about each of your points, making sure to include your rationale, an example so that it’s not merely conceptual, and a graphic if it helps explain the point. (20 minutes per point)

7. Write a closing that’s a call to action. (10 minutes). [The next time prospects walk into your office, invite them to sit in a comfortable chair, offer them some refreshments, and remind yourself that they represent opportunity, not threat. Ask yourself how they might speak positively of the experience, no matter what your ultimate decision. That, alone, might increase your business more than you can imagine.]

8. Reassess the title to see if you want to now adjust it. (5 minutes) [The Human Banker—Stepping Out from Behind the Green Curtain]

That entire process above, with six points, requires about two hours. Spread it over four days, and it’s a half-hour a day. Put that in your calendar at 10:30 each morning, and don’t change it, no matter what.

That’s how you get work out. I’ve probably taken a week off the process above for most of you! Stop fooling around, discretionary time is wealth, and you are eroding yours.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

There are certain words and phrases that, while originally well intentioned, have become hackneyed and trite. “Have a nice day,” “meaningful,” “impactful,” and “good to great” all come to mind.

I’m not merely fossicking here, because “We want to go to the next level” has become one of those tendentious phrases that seems to mean so much but results in so little.

Whether that “next level” is financial (which it usually is), or competence, or repute, or anything else, I’ve found that it’s less a matter of action than one of thought. That’s because you seldom reach new heights by merely doing more of the same of what you’re doing now. You have to change your mindset and thought patterns if you truly want to metamorphose into a new being.

Fortunately, that’s not physically difficult—there are neither cocoons nor hibernations required. Unfortunately, it can be quire difficult mentally, because different frames of reference and perspective are required.

Earlier today a woman wrote to ask exactly where in Los Angeles my June workshop would be, since that would depend whether she would go. (This is a workshop that would normally cost at least $1000, but I’m doing for $100!) Upon investigation, I find that her days are totally filled, primarily because she is “selling all day” and feels obligated to run at 4:30 or so in the morning. If you’re in a rut that doesn’t allow you the time to explore how to leave the rut, guess where you’ll remain? (Hint: Not on the next level.) This is why doctors who schedule back-to-back patients every day all week can’t improve their practices.

Here is some quick help:

1. Who are you? How do you define yourself? Are you a consultant, or are you someone who dramatically improves sales results or ensures strategic goals are exceeded?
2. What do you do? Do you “coach” or “consult” or “facilitate”? Or do you improve your clients and help them reach results unattainable without you?
3. Why are you doing this? Is it to make money, or to salve your ego, or to implement a methodology you love? Or is it to make a difference in the world and create a legacy?

Look through a telescope, not a microscope. Change your mentality so that you’re thinking big and not constantly stuck on trifles and trivialities. There is a hebetude around people who immerse themselves in the granular and specific. There is an excitement around those who forge new paths and provide new ideas.

If you want to arrive at “the next level,” start aiming for three levels above that.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

I’ve known a couple of actual rocket scientists, and they were nice people, but they were  no better than I at trying to open plastic-sealed tools, operate the cable remote, or understand why Snookie is even vaguely interesting.

Fortunately for all of us, consulting is not rocket science. Here’s why:

• The obvious solutions and improvements are usually the right ones. (Occam’s Razor).

• You often have to merely cut to the chase: “He can’t be helped, coached, or re-skilled, and he stole from you: Fire him!”

• Most of what you tell the buyer he or she already knows, consciously or subconsciously, and merely requires some authoritative validation.

• The vast preponderance of people want to improve and create better conditions and support constructive change.

• If you deal with decision makers and not low level people, you will have ample authority to act.

• Most people take gratification from work well done which utilizes their talents, which is easy enough to arrange.

• There is virtually no barrier to entry in the consulting profession, nor likely to be one any time soon, meaning smart people can readily set up shop and acquire clients, rapidly outstripping those who also gained easy entry but who have no talent.

• You can improvise as you go.

• You have a laboratory in front of you (the client’s operation) in which you can prove and disprove things, and from which you can build an inventory of models and approaches.

• You don’t have to worry about inventory or returns because your dealing with advice and knowledge.

• Very few organizations have the residual, captive talent that can provide the same frames of reference, perspective, and skill sets that external consultants can provide.

• If you’re not dumb enough to base your fees on time units, you can establish huge margins.

• Our fees pale in comparison to most expenses in Fortune 1000 companies, where it can cost $200,000 to cover ruined postage, or mist the plants, or remove spilled food.

• If you’re a generalist, you can diversify and insulate yourself from economic and perceptual changes in given industries.

• Technology inevitably allows us to do more with less and lower labor intensity.

• It’s a rare exception for anyone to care what your gender, background, age, ethnicity, or schooling are.

• You are certainly not going where no man has gone before.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

People often fail to achieve goals because they don’t “run through the tape,” don’t have the wherewithal to get past the finish line. What I call “resolve” is beyond accountability, beyond priorities, beyond discipline.

I’ve created four free videos for anyone interested. Simply go to this page and you can watch my introduction to the four and arrange to receive one every two days. In about a week and perhaps 30 minutes, gain “resolve”!

http://www.summitconsulting.com/resolve/

Nice review, sent courtesy of Donna Brighton. The Consulting Bible on Amazon is at #18,000 overall, #9 in education and #13 in consulting; by comparison, Million Dollar Consulting is at 22,000 and 16 in consulting (it isn’t in the other category). I have five of the top 20 consulting books at the moment.
Consulting Community of Practice Book Review: The Consulting Bible – Everything you Need to Know to Create and Expand a Seven Figure Consulting Practice
Author: Alan Weiss Ph.D.
Reviewer: Richard Sachs, PMP, MCPM
Dr. Alan Weiss adds this recent book to his extensive publishing career of over 40 books and more than 500 articles. The CONSULTING BIBLE, has some biblical analogies as it is divided into five sections: Section 1 Genesis: Consulting as a Profession; Section II Exodus: Consulting as a business, Section III Deuteronomy: Consulting Methodology, Section IV Acts of the Apostles: Implementing Consulting Methodologies, Section V Proverbs, Consulting Success. The author adds in ‘lessons learned’ or tips under the caption of “The Gospel” throughout each chapter and section when he wants the reader to pay attention to special information. I counted over 50 of these tips and the reader could create a compendium of these for quick reference as I found them valuable: Here are just three examples: “The only time an alliance makes sense is when there is money on the table”; “Everyone can write. Writer’s block is merely a clever term for procrastination. But not everyone has something to say. That’s a key differentiator”; “You must accept rejection and reject acceptance. This is a relationship business and you will not always be successful. But do not align yourself with those who can’t say ‘yes’ but can say ‘no’ “. This last “Gospel” is one pitfall everyone should consider carefully when being asked to prepare a proposal.
The book reads easily and Weiss communicates as if he was giving a presentation. He uses many techniques to move the reader through his thesis. That thesis is that wealth is discretionary time and not money and building a practice to give one the freedom is the goal. There are Case Studies from Weiss’ personal and extensive consulting career. Truth is stranger than fiction and Weiss captures some humorous client situations stating that “you can’t make this stuff up”. Weiss creates many applied consulting terms and illustrations and shares these throughout the book. His concepts include- The Consulting Model, The Accelerant Curve; Market Gravity Wheel and The Market Value Bell Curve. These are designed to foster new thinking by the consultant in how he/she models their business to achieve growth. His experience is as a sole practitioner and his goal is to expand your capability and income as a one person consulting practice or small boutique firm. Weiss makes light of those that would criticize his approach as not scalable to the medium or large consulting firm- but that is not his market.
The Consulting Bible at 265 pages provides some strong sales tools(obtaining referrals) as well as real tactical insights into pricing services, charging retainers and finding the best clients which by the way have a mutual respect for the consultant they engage. The consultant is sometimes his own worst enemy by taking on work and services that he or she will not be paid for. “Scope Seep” which Weiss adds, is “the most invidious and potentially damaging aspect of consulting… (it is) when the consultant without impetus or request from the client, enlarges the project unilaterally without changing the proposal, agreement or fees”. Some readers may find this familiar territory and Weiss provides some clear advice on the subject of roles, responsibilities and self-management.
Disengaging is a chapter that I especially found thought provoking. You don’t necessarily have to leave the client but your project when coming to an end requires an endorsement that the improvement your client was seeking as a condition of the assignment was achieved. As a consultant, either the results were achieved or will require more time, but disengagement is necessary so that you can “maximize the chances to leverage business internally and externally”. Weiss outlines seven things a consultant should do to enable a positive disengagement. Weiss elaborates on referrals, testimonials and long term leverage. This chapter is highly valuable as any good project manager knows that lessons learned is what builds a strong foundation for organizational project performance. This same thinking, but with a business development consideration, is most illuminating and worth the price of the book.
Weiss ends the book on the subject of giving back. This especially resonates with me as I mentor project management students and put high value on the benefits we both derive in this process of returning to the community. The author goes on to talk about ‘Advancing the state of the Art’ and again I subscribe to the belief that while not everyone can add to the profession in a substantive way it is often about incremental change that when aggregated actually adds to thought leadership, innovation and service excellence.
I recommend this book to other PMI members who are interested in learning how Alan Weiss has built his multi-million dollar practice with an array of services and offerings that leave his business diversified and capable of growing during various economic cycles. He is a consummate expert on the subject of coaching consultants and has provided the reader with many tools in The Consulting Bible. Enjoy.

Bentley has just announced its best sales year ever, and the U.S. is its biggest market. They are even considering the launch of a Bentley SUV for $150,000, which I doubt anyone has been begging for, but there you have it.

Some organizations are doing quite well, and luxury goods, travel, and recreation are among them. The auto industry is doing just fine, and so are many aspects of health care, home improvement, and retail, just to name a few.

My point is this: Be like Willy Sutton, and go where the money is. Stop marketing remedial “fixes” and remedies and problem solving. Stop assuming that damaged organizations are your best prospects. (Most organizations that are poorly run don’t have bright enough leadership to recognize the need for or investment in external help.)

Offer innovation, market gain, new customers, diversified offerings, improved conditions. Help all-stars become world class. Create “killer gaps” for the front-runners between themselves and the next best in the competitive race.

Too many consultants see themselves as repairmen, doctors diagnosing illness, or investigators solving a crime. Problem solving for struggling firms is not where the rewards are these days. Innovation for highly successful firms is the current and future game in town.

So consider adjusting your web site, blog, newsletters, collateral, conversation—and, most of all, mentality—to this new reality. How can you help people with money to invest become even better?

If you can do that consistently and well, you’ll wind up driving the Bentley.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

I was driving by a well-manicured expanse of lawn covering perhaps six acres. In one spot, about 150 gulls were sitting on the grass in a large cohesive group, conducting a meeting on the drizzly morning. Just a few yards away, about 100 geese were holding court. Apparently, the Avian Aviation Authority had grounded all flights due to weather.

There were no gulls among the geese, no geese among the gulls. Neither ruffled the feathers of the other, but there was no interaction whatsoever. They each stuck to their own kind.

Too often people do the same. We stick with people who look like we do, think like we do, dress like we do, comport themselves like we do. I remember the New Yorker cartoon in which a man behind a desk talks to a job candidate on the other side of the desk who looks exactly like him and says, “I don’t know what it is about you, but I really like you!”

Yet we are sentient creatures, and our DNA does not require that we all look alike and act alike and congregate as one. We have free will, and our futures are mainly in our own hands, our daily behaviors totally within our own purview.

A Fortune 100 client once assured me, while hiring me to look into their diversity practices, that I would wind up using them as a model of diversity and inclusion. Yet when I walked into the massive cafeteria to look around at lunch, I saw all the gulls, geese, blue jays, robins, and sparrows—clustered together in their own groups.

Too many trade and professional associations appear to be birds of a feather—the same people saying the same things in the same way. There are no divergent opinions sought, no provocation, no exploration. I once facilitated a group of high-powered, male, insurance executives from 24 different firms. Every one had on a blue or grey suit, a red or blue tie, and wing-tips; all had hair that was grey, white, and/or balding. The topic was innovation, and why the insurance industry seemed to lag behind.

“Look around,” I advised.

With whom are you hanging out? At meetings, might you as well be peering into a mirror? Does anyone around you provoke, confront, upset, push back, or find irony? Are you walking away energized or merely content, agitated or merely reaffirmed?

My money is with the gulls. The geese fly in formation. The gulls fight for food. To me, all geese look alike. But the gulls have diverse colors and markings if you look closely.

The problem is that I shouldn’t have to look too closely at you to tell you’re your own person.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m in Toronto keynoting for the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) tonight. In two weeks I’ll be in Key Biscayne helping to facilitate an “elite” speakers workshop for the National Speakers Association (NSA). I’ve made well over 60 appearances for NSA and the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC). I’m one of only two people in history granted the highest honors of NSA (Hall of Fame) and IMC (Fellow).

I tell you all this because I’ve been very involved in these organizations and have tried to “pay back” the professions which have been so important to my success. So I was saddened to receive an email today from the New England chapter of the IMC—historically highly innovative and organized—stating it is considering disbanding.

The problem with these organizations is historic (I’ve been a member since the 1980s): They have failed to brand themselves and their primary certifications. No one—no buyer—has ever asked me about CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) or CMC (Certified Management Consultant). Never. Moreover, there are thousands of superb speakers and consultants who choose not to belong to the organizations, because they see no need or benefit. (I believe you support professional associations in your profession, and try to help others.)

Scores of chapter officials, national presidents, officers—and thousands of board members—have failed to understand the need to create a brand powerful enough to distinguish members and recipients from others—in other words, to create a gravity toward them and make marketing easier and more effective. There has been insufficient understanding, interest, investment, and action. Stringing initials after your name that are not recognized immediately by prospects creates skepticism, not acceptance. But using those that are readily known—MBA, PhD, PE—creates credibility.

Too often, these designations are simply used for elitism and “rank” within the organization, but rarely transcend those borders. Recognition is irrelevant if it doesn’t influence buyers. You can’t send your plaques and certificates to the mortgage company.

In a world where we see successful branding on a global basis, from commodities to services, small firms to large, why is it that professional associations don’t understand that their major function is to create brand recognition for their members? Nothing else is as important.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

As consultants, we have to guard against the insidious dynamic of “not being able to win enough.” It’s often an external stimulus: “Nice sales job this year, but of course you didn’t break that record set in 1988.” Or: “It’s wonderful that Stanford accepted you early admission. Your cousin, Rachel, did that with Stanford AND Harvard, remember?”

However, this is often an internal issue, especially with people whom we coach. When Jim Collins’s fine book appeared, everyone was talking about going from “good to great,” but very few knew what that meant, or how they’d know when they made progress toward “great.” Remember Michael Hammer and “reengineering”?  Everyone wanted to “reengineer,” though few would know it if they tripped over it, and some probably believed it meant running a locomotive.

When coaching clients say they want to be “extraordinary leaders,” “outstanding managers,” “state-of-the-art financial experts,” or “world class strategists,” ask them exactly how that condition would differ from their current one. I just completed my second annual Thought Leadership Workshop for two dozen people, and one major issue is: What are the traits that describe and typify a thought leader? With that knowledge you can tell what you should be achieving and measuring.

Do you want to be regarded as the top consultant in supply chain management? Or does your client want to be acknowledged as the finest sales executive in the industry? What would that look like and how would others know?

If you don’t pursue that level of specificity, you wind up in tendentious discussions about “best” and “ahead of the curve” and “innovative.” But those contribute to an amorphous mess if you can’t really specify what the “best” would be compared to “non-best.” When you are specific—with yourself or with your clients—you create the environment for clear objectives, crisp metrics, and obvious value, and concomitant high fees.

You can also discriminate among the important and not so important. A pharmaceutical firm needs world-class chemists, but probably not world-class accountants. The book that you write doesn’t have to be a best-seller, but only has to get you into a few dozen key new clients.

TIAABB: There Is Always A Bigger Boat. Don’t pursue grandeur for its own sake. Pursue reasonable growth goals. If you do that consistently, you’ll be in a very comfortable boat, with the wind and spray in your face, and others in your wake.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

When you’re heading to a meeting with a prospective buyer, it’s easy to be intimidated by all that you “don’t know.” You’re unsure of what kind of temperament and personality you’ll encounter, haven’t seen the environment before, aren’t certain what the needs may be, and so on.

So let’s redistribute the balance of power by focusing on what you should know before ever seeing the buyer. If you know these answers—and there’s no reason why you can’t—then you know more than enough to get you through any uncertainties.

1. What is the value proposition you want to focus on? How do you mainly improve your clients’ conditions, and what major areas of need should you be listening for?
2. What is the client organization’s position in its field? (Research reports, ask people who have used their products and services, shop the business, if possible.)
3. What are the major challenges for the industry? (Research trade associations and newspaper reporting.)
4. Who are the major competitors? (Research who the main players are and where your prospect ranks in sales, profit, market share, and so forth.)
5. What is your buyer’s key responsibility? (Call the company, read press reports, read the annual report.)
6. How will you use your time? If you’ve agreed upon an hour, how much time will you spend on introductions, key questions, and so on, and at what point will you start to summarize and set the next step?
7. What is your minimum and maximum objective for the meeting? What’s the least you’d like to accomplish (e.g., establish a relationship and a next meeting) and the most you can reasonably accomplish (e.g., agreement to accept a proposal in the next couple of days).
8. What references and examples will you use that are most effective for the person, company, and industry? What “war stories,” examples, metaphors, and names would be effective to include?
9. What will be your response to some of the most typical questions you’ll be asked in all likelihood ? (Example: How many people are in your firm?)

10.What appearance and demeanor do you want to portray, and how will you do it (e.g., what will you wear, what language will you use)?

You have the opportunity to know more than you think you might if you apply yourself to the proper preparation. Never worry about the “sale.” Focus on establishing a trusting relationship.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

With the announcement by Steve Jobs that’s he’s giving up the CEO role, Apple’s stock will probably take a hit today. The only real reason will be perceptual and emotional, since his successor is a proven talent and the Apple pipeline is full of new products. I doubt investors are reacting to something that they think happens five years or more from now.

Let’s hope I’m wrong, but after-hours trading had the stock down by several dollars last night.

The people who despise Steve Jobs and Apple strike me as the same ones who despise others’ success. They explain away the talent and innovation (luck, timing, theft) and they focus on what they perceive to be the weaknesses (autocratic, unemotional, ruthless).

Too often, like alligators, we tend to try to eat our own young.

Jobs has created one of the most valuable companies in the world through his visceral and intelligent identification of what customers need, whether the customers know it or not. (Most customers know what they want, but not what they need, or there would never have been a Walkman to begin with.) He creates trust and belief, and appeals to early adapters. His company creates more evangelists among customers than any I’ve ever seen that wasn’t actively in the evangelism business.

I’ve personally converted hundreds of people from PCs to Macs. I refused to listen earlier in my career when “experts” told me I had to be compatible with my clients and solely use PCs. I find it perfectly reasonable and efficient to be sitting here in Nantucket with my Mac lap top, iPad, and iPhone. (I’m typing this on my lap top and have written a dozen articles and columns, which I can’t do rapidly on the iPad. But I can read my books and play the latest level of Angry Birds and Fragger on my iPad. And I’m doing business occasionally from the beach on my iPhone.)

Steve Jobs is one of the latest American icons, like Hewlett and Packard starting out in their garage and creating “The HP Way” in their business (unfortunately lost in the past several years). He’s not going to be trotting out on stages in motivational rallies that dredge up ex-politicians, ex-quarterback, and ex-astronauts, along with vacuous “motivational speakers.” He’s the guy who did it his way, despite criticism, odds, larger competitors, and conventional wisdom.

We need more like him. Our kids should be studying him. He belongs in the news as an exemplar. But the media would rather focus on Bernie Madoff or the sexual escapades of still anther French politician.

One day, many of you will be telling your kids, “I watched Jobs build Apple. It was unbelievable.” I don’t’ think it’s unbelievable, but it certainly seems to be underappreciated.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’ve always been intrigued by the difference between compliance and commitment. They are simple contrasts that make consultants into heroes because so many senior people don’t grok the difference.

Of course, that’s assuming the consultant understands the difference.

Compliance works only so long as the authority is present, has a big stick, and demonstrates willingness to use it. That’s why on any interstate highway the average speed is at least 10 miles above the posted limit, until there’s a police car in sight. That’s why Prohibition closed 80,000 New York City saloons, only to see 130,000 speakeasies take their place.

The threat of reward and punishment branded by hierarchical leaders (the title printed on their business card and the size of their office—and often, ego) is effective only so long as they are present, can effectively provide carrots and sticks, and have a recent history of doing so. But the problem with mere compliance is that it is entirely reactive. That is, very few people will voluntarily come forward with innovation and ingenuity, and will often even refrain from prudent warnings. Compliant organizations are dull, conservative, and poor competitors in volatile times. (Do law firms come to mind here?)

The military might seem like the ultimate compliant organization, but assaults and defenses are far more effective when the participants are committed to the cause, not merely ordered to charge or resist. Do you prefer people who are ordered and monitored to be dealing with clients, or people who truly love being with them and helping them? Do you want people meeting quotas, fearful for their jobs, or people finding new business because they’re so attuned to providing value to others?

Poorly run organizations—most airlines, newspapers, banks, to name a few underachievers—demand compliance with rules, processes, and policies. Truly outstanding organizations—Apple, Fedex, Amica Insurance—create evangelists among employees and customers alike.

You can’t demand evangelism. You need people committed to the cause. That’s not so difficult, really, unless, of course, you’re insecure and don’t really believe in the cause yourself. That’s when you try to order the troops to attack from the rear, they’re unsuccessful and stream by you in retreat, leaving you to face the enemy all alone.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

An OBJECTIVE is a business outcome that improves the buyer’s condition. It is never a deliverable.

A METRIC is a measure or indicator of progress and success. It must be identifiable by the buyer and you. There should be at least one metric and preferably more for each objective.

VALUE is the various impact of the objectives. An objective of “increased profit” can yield value including higher margins, more money to reinvest in the business, ability to attract more investors, ability to attract more talent, and so on. Ideally, each objectives should generate several value statements.

With this framework, fees can be viewed in the context of ROI based on the value. If you achieve conceptual agreement with a true buyer prior to your proposal on objectives, measures, and value, you will close at least 60% of your proposals at high fees; and if you provide options with escalating value and fees, you will close at least 80% at very high fees.

You can read about this framework in detail in almost any of my books, or hear about them on many of my downloads, and practice them in most of my workshops.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

The Future of Consulting: Session 2

(An anonymous grad student’s interview with Alan, part 2)

BEB: We’ve been inundated with vision/mission/values and so on for what seems like decades, and we’ve been told that “execution” is the key. But things still don’t get done. Do you anticipate any changes in these “sacred” relationships?

AJW: I do. We all know (that is, most good leaders and executives) what has to be done, why it’s important, and even how to do it. In all my years of consulting I was usually validating what people already knew, infrequently introducing entirely new concepts. So “execution” isn’t sufficient. What we really lack is accountability.

BEB: You mean we’re lazy or we don’t know how?

AJW: We DO know how, but we fail to hold ourselves and others accountable. There is no rigor, no discipline, no priority. I’ve used the example for years now that over the prior decade the U.S. along has spent tens of billions on weight loss: diets, exercise equipment, personal trainers, medication, operations, and so on. Yet we’re collectively fatter than ever! I’ve led a hundred strategy sessions, and where those that fail do is when the top executive doesn’t hold himself or herself and subordinates accountable for all those lofty statements on the easel sheets they created.

BEB: Because people lack the willpower?

AJW: Let’s define “willpower.” People are enamored with the goal and the future picture is wonderful. But the journey is another matter entirely. That’s because the specific steps are either not defined sufficiently or they are not laden with the proper reward and punishment, so to speak. I was ineffective at working out on my own, but very effective once I paid a personal trainer who isn’t interested in how tired I am but is interested in how much progress I make. I don’t miss a session, I’m paying for them, even though I hate the sessions with a passion. But I’m stronger and in better shape today than I was ten years ago.

BEB: And you see this as an example of consulting in the future?

AJW: Yes, I see the dramatic need to make things actually happen as they are intended in those situations where they are not happening due to a lack of accountability and discipline. I think consultants who can install an “accountable culture” within clients will be worth their weight in gold.

BEB: Are some organizations there already?

AJW: Yes, but: It’s highly situational. FedEx has a tremendous, accountable delivery system replete with great people. But their back office is a customer disaster. My driver will make extraordinary attempts to get packages to me, but try calling to get a credit when something doesn’t arrive as it should or to correct a billing error and you’re dealing with a bureaucracy from a Rube Goldberg cartoon. I can’t think on one airline today that is fully accountable to customers, although you can find bright spots here and there. But how could they be, when they’re not accountable to their employees or even to their own stated strategies?

BEB: So contrary to those who believe that globalization, technology, demographics, and the like will be the high potential for consulting, you believe it’s in accountable cultures?

AJW: Look (to quote our President), you’re talking about fertile grounds to add value and I’m not disagreeing with those choices. But I’m talking about a process that transcends fads and trends: I think the world of tomorrow will richly reward those who make make things happen, and I’m convinced that’s done through accountability and resolve. Otherwise, you’ll just be another investor in “Spiderman.”

I’ve written for 25 years that you must be willing to abandon business at least every two years, because you can’t reach out unless you let go. Too many consultants lug around long-time clients like street people unwilling to jettison anything in the shopping cart that contains their life’s possessions.

A great many clients are dysfunctional: not profitable enough, too difficult, not interesting, too labor intense. You have to let them go in order to reach out to new, better, more profitable ones. Yet we cling with ferocity, holding on with our fingernails, as if all business is good business.

It isn’t.

The corollary  is that we must say “No” to some new business that comes our way because, well, all business is not good business. Troublesome prospects make terrible clients—they don’t magically improve. Why take on low profit, high labor clients? It’s usually because the consultant believes that it’s immoral, unethical, and illegal to turn down any paying business, no matter how frightening the warning signs and tocsins.

I’ve seen this trait in otherwise successful people, who are making well into seven figures. They’ve never lost the fear of being hungry, never achieved the stature in their own eyes of someone who is in demand and can afford to select ideal partners. These are the people who don’t enjoy their riches, because they’re seldom off  planes unless they’re in hotels.

The prospect should evaluate you, and you should evaluate the prospect. What are your decision criteria? Are you comfortable with the buyer? Do you see each other as peers? Is the work interesting? Can you accomplish a great deal without traveling? Will you have a significant impact?

Is the fee high and the labor low?

You have to say “No” on the way to “Yes.” Otherwise, you’ll be caught in the undergrowth of minor work and major worries. The sign of someone with high self-esteem and confidence in their abilities is the wherewithal to reject certain business.

Counterintuitive? Perhaps. But highly productive.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

The Future of Consulting: An Interview with Alan Weiss

Session 1

Alan was recently interviewed by a graduate student who wishes to remain anonymous.

BEB: We’re seeing increasingly startling headlines about management incompetence, whether Toyota’s quality problems or Hewlett-Packard’s leadership follies. Do these represent more opportunity for consultants?

AJW: I don’t subscribe to the notion that management is more corrupt or less adept today than in, as my son says, “days of yore.” Most of the great fortunes, from Kennedy to Astor and Vanderbilt to Rockefeller, were created through questionable practices. As Balzac commented, “Before every great fortune there is a great crime.” We are able to more immediately and shrilly comment on faults, through the media, as we do proclaim new “geniuses,” as we do with Gerstner or Jobs or Smith [IBM, Apple, FedEx]. Remember that Bernie Madoff’s scheme takes its precedent from Charles Ponzi of nearly 100 years ago.

BEB: So is this a particularly enlightened management age? Do we know so much more, have so many more resources and access, that management is actually better than ever?

AJW: It’s an age like any other. There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. What I don’t subscribe to are the notions of some authors and consultants that management, as a class, is somehow “evil” and it’s the responsibility of the workers to fight that evil. Are there greedy and inept and bullying executives? Sure. Are there enlightened and generous and exemplary executives? Sure. I hate the labeling. The bad cops, bad teachers, and bad clergy are a minority. But they get the preponderance of the headlines. If most weren’t good at their jobs, we’d have a meltdown.

BEB: If a consultant were to ask you what major philosophy to adopt about the business marketplace, what would it include?

AJW: First, volatility is the norm. This isn’t a passing fad after which we’ll return to years of boring stability. We’re in a swirl of huge evolutionary  and revolutionary change, a great deal of which we can’t possibly control and are lucky to merely influence. The Arab “spring” that we’re currently witnessing is just one example, as is the radical change in the housing market.

BEB: What else would you include?

AJW: Technology is omnipresent, as is any other utility from electricity to natural gas. It’s innovative aspect is plateauing. The last time I had a technological breakdown, I was still being told to unplug the item and then plug it back in. Imagine if that were the case with our cars or elevators? International influences are unpredictable. I don’t agree with the India/Brazil/China default of “huge economic powers” of the future. There are simply too many social and environmental issues that have to be addressed in these countries and, as far as I can see, aren’t close to resolution any time soon. I also suspect that Europe is going to change radically.

BEB: Why is that?

AJW: Because they’re not replacing their mortality rates and their only recourse for the labor they need is immigration, and it’s going to be largely Muslim immigration, which has not been a smoothly integrated community in most of Europe. Not only has Europe been far less friendly to immigration than the U.S., but laws are now being passed—such as a ban on veils in France—that would never occur in the U.S. Further, the Euro is in dire shape. The U.K. has never accepted it, and economically depressed countries which would at one time simply devalue their own currencies no longer can. That places a huge burden on economically strong nations such as Germany. Now we’re even seeing increased border controls within the EU, which had claimed ease of unfettered travel as a fundamental benefit.

BEB: Let’s return to consulting specifically. What does this bode for the profession?

AJW: Peter Drucker wrote about the great, universal need for management expertise and corporate intelligence. He even posited that if one were to include education as an American export (both that aspect going abroad with consultants, and non-U.S. students studying in America) that there would be no trade imbalance. I’m not so sure about that, but I do think that the need for management expertise will rival technical expertise as universal requirements, even  in third and “fourth” world nations.

BEB: Aren’t the needs of developing countries those of infrastructure, health, jobs, and so forth? Much more basic?

AJW: That’s the point. How do you manage large scale improvement? How do you intelligently use money and resources to help the populace and not the politicians? We’ve seen, for example, that providing massive amounts of food has the horrible byproduct of destroying the local agricultural base. These are world, not local, issues, that require highly adept advisory support.

BEB: And for the private sector?

AJW: If you believe that volatility is the new normal, and demographics continue to shift, and finances continue to oscillate, then I can make a case that the future of strong product and services growth is in forming communities of customers, disciples who provide feedback on future products, promote current products to peers, and who constantly challenge companies to raise their standards. Consultants adept at helping in these dynamics will be in great demand.

BEB: Are we seeing those trends now?

AJW: Just look at Apple.

[To be continued….]

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I find that the default position for far too many professional services providers is adversarial. That is, someone has to lose for someone else to win. I recall one of the “sales gurus” commenting from the stage, “In every sales transactions someone wins. You either win and make the sale, or the prospect wins and rejects you.”

That’s certainly healthy! No wonder there are so many execrable books on selling.

The marketing and sales processes are collegial. They are intended, in their correct form, for both parties to “win.” You receive tremendous value, and I receive equitable compensation. Easy as that.

But your mindset must be: “I have tremendous value to provide, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t attempt to provide it for all appropriate parties,” and not, “I need to make my quota, and I know I’m imposing on this person in an attempt to take their money.”

That mindset makes a tremendous difference. Eschew the “experts” who advise of tricks and manipulation and “finding the pain” (which went out with Nehru jackets and quadrophonic sound). Instead, focus on maximizing your value, the amounts of people exposed to it, and the ease of doing business with you.

The next time you’re in a group of peers, such as I recently assembled in Las Vegas at three major meetings, consider how easily you interact with them and share. Now take that attitude and superimpose it on your prospective buyers. Peer conversations are what matter. “Elevator pitches” should only be considered if you’re on the 67th floor and the elevator’s brakes are failing.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Here are some incredibly easy tips to stay ahead of the pack that most consultants simply ignore or aren’t disciplined about.

1. Speed: “Right from the outset, we saw how quickly you responded and realized that was lacking with people in the past,” said a brand new client of mine a week ago, whose business was closed while I was in France, never having met. Proposals, meetings, reports, debriefings, promised items—get them there fast. Using Fedex is a cost of doing business. The Internet is free last time I looked.
2. Attention to detail: If you can’t learn to use grammar and punctuation correctly for some unfathomable reason, then find a good proofreader and/or editor. When there are mistakes in your communications with clients or your promotional material people wonder how much attention you’re paying. (There will ALWAYS be mistakes, we’re not perfect, but the idea is to minimize them.)
3. Independent expertise: When you constantly quote others as verification for your approaches (Oswald’s Decision Model, or Karponsky’s Supply Chain Theory), then why do I need you? Why don’t I simply go to the source? What’s your contribution to thought leadership?
4. Assertion of value: Many of you reading this are afraid to make follow-up calls, or instead use far lower profile (and far more ineffective) email to follow-up. What are you afraid of, bothering someone??? If you believe you have value, then pursue buyers. The worst they can tell you is “No,” but they won’t tell you anything if you sit by the phone and wish for it to ring.
5. Perspective on methodology: No client was ever improved by methodology. The client was improved by the RESULTS of the methodology, and ten times out of nine there are alternatives to create those results. Don’t default to how you do things. Find out what the client needs and work backwards, using the shortest and easiest methods, not necessarily a 24-step process you’re in love with.
6. Ask, don’t just tell: The very best people with whom I work are constantly asking. On Alansforums.com I remind some people that there is no “faculty,” so you can’t just sit back and offer opinions and advice. The consulting meetings we’ve all attended where a bunch of people sit around and tell each other how good they are and how things should be done according to them produce one thing: old, unsuccessful consultants.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

“Collaboration” with colleagues is too often a theoretical exercise that burns up time determining what would happen “if”: If a client came along. If you had a project together. If you combined your methodologies.

Collaborate (that is, work together on a project, sharing revenues) under these conditions:

1. One or the other of you has a client or prospect ready to move forward.

2. The project requires expertise, methodology, and delivery more than just one of you can provide.

3. It isn’t a sole matter of needing extra delivery, since quality delivery people are widespread and can be hired at a daily rate. (These are people usually unsuccessful at marketing themselves, hence, they hope for business from others.)

4. The value the two of you bring far exceeds the value just one of you would bring, In other words, one-plus-one must equal 80, not merely 2.

5. You don’t make it legal, simply situational. Legal partnerships are worse than bad marriages, and more costly to tear asunder.

6. You trust each other implicitly, allowing each to make decisions for the other.

7. You apportion the revenue with a formula representing your contributions to it (e.g., business acquisition is far more critical than providing methodology or delivery) and are both happy with it.

8. You can be honest with each other.

In 30 years of consulting, I’ve had three alliances, each one with specific markets or a single client engagement. Of course, I could simply be anti-social. Or, on the other hand, I could be really smart.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

When you enter a buyer’s office for the first time, here are some useful behaviors to discipline yourself to follow. They’ll help you understand the person, the environment, and your own actions, as well as calm you down if needed.

1. Look around.

What is the office like? Large or small? Is there comfortable seating or merely a desk and chairs? Are there mementoes, photos, and awards, or is the place institutional and sterile? Is it neat or does it look like the aftermath of a shipwreck? This will tell you a lot about the person with whom you’re meeting (assuming it’s the buyer’s personal office!).

2. Shake hands firmly and smile.

Press the hand you’re offered with equal pressure back, whether male or female. Smile when you repeat the other person’s name and your own. If the other person says, “I’m Jane Anderson,” it’s fine to say, “Nice to meet you, Jane.” But if she says, “I’m Dr. Anderson,” then your reply is, “Nice to meet you, Dr. Anderson.” If she says, “Dr. Joan Anderson,” reply with “Dr. Anderson” and see if she says, “Please call me Joan” or not. I always ask people to call me “Alan.”

3. Be seated quickly.

Don’t unpack as if you’re checking into a Ritz-Carlton. You should have left any coats, baggage, computer cases, and mining equipment with the secretary or the receptionist (or in your car or limo). Sit where indicated by your host, take out something with which to take notes, and start listening carefully. (Note: Don’t accept the offer of refreshments, unless you’ve just arrived from the Gobi Desert. Trying to balance coffee, or figure out where to place a tea bag, or wait for the assistant’s interruption, and so forth, just get in the way. You don’t go to a coffee shop to build business, and you don’t go to a business meeting for coffee.)

4. Follow the buyer’s lead.

There’s a huge difference among, “How can I help you today?” and “What can you do for me?” and “Tell me something about yourself and how you’ve come to me.” Answer what you’re asked, but briefly. Tell the buyer what the buyer needs to know, not everything that you know (“I was born in Madagascar….”) You’ve now been able to observe the office, your seating arrangements, body language, and opening conversation, all in about 60 seconds.

5. Take the initiative.

Once pleasantries are briefly exchanged (which could be 30 seconds or five minutes), say something like this: “Both of us appreciate the need to make the best use of our time, so why don’t we set a brief agenda? I have three items I’d like to discuss, and I’d like to hear what your expectations are, and then we can utilize our time accordingly. I think you said we have 45 minutes, is that still the case?” This exchange immediately establishes you as a peer and allows you to actually lead the discussion and avoid becoming a performing seal. Make sure you know what your minimum and maximum objectives are (min/max) for that meeting.

6. Take notes.

Don’t trust your memory, but be judicious. I’ve seen people write everything down as if they’re auditioning for a court reporter’s position. Just note the salient points for your purposes of exploring a potential partnership. I find this easiest to do with a pen and paper, not electronic pecking. Ask for clarification when needed, and paraphrase and summarize regularly.

7. Watch for changes in behavior or language.

The buyer is going to do one of only three things: Stay the same as when you arrived; become less cordial and communicative; become more cordial and communicative. You want the last. Make mid-course corrections by observing what, if any, changes are transpiring. “You seem more enthusiastic about this last point. Should I infer this is your top priority?”

8. Create definitive next steps.

Building trusting relationships takes time. But the time can be shortened if there are clear and agreed upon actions and dates. Never accept “Let me get back to you,” or “Call me in a couple of weeks,” or “I’ll need to get some more information for our next conversation.” Make definite times and dates while you’re sitting there.

Never overstay your time unless explicitly invited to do so and it’s necessary for your purposes. It’s always fine to leave early once the mission (min/max) has been accomplished.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Here are the marketing best practices being used by members of the Private Roster Mentor Program Hall of Fame, who met for the last three days in New York City:

• Repurpose existing intellectual property (IP) in multiple ways on diversified media.

• Obtain referrals which are personal introductions to the prospect.

• Use an assistant to find and set up calls with people who directly hire speakers.

• Webinars on specific, high value issues.

• Use a client case study (with permission) for promotion.

• Volunteer to present at high potential management meetings.

• Send out a plain text letter at holidays and/or for special events.

• Include “war stories” and “secrets” in speeches.

• Relentless communications with thought leaders.

• Use of a “sales funnel” to track prospects.

• Create checklists based on your IP as handouts and downloads.

• Use concurrent speaking sessions at national events to work up to keynote opportunity.

• Chair breakfast roundtables.

• Conduct studies and surveys for clients, contacts, publishing.

• Interview colleagues reciprocally.

• White papers on high potential issues and high potential market segments.

• Become a panel and roundtable resource.

• Create teleconferences that appeal to prospective market.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m conducting my Mentor Hall of Fame meeting in New York just prior to my birthday party. Andrew Sobel, who has been in my community for quite a while, came up with an interesting phrase, “contrarian wisdom.” I told him that I’d race him to write the book (he’s written some fine work, such as Clients for Life), but since he focuses on accuracy and I focus on volume, we both know I’d win!

His phrase originated with some observations the group was sharing. For example, I’ve found that, at large dinners in restaurants, the servers will get a better tip from me by not including service rather than by including the traditional 18-20%. That “guarantee” of good compensation actually decreases their compensation, unless I pay attention to adding still more to it.

Why do realtors insist on conforming to a 6% commission rate, or search firms to a third of first year income? Doesn’t the value vary, and isn’t it usually greater than that arbitrary compensation represents? I watched a workman carefully put plastic booties over his shoes when entering my home. Why can’t someone provide these at airport security in return for advertising, or charge a quarter for them? It beats walking barefoot over the filth that accumulates on those floors.

Why aren’t there canisters to collect loose change for charities when you’re departing countries you’re not returning to soon, and the small change doesn’t matter except when it adds up after thousands of passengers (Virgin Air does this in flight)?

Shouldn’t there be a charge for speed, not merely solution? If Disneyland has express passes to avoid lines, why can’t consultants charge more for priority attention, or auto repair shops, or accountants?

We often fall into what I call the “success trap.” We do more and more of what we feel we’re already good at, instead of using success to springboard us to a new level of effectiveness and appeal.

What’s your reaction to my position that wealth is actually represented by discretionary time, not income, and that the mindless pursuit of money can actually erode your wealth by demanding so much of your time? Are you aligned merely to make money, or to create real wealth?

Consider it unconventional wisdom. Andrew and I do. And I’m sure he’ll enjoy reading it in my new book!

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Here is the opening of my new book, available in about a month from John Wiley & Sons, The Consulting Bible. It will be available for order on my site in about a week.

Section I: Genesis

Consulting as a profession

The origins, evolution, and basic requirements

of successful consulting.

Some realities are self-evident and eternal.

Chapter 1

Origins and Evolution

From whence we came

The role of a consultant

One day, somewhere in the mid-Pleistocene Epoch, after the last glacial period, a man was trying to create a stronger point on his stone spear head, so that he could better hunt and slay the peccaries that fed his clan, and protect himself from dire wolves that fed on his clan. He did this in the only way he knew how, which he learned watching his father—he laboriously abraded the sides of the point on a larger rock.

On this day, however, a stranger happened by who may have been seeking more interesting surroundings, or was exiled from his clan or, one could readily assume, might have simply been lost. Observing the work on the spearhead, the stranger demonstrated that the point had to be ground on a harder rock, not a softer one, and indicated how to choose them. Not just any rock would do. And, indeed, his method worked and the hunter fashioned a sharper spearhead more quickly. The stranger was offered thanks, provided with food, and bestowed with a lion’s tooth. He then went on his way once again, well fed, and with a talisman.

Consulting had been born.

The Gospel: The role of a consultant is to improve the client’s condition.

It may or may not have happened that way, but you can’t prove it didn’t. Consulting—advice, counsel, suggestions—has been around since people began living together. Claims of  “the oldest profession” have been misapplied to another career, though some would claim that consulting can also be somewhat meretricious if performed with poor motives or lack of skills.

Our job is to improve the client’s condition. Doctors are consultants, and one of the first things they learn in medical school is Primum non nocere (first, do no harm). When we walk away from a client, the client’s condition should be better than it was before we arrived, or we’ve failed. (That “we” may mean both the client and we have failed, but we share in the failure in any case.)

It’s that simple.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

An excerpt from my new book to be released by McGraw-Hill in a few months:

I was introduced once to a top client team by their boss who had hired me, who had used my help in a prior company and who, himself, was once a consultant in a former life. He opened with, “Alan is a consultant who, like any good consultant, will work closely with us until, like some incurable disease, he has taken root in our systems and we will not be able to get rid of him.”

That brought some nervous laughter—including my own—but I understood his point. Good consultants want to do such good work and meet so many potential buyers that they spread their tentacles throughout the organization seeking sustenance. This is because my mindset is that they need my value, not because I’m “searching for business” or “trying to reach revenue quotas.”

In your calendar, or diary, or Filofax® or cocktail coaster (whatever you use for critical reminders) you should note the following referral potential sources and check off whether you’ve inquired about them. If you don’t discipline yourself, you’ll tend to overlook sources. Feel free to copy this right out of these pages. Note how many of these sources there are, and that you cannot afford to overlook any of them in each client.

Potential Referral Sources to Be Sought

o      Buyer Peers                                    o      Buyer Superiors

o      Buyer Subordinates                      o      Client Vendors

o      People in Parent Organization   o      People in Subsidiaries

o      Professional Colleagues               o      Acquaintances and Friends

o      Client’s Customers                        o      Trade Associations

o      Regulatory Groups                        o      Media Contacts

My estimation is that it is about 20 times more difficult to bring in new business than it is to develop repeat and referral business. It also costs five or six times more in money and time. Think about it. Asking for a referral or another project within a client takes little time and zero investment. Trying to unearth a new client—turn a cold lead into a warm prospect and then a hot client—is laborious and expensive in terms of trips, time , and managing the process.

Thus, your hunt for referrals is an excellent investment with a significant ROI.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

We all are confronted with tough prospect and client questions, and even challenges socially and professionally from colleagues, regularly. (Forget about the social media platforms, where anyone with zero experience and less intellect feels comfortable informing you about their view of the world. A phys ed teacher on Twitter is trying to tell me that buyers need approval from others, and you shouldn’t seek the actual people who can approve investments!)

You can fret and stew about this stuff, and generally become immobilized and increasingly stressed. Or you can learn some simple steps to effectively resolve it. (There are only two outlets for stress: internal, making yourself ill; or external, making someone else ill. I’m just kidding. I think.)

1. Treat objections, questions, and rebuttals as a sign of interest. These are opportunities, not threats. What you should really fear is silence and apathy, meaning you haven’t pushed anyone’s buttons. So regard even a confrontational reaction as a positive.

2. Focus on principles, not taste. When someone wants to pay people for loyalty and not merit, or forge signatures, or evade taxes, pull out your weapons. But if it’s about the choice of the hotel for a retreat or a dress code, swim with the tide (to quote Jefferson).

3. Remember that your entire being does not depend on the outcome, and that little you or I ever do will change the course of civilization. The Greeks believed there was nothing more glorious than to die in battle. The Romans believed that if things weren’t going all that well you retreated to fight another day. Be Roman, not Greek.

4. Use language better than the other person, which isn’t difficult at all. Responding with “Oh, yeah?” or “So’s your old man!” or “Says who?” is not going to impress anyone with more than a third grade education. But responding with, “You’re logic is self-contradictory. You’re arguing that customers won’t realize that we’re not treating them equally, when those same customers are in discussions with each other daily on our own website. They’ll find out in the first fifteen minutes.”

5. Understand that most conflict is NOT personality based, but is over one of two things: disagreements over objectives (end results, destinations) or alternatives (options to reach the destination and result). Sort that out first. If it’s about objectives, find out who really “owns” the decision. If it’s about options, the agree on the destination and compromise on or combine the options.

6. Identify your “musts” which are inviolable and which you cannot live without, and your “wants” which are desires and not as critical. When you negotiate and compromise, use your wants as the bargaining chips but store your musts in the vault and never put them on the table.

7. Never hold a grudge or seek retribution. An old bromide goes, “You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you have to suit up for them all.” Win more than you lose, but don’t expect to win them all, and never take a loss personally and grow to detest the other party. That merely diminishes you. When you hate someone else, they forever have you enslaved, which is far worse than merely losing an argument.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

When you learn to scuba dive, the instructor imprints in your cerebral cortex one word: breathe! While it’s counterintuitive to breathe underwater, the instructors explain endlessly, “Never stop breathing. Do not hold your breath. You could die.”

Oh.

When you’re with a prospect, build the relationship. Never stop. Thought it sounds counterintuitive (instead of “going for the close” for example), it’s vitally important. Never stop relationship-building. Don’t hold back. You could die.

Yes.

You need to build a trusting relationship in this profession with all potential buyers (not with non-buyers). That’s because only then, when trust is established and apparent, will the buyer provide his or her objectives, measurement criteria, and impact (value) on the organization and on them. That’s the basis for a proposal. They won’t do that for someone they don’t trust. They won’t do it for someone constantly trying to close a deal.

And even if you do manage to close a deal short of a trusting relationship, it will always be a smaller deal than would have been otherwise generated.

I talk to too many consultants who don’t feel they are peers of the buyer. Who are too concerned about getting business. Who desperately are always thinking of money. Who can’t seem to put themselves in the buyer’s shoes. Whose egos make the conversation adversarial. Who simply want to deliver their methodology and don’t care about the buyer’s needs.

Breathe. Don’t get too deep without having reached agreements on the way down. Otherwise, when you’re done and attempt to surface, you’ll get the bends: Being eternally necessitating depleted savings. (You get the idea!)

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

We often talk of “thinking big” without bothering to determine what that entails. Herein, some suggestions:

1. Keep asking “Why?” to find the buyer’s larger objectives. “We need a developmental program (Why?) because our sales need improvement (Why?) because we want to become the industry leader.” The last goal has far more value than the first.

2. Stop asking permission, except rhetorically (“May I suggest a bolder approach?”). Peers don’t ask permission, they make suggestions.

3. Don’t ever assume money is an issue. There is always money. The only question is whether you constitute enough of a priority for the buyer to give it to you.

4. You can always make another dollar, but you can’t make another minute. Focus on the next date, time, and accountability. Never accept, “We’ll get back to you” or “Let’s talk again in the spring.”

5. If you don’t blow your own horn there is no music. If you can’t be passionate and dedicated about the value you’re bringing, then why should the buyer? If you can’t honestly tell me you’re the best person for the job, then why should I think you are?

6. Remember that your project is current business but referrals are your future business, and they are equally important. Every client has this duality of value for you. Plumb both.

7. The natural progression is a project or a series of projects leading to retainers so that access to your “smarts” is always available. Don’t read too much about how to “disengage.” Read about how to perpetuate client relationships.

8. Learn to reject acceptance. You do not want to waste your time in human resources, learning and development, training, or other support positions, except as a route to the real buyer. No matter how much they embrace you, run for the “up” stairway.

9. Think of yourself as someone who improves the client condition, and can do so by consulting, coaching, training, facilitating, writing, speaking, and so on. If you see yourself merely as a methodology conduit (“I’m a teambuilding retreat facilitator”) you might as well lower your future expectations right now.

You can subscribe for free to my monthly electronic newsletter, The Million Dollar Consulting® Mindset, at http://summitconsulting.com/million-dollar-consulting-mindset/. You’ll have access to the archives as well as all new editions.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I tell every consultant whom I mentor to assume the client is “healthy.” That is, the client isn’t “damaged” until and unless you see evidence that the client is the problem: screaming at subordinates, lying to colleagues, cheating on expenses. In my experience, the client being the problem occurs in a small minority of cases, yet too many consultants assume the person smart enough to bring them in to help is also dumb enough to be setting his own pants on fire.

Having established that, this column is for all of you who feel you are subordinate to your client; that common sense pales against complex models; and that a large organization’s sophistication dwarfs your own.

My case: Captain Owen Honors of the United States Navy, former commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, independently capable of destroying a major part of the world.

We only have about a dozen of these behemoths, so only a dozen people are commanding them at any one time. Quite a rare club. It makes the Senate seem like an open house, and the House look like a Boston bar.

Captain Honors is a product of a great education (the Naval Academy), strict military discipline (the Navy is perhaps the most rigid and doctrinaire of all the services), and extreme competition (there are fewer and fewer capital chips to command). He served as executive officer of the Enterprise, and was promoted to command in May, about to set sail on deployment, until his unfortunate, bigoted, and sophomoric videos were inevitably leaked.

There are many saying he’s been sacrificed on the alter of political correctness. But another and prevailing view is that officers of any rank simply shouldn’t act that way. (It almost seems like the residue of an age of YouTube and Facebook, when there are no restrictions on what anyone chooses to say at any time to anyone.) It’s hard to imagine the legendary Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, whose name is given to an entire class of these huge carriers, conducting himself in this manner or tolerating such conduct from his officers.

Captain Honors is one in twelve, perhaps. What I’m telling you is that just because someone has a large office, a huge paycheck, and hordes of subordinates doesn’t mean that the individual is any smarter or more sophisticated than you. In small businesses, we’ve seen inventive and risk taking people build firms which they were atrocious at managing. In large businesses, we’ve seen people ascend the hierarchical ladder through connections, politics, and luck. It happens.

Don’t be intimidated by your client’s background or wealth. Simply treat the client as an  equal—a peer—unless you see evidence that proves otherwise. Maintain command of your own ship, and earn the respect that you’re due from clients and colleagues.

That will keep you safe and strong even when you have to sail into harm’s way.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I use a framing store for the certificates I hand out in sessions such as my Million Dollar Consulting® College. For December’s College, my wife took the certificates from the calligrapher to the framer, but the owner told her that her husband, who actually did the framing, wasn’t there and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks—far past my deadline. She directed my wife to an arts store a couple of miles away where there are assembled frames.

We found that the assembled frames were almost indistinguishable from the hand made fames. The difference in cost: Framer is $450 for 10; store is $40 for 10.

This is the problem with small business owners. They don’t think of the customer relationship, only the immediate work. I’m sure most of you would have suggested to her: bring the framing to a competitor if you have to, but get them done for your customer of five years; find someone who can do this on a subcontract basis; learn to frame yourself as the owner; line up replacements when you know your husband will be away.

I’ll go back to her. I want to support her, her work is very good, and she’s two minutes from my home. But a lot of customers won’t under similar circumstances.

Consulting is about common sense. Alarmingly, too many business owners and senior managers are lacking it. Don’t be shy about charging for it, because the value of common sense is constantly on the rise.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

ALAN’S TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS FOR CONSULTANTS
By Alan Weiss

Reprinted from last year at popular request.
(with apologies to everyone from the 16th Century and prior)

On the first day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
A large dose of self-esteem.

On the second day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the third day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the fourth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the fifth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the sixth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the seventh day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the eighth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the ninth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the tenth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing
Eight speaking requests
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the eleventh day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Eleven innovations,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Twelve vacation days,
Eleven innovations,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

What’s the difference between a coach and a mentor? I think the differences are significant. Here are some examples from my upcoming book, Million Dollar Coaching (McGraw-Hill, January 2011):

Attribute                  Coaching                                        Mentoring

• Initiative                • As often proactive as reactive    • Solely reactive

• Scope                      • May work with groups                 • Only individuals

• Duration                • Set tenure with disengagement  • Open-ended

• Key Feature          • Periodic interaction                      • Accessibility

• Proximity              • Tough to do solely remotely       • Can do remotely

• Fees                        • Based on value to the client        • Retainer access

• Accountability      • Guiding development                   • Sounding board

• Focus                     • Heavy process, some content      • Can be either

• Primary Client     • Organizational                               • Entrepreneurial

• Specialties            • Usually                                            • Irrelevant

• Experience           • Needn’t have done the job            • Has done it

• Ease of Entry       • Simple                                              • Tough (earned)

As a rule, mentors are experienced, successful people who provide wisdom and insights that may or may not require actual content expertise of the subject matter. Coaches, however, generally need strong process skills and some demonstrable knowledge of the content involved. (“Content” is what is being discussed, “process” is how you do what is discussed. Manufacturing tires in a content issue, but decision making is a process which transcends the content of the subject matter.)

The segmentation into “life coaches” and so forth has always struck me as more than silly. What qualifies someone to be a “life coach,” even if you can conjure up a definition? Would it be someone who has already lived life and can therefore provide empirical advice? Or someone now living such an unequivocally great life that others can only gawk in envy? I find that most life coaches are so pretentious that, well, they need to get a life.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Language to generate referrals in various stages of client interaction (From my new book, Million Dollar Referrals from McGraw-Hill, which will be released in mid-2011.)

New Clients, Project Launching

• “As we move forward, it’s common for me to request referrals from my client partners, since that is the source of most of my business. I hope you’ll consider agreeing to do that when the time is right.”

• “Referrals are the ‘coinage of my realm’ in this business, and I’m going to work very hard to maximize your project’s outcomes so that you’ll be very comfortable is providing these at the right point.”

• “It’s very early, but my experience is that it’s not uncommon for my clients to want to share their results with others. I want to assure you that when you provide referrals, and if I accept their business, you will always have my highest priority and I would never endanger that.”

• “Since you and I actually met through a referral, you know how effective that is for others who for whom we both believe I may be a good ‘fit.’ I’m happy to discuss that with you if you are ever questioned about our work together.”

• If you encounter people inside or outside of the organization whom you believe could benefit from my help, I’d be happy to be of further service to you and to them.”

Existing Clients, Project Underway

• “As we’ve progressed, I’ve received some indirect inquiries from some of your colleagues. Would you be comfortable introducing me?”

• “Would it make sense to approach the other units which have relationships to our project to see if they are amenable to becoming part of it?”

• “When the project began, I mentioned the potential of referrals from you to people who might also benefit from this value. While it may be premature to approach them, it’s probably a good time to understand who they may be.”

• “Are there people outside of the organization with whom you’d like me to share some of these approaches?”

• “Who else within the organization do you think I should be talking to as this project approaches completion?”

Existing Clients, Project Concluding

• “As I mentioned at the outset and along the way, referrals are the lifeblood of my business. To whom would you be willing to introduce me at this point?”

• “While we’re still together but before this project concludes soon, can you suggest who else I should be talking to here for similar benefits?”

• “If you had to choose three names of people who might be interested in this type of value, which would they be?”

• “It seems to me there are three logical continuation points for me, do you agree, and would you introduce me to your counterparts?”

• “You had mentioned several people whom I should meet when the time is right. Are you prepared to introduce me at this point?”

Past Clients, Projects Concluded

• “I thought I’d contact you to provide some things which might be of interest, up date you on my work, and ask if you have anyone whom you would recommend I contact.”

• “Looking back to our project’s results, and forward to what’s likely in the future, whom would you recommend I be contacting in your organization to provide similar value?”

• “Have you met or considered anyone in your professional circles outside the organization for whom an introduction would be a win/win/win dynamic?”

• “I’m making one of my quarterly calls to see how you’re doing and inquire as to whether you might have some people to recommend to me.”

• “I’ve thought of some people with whom it might make sense to work, and I was wondering if you had a relationship with any of them and might agree to introduce me.”

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

When you’re with a client, before you depart, try to:

• Summarize progress and current status.

• Have client agree with positive results to date.

• Commit to his or her accountabilities in near-term.

• Agree on time and date for next discussion between you.

• Secure follow-up on any internal issues that need action/correction.

• Acquire referrals (if you’re more than half-way through the project).

• Provide value about non-project and peripheral issues.

• Personally see all key stakeholders who are present.

• Find out if anyone is waiting for anything from you.

• Seek feedback on any new initiatives you’re considering (e.g., new product or teleconference).

• Thank any assistants or secretaries who have been of help.

• Observe the environment for any changes.

• Raise status on any overdue fee or expense reimbursement payments.

• Learn of any key changes in the company’s condition (e.g., earnings, attrition, technology, etc.).

• Be seen by as many people as possible, including potential buyers.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I heard a lyric today, “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.” (I think it’s from Donna Fargo.) Sort of fits in nicely with my philosophies that “If you don’t blow your own horn, there is no music,” and “shameless promotion.”

No one will follow you, let alone accept your advice, if you’re not so confident and enthusiastic about your value that you can’t assertively pursue others with it. People have to recognize you as a thought leader, object of interest, provider of value.

Today, in a critical off-year election, we will have a relatively low turnout of registered voters. Many of the primaries leading up to today had voter turnouts below 30 percent. Yet many people who are too lazy to vote—or claim they are “too disgusted,” meaning they’re simply not willing or able to discern who would best meet their self-interests—will complain about the results and those elected for the next two years, before they refuse to vote again.

If you’re not trying to influence the system, then you’ve lost my respect to complain about perceived injustices.

And if you’re not actively engaged in trying to promote and build your business, your complaints about the economy, technology, competition, outsourcing, and conspiracies don’t carry any weight with me. The benefit of being a solo practitioner is that you can engage in your own marketing and promotion without restraints from the “corporation” or “the boss.”

Yet too many otherwise fine consultants are working for a tougher and less enlightened boss than they ever suffered under in the corporate world.

You don’t get elected without building a constituency and devoted followers. You don’t build business without the exact same dynamics.

Light up someone’s life if you want to prevent a shipwreck on the rocks below.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Thought Leader characteristics from my Thought Leader Workshop this week at The Breakers in Palm Beach, FL.

• Sought by other professionals.

• Sought by the media.

• Multiple commercially published books.

• Expertise appreciated globally.

• Public appearances.

• Continually ad intellectual property to the field.

• Admit errors and changes/grows.

• Cited by others to prove their points.

• Controversial/provocative.

• Usually have taught at undergraduate and/or graduate levels.

• Star client list.

• Know other thought leaders.

• Plethora of protected intellectual property.

• Totally comfortable with top people in any field.

• Longevity over diverse conditions.

• Communities surround them.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I’ve actually been told the following by “coaches” and “experts” and “gurus” over the years. They really require little explanation, except to ignore the advice completely.

• Get the audience involved by asking them to raise their hands (e.g., “How many of you have been to Pittsburgh?”). Sure, if your audience comprises six-year-olds.

• Use a workbook with empty spaces for the audience to complete (e.g., “Always be __________ when stating ideas”). Sure, if your audience comprises five-year-olds. (The correct answer is “dressed like a clown.”)

• Raise prices when demand exceeds supply. Right, if you like working all day, every day.

• Consultants are hired hands who should do whatever the client requests. Do you draw the line at changing the oil and washing the windows?

• Accelerated learning can reduce your information gathering by half. Yes, and reduce comprehension to zero.

• When you move about on the stage, I can’t focus on your points, so you need to plant yourself for people. Only if they, like you, have a learning disability that prevents you from learning from moving people.

• Replicate the movements and speech nuances of the prospect to gain acceptance. Or to gain entry into an asylum or hospital when you’re thrown out the window.

• You never break confidentiality with a client’s employee, no matter what. Great, I hope you never encounter one who wants to kill the boss or rob the warehouse.

• If you have a speech, you have a book. Of course, but an excruciatingly short book.

• To get your nerves under control, picture the audience sitting there naked. And how do you suspect they’re thinking of you standing up there?

• Always dress-down and dumb-down your language for clients, so as not to show them up. Only if you want stupid, poorly dressed clients.

• Never blow your own horn. Then get used to the silence.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I addressed about 140 consultants, coaches, speakers, and trainers in Denver yesterday and today. Here are a few of my most critical points.

• You must focus on the highest value market you have, not merely the most possible people.

• Powerful communities draw high-powered people, who attract still others in their own right.

• You can cite exceptions all day long, but the fact is that cold calling and social network platforms should have only a tiny investment of your marketing time and funds.

• High tech creates more ambiguity, not less (there are more choices and alternatives, for example). This can paralyze people who aren’t comfortable with high degrees of ambiguity.

• Trade associations that don’t evolve into true communities—and offer only a monthly publication and annual meeting—will disappear into irrelevance.

• Before approaching the buyer, put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and ask, “What would prompt me to do business with this person?”

• You must create “low barrier to entry” offerings so that prospects can be exposed to your value at low risk and no trouble.

• Most speakers bureaus have it all wrong. YOU are the talent, and the client is YOURS. The bureau is merely a middleman. (Speakers could exist without bureaus, bureaus couldn’t exist without speakers.)

• Consultants have characteristically coached throughout their careers because they help key individuals through changes.

• When you attract people (as opposed to reaching out to them) your credentials and fees are no longer factors.

• If you don’t create you own direction and strategy for the next year, then the market, competitors, or economic factors will. Then you’re just one of the herd.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

1. Be clear about your value to clients, and accept your mission to provide that value to as many people as can possibly gain from it. Don’t be afraid to blow a horn to get their attention.

2. Never assume the client is damaged. The client is smart enough to be talking to you.

3. Learn to accept rejection (from buyers, it’s part of the profession) and reject acceptance (from gatekeepers, whose job it is to block you).

4. Never believe you have the only way. Provide the client with options that are all good ways, so the decision is “How should I do this?” and not “Should I do this?”

5. Don’t think about or pursue perfection. Think about and pursue success.

6. Remember at all times that wealth is discretionary time, and the blind pursuit of money can actually erode you wealth.

7. Your physical presence is not of inherent value. The client’s results constitute value. Ergo, don’t tie the two together.

8. Routinize your inputs, customize your outputs.

9. IC to IP to IB: Intellectual capital must be manifest as intellectual property which can then be transformed into income that’s bankable.

10. Your best credentials are your results. Initials, “certifications,” ratings sheets, and degrees are mostly irrelevant and usually dumb. Provide a testimonial from a delighted client and it doesn’t matter what school you went to.

11. You should think about marketing all the time and delivering some of the time. Those who advise these are mutually-exclusive are universally unsuccessful.

12. Think in terms of speed and responsiveness. They display your sense of urgency, character, and professionalism.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

(The Dog Star is a symbol of power, will, and steadfastness of purpose, and exemplifies the One who has succeeded in bridging the lower and higher consciousness. – Astrological Definition)

When I head toward the master bedroom upstairs, the dogs arrive from wherever they are in the house. I hear their claws tapping out their direction on the wood floors as their speed picks up. Buddy Beagle will run ahead of me, trying to lead to the master bathroom, where the dog treat drawer is, and Koufax will actually engage is some herding maneuvers, which must represent distant racial memory. (If he came face-to-face with an actual sheep today, I’m sure his first move would be to fire up the grill.)

The dogs have mastered a process, just as they have for getting me into the truck to go for coffee and biscuits when I’m not working out. They recognize key signs and act in a prescribed fashion. They are successful more than not. In fact, A Rod would envy their batting averages.

Consultants need to tune in to similar indicators in the environment. For example, there’s the transference that takes place when people critique the boss because they’re really upset with themselves. There’s the turf battles that arise not because of personal animosity but because two senior people are setting the example (“us against them”). There is the projection that ensues when an employee doesn’t want to grant that someone else will be able to do something they haven’t.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. As your consulting career progresses, you should be quicker, more accurate, and more confident. There is actually a finite range of issues that confront an OD consultant (I maintain there are 11, but you know I just love to provoke people) and you should identify what evidence you’re immediately seeing in the environment of which ones.

The faster you help the client, the more valuable you are. A German Shepherd can herd a lot of sheep all my himself. Just don’t drool on the carpets.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Download Graph: Accelerant Curve as PDF (2.99MB)

My recent Writing on the Wall video about the accelerant curve for consultants (you can find it here on the blog) was so well received, that I thought I’d put some of it in writing here. The concept will appear in three of my new books: Million Dollar Speaking, Million Dollar Coaching, and The Consultant’s Bible.

I call this version the Million Dollar Consulting® Accelerant Curve. The basic concept of decreasing barrier to entry coupled with increasing fees on the two axes was introduced to me first by Mark Smith at a Million Dollar Club meeting two years ago. Since then, I’ve developed the concept specifically for consultants and related professional services providers into the graphic you see here.

The vertical axis represents decreasing barrier to entry, from bottom to top. The horizontal axis represents increasing fee and intimacy (and decreasing labor intensity) from left to right. This blog post, for example would be at the top left: it’s free and there is no intimacy involved—it’s available to anyone who stops by.

The verticals (12 is an arbitrary number simply for my illustration) represent your products and services. The left third, with easy entry and low price (or free) is competitive with others. There is little differentiation. The middle third, however, is distinct: There are distinguishing features which create more personal contact with you and commensurately higher fees. This might comprise personal coaching, workshops, team building, and so forth.

The right third I term “breakthrough” and places you at the leading edge. These are high intimacy and high fee. They might include strategy work, small and very elite workshops, CEO coaching, and so forth.

Finally, the “vault” is composed of value that is uniquely yours with a client. No one else can work that combination. These might include retainers, retreats, licensing of your intellectual property, and so forth. Note that these actually represent less labor intensity for higher fees!

The idea of the accelerant curve is to encourage clients to move down the curve to higher value and higher profit offerings. The curve’s ability to move people along relies on the trust and credibility established toward the left. It’s vitally important not to have any “chasms” so that people don’t fall off the chart as they slide forward! Whatever your number of offerings, you need them spread across the three categories.

Having said that, once you build brand and repute, you attract “parachute business.” That is business which travels immediately to your higher-end offerings, because trust has been established by referral, word-of-mouth, and market gravity. This business lands on the right side of the curve, or even in your vault.

Finally, you can create “bounce factors” along the curve, so progress is exponential and not sequential. For example, many people read my book Million Dollar Consulting and immediately “bounce” to participation in my Mentor Program, or my Million Dollar Consulting® College. Many companies, for which I simply keynoted, moved to place me on retainer immediately thereafter.

Can you fill in the 12 spaces I’ve provided plus the three for the vault? If not, this is a great marketing device to help you attract and propel prospects and clients toward higher value, more profitable, and less labor intensive relationships.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Here’s the fine line walked by fine consultants:

1. Don’t assume the client is damaged.

But DO validate and verify what you’re told through observed behavior.

2. Don’t get sucked in by fads, jargon, and academics’ “breakthroughs.”

But DO find legitimate workplace trends and develop your own intellectual property.

3. Don’t get sucked into the whirlpool of low level people who talk a big game but have no budgets or authority.

But DO identify that one in ten who is professional, recognizes value, and can introduce you to economic buyers.

4. Don’t allow amateurs shouting on the social media platforms to influence your thinking or actions.

But DO use social media to introduce your own value into larger communities and to overcome the amateurs who are upset because you won’t follow them on Twitter!

5. Don’t allow the client to tell you how to consult.

But DO operate diagnostically in your marketing to draw the buyer toward your approaches, then become prescriptive when you’re hired and you must be seen as the consultant.

6. Don’t spend your precious discretionary time on people who beg you to help them for free.

But DO provide pro bono work, philanthropy, and advice to those whom you respect and deserve such help.

7. Don’t think you have to have all the answers.

But DO know how to ask all the right questions.

8. Don’t wait for the prospect to get back to you.

But DO think of the fourth sale first, and don’t rush into the easiest or most obvious project.

9. Don’t spend more than you take in.

But DO plan to invest in your own self-development continually.

10. Don’t fail to use technology to reduce labor intensity.

But DO avoid allowing it to become a burden or time waster.

11. Don’t charge by the hour or time unit.

Seriously, not ever.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Here is the heart and basis of my proposals and consulting model. It’s simple, but it’s incredible how many people mess it up.

Conceptual agreement is based on a trusting relationship with a buyer. You must deal with an economic buyer, who can authorize payment for your value. You must have a trusting relationship or the buyer will not share what you need for a proposal: conceptual agreement.

Conceptual agreement has three elements:
1. Objectives. These are ALWAYS business outcomes, never deliverables (which are always requested by low level, non-buyers), tasks, or activities. An objective is not to “Observe your work force” but rather to “Improve productivity and accountability.”
2. Metrics. These are measures of progress and success. They must be seen in the environment, so a metric cannot be “phone representatives will feel more confident that they can handle a multiplicity of client questions.” How would you know? The indicator may be “logs show that there is a continuing reduction in calls referred to technical experts.” (A metric can be subjective if you agree on the standard: “The buyer will report that time spent on serving as ‘referee’ for the management committee has significantly declined.”)
3. Value. This comprises the real power of ROI and your fee justification. It is not merely a repetition of the objective. An objective such as “increase profits” may seem like value in and of itself, but it can also translate into other value:
• Higher dividends for investors
• Better treatment by lenders
• Higher equity for resale of business or exit strategy
• Greater philanthropy and community support
• More competitive investment in overseas growth, use of technology, etc.
You can see that 5-6 objectives, multiplied by 5-6 statements of value for each, can create a very compelling reason to make a major investment in the project.

It’s really that simple.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Leadership is a noun. Leading is a verb.

I’ve been observing, coaching, and consulting with leaders since 1972. This has occurred in large firms and small, public and private, educational institutions, charities, the military, non-profits, arts groups, and the clergy, to name the major categories. I’ve done this in 50 countries.

Great leaders can’t be idealized. They possess some traits which we might otherwise regard as inappropriate at best and offensive at worst. They tend to strive for results and not acclaim. They don’t care if people like them, they care about meeting goals. Jack Welch was effectively leading 12 separate companies as CEO of GE, from light bulbs to locomotives, and was sometimes known as “neutron Jack.” He didn’t seem to care (and while GE was a client, I didn’t observe any managers who cared). He was extraordinary.

They are in many cases quasi-narcissists. They believe they are somewhat different, marching to the beat of a distant drummer, on a road rarely traveled. They break rules, exercise power, demonstrate outrage, don’t suffer fools gladly or in any other way, and are not at all afraid to make mistakes. Steve Jobs said, okay, we’ll provide you with a free case to mitigate dropped iPhone calls, but what’s the big deal?

What, indeed?

Outstanding leaders stand their ground.

They are tough, demanding, but fair. When I worked with Roy Vagelos, CEO during the golden years at Merck (America’s Most Admired Company five years running in the annual Fortune Magazine poll), people were afraid of his temper and bluntness, but he never turned a deaf ear to a fair argument. He never asked anyone to do things he wouldn’t. He thought he was the brightest guy in the room until and unless someone proved otherwise.

They take chances and aren’t afraid. Lou Gerstner didn’t know a whole lot about IBM, but he had the skills and the nerves to turn the supertanker around in the water. Scully couldn’t do that at Apple and Gilmartin couldn’t do it at Merck.

Organizations, businesses, even governments aren’t true democracies. They often function best with a benevolent dictatorship. (Lincoln Steffens observed that if we had had good kings, we would all still be monarchists.) Lincoln and Roosevelt regularly bent the rules (e.g., one suspended habeas corpus, and the other tried to pack the Supreme Court).

They aren’t afraid to tell us what we need. Morita gave us the Walkman, great grandfather of the iPhone. Smith gave us overnight, guaranteed delivery, which experts had scoffed at.

Great leaders see themselves as different, not subject to all the normal rules and regulations (and sometimes laws of nature). They can be infuriating, They wield power disproportionately. They make demands.

But the great ones make a difference.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Nice dinner last night at Martini Beach. Crowds not as thick as last year, restaurant with open tables at 7 on a Saturday. Finished with an Opus X and chocolate covered jellies and nuts on the balcony. Maria’s seagull made another pass today at her lunch, but the anti-seagull fire drove him off. Started my morning ritual of getting coffee at 7 at the diner, then wandering over to watch the bikers, joggers, and walkers on the boardwalk (which is really asphalt), then writing, until the beach guys open with the chairs and umbrellas at 8:30, so that I can get settled right on the water. Maria usually get there in the next hour or so.

The breakers have been fabulous, but very rough, with a strong undertow, even though I’m prepared for it. Which got me to thinking, as I was trying to estimate the next wave’s cycle so as not to get clobbered (which has happened three times thus far).

A lot of consultants are stuck in the undertow. They are willing to venture out, dare the oncoming waves, enjoy the rush. But they keep getting pulled farther out because the don’t apply discretion or judgment, or even common sense. When they finally extricate themselves, they are farther down the beach, temporarily lost, and too intimidated to go out and try the waves again.

The “undertow” in this profession comprises buzzwords, fads, training people, meeting planners, human resources, academics’ books, invalid testing instruments, poor coaches, victimization mentalities, professional groups that set the wrong standards, and demanding clients. Some consultants get caught in all that undertow and find themselves either needing rescue or exhausted when they finally drag themselves back to the beach.

You can’t just dip your toe in the water. You should make waves. Just don’t let the waves make you.

Watch out for the undertow.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

If you want to be seen as a leader, as a brand, and as an object of interest, stop joining conversations.

Lead them.

Your “self-talk” needs to be manifest as interactive communications, attempts to influence and persuade, defense of your positions, and so forth. You’re not going to stand out in a crowd if you’re simply singing the same song as the other 400,000 people in the choir.

If you intend to be a thought leader, an object of interest, a center of expertise or however else you may choose to attract people to your market position and brand, then consider these dynamics:

• Is there a uniqueness you can lend to the discussion, given the economy, technology, or society?
• Is there a contrarian or non-mainstream view that will give others pause to think?
• Can you anticipate a new application or window of opportunity approaching?
• What original elements can you lend to the discussion?
• What examples can you cite in contemporary business and/or society that reinforce or refute the position?
• What metaphors or analogies will make your approach memorable and attached to you?
• Can you cite examples of having personally used, proved, disproved, or otherwise engaged in the subject matter?

For example, I feel that planning and strategy are two different pursuits, usually incorrectly interchanged and artificially combined by organizations and professionals. So I point out to people that “strategic planning” is an oxymoron, and that planning usually kills strategy (because the former starts at the present and extrapolates, and the latter paints a picture of the future and works backwards). I can cite why two airlines have shown intelligent strategies and results while the others have mostly floundered, and I use a strategy/tactics grid to help leaders understand where they are, where they should be, and what they have to do to get there.

When people talk about “team building” I point out that most organizations have committees, not teams, and they are two entirely separate species.

You get the picture. Don’t join the crowd, lead it. You neither want the beat of their drummer nor a distant drummer.

You want to set your own beat.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

The Chief Justice of Western Australia was cited here not long ago with a video link, calling for attorneys to stop charging by the time unit as unfair to the client, and not representing their own value correctly. I sent him my book, Value Based Fees, with a note. He recently returned from a trip and kindly responded.

View letter in PDF (220 KB)

Last night my wife and I were in a skybox owned by the Boston NBC affiliate watching the Red Sox play Tampa Bay. These boxes are stocked with food throughout the game, air conditioned with a wide-screen TV and leather furniture inside, and have 20 tiered seats outside, where you can take your food and watch things al fresco. We had a great view on the third base line midway to home plate.

The stadium was packed, as was the suite, and my wife’s comments (example: she found the players looked sloppy and unprofessional with their pants hanging over their shoes, and that David Ortiz looked out of shape and fat) drew astonished stares from the suite’s usual habitués.

In any case, the game was a scoreless tie in the fifth, when Boston managed to get runners on second and third with two out, and who walks to the plate but Ortiz, who’s the designated hitter (my wife is not inaccurate) and batting about .250. The crowd goes wild and Tampa Bay does what opposing teams do in trouble—they call time out, at which point the manager and every infielder converge on the mound. There are seven people there, which are six more than it takes to write Hamlet, compose music for The Lady Is A Tramp, or fly a billion dollar jet fighter.

Everyone in the ballpark knows the strategy being discussed: First base is open with two out. Throw Ortiz four awful pitches. If he swings, which he’s been known to do, fine. If he walks, who cares, because then you have a force at any base and Ortiz isn’t going to hurt you hunched over first base.

The umpire finally breaks up the convention, everyone returns to their places, and the pitcher winds up and throws the baseball. Ortiz promptly hits it 400 feet into the right field stands. The right fielder is lucky he wasn’t able to catch it, because it probably would have killed him, it was hit that hard. Red Sox 3, Tampa Bay 0 (the Sox would go on to win 8-5).

Strategy is useless without proper implementation. You can talk all day, draw fancy charts, create color-coded, 3-ring binders, invent funny acronyms, cite “vision” and “mission” and “goals” and “objectives” until the cows come home.

Nothing helps unless the people who didn’t set the strategy are able and willing to implement what the strategy requires.

That’s why consultants are even MORE valuable in assisting with implementation post-strategy, why so many strategies fail, and why anything looking out more than two years might as well be a horoscope. Make sure you include these arguments—and value—in your options and your fees.

Because no matter how good the right fielder is, he can’t catch anything screaming ten feet over his head at 100 miles an hour.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I was sitting in the truck whiling away my time as my wife shopped for flowers to plant. We have six acres, and we’re running out of planting room. But that’s another story.

It was too hot for the dogs to be with us, so I was taking in the surroundings, and became fascinated, as usual by the strange equipment and vehicles the nursery had on hand. (My son and I once laid plans to steal an asphalt reclamation machine at night and drive it for a hundred feet, and I’m constantly offering the fire chief here a chance to drive the Bentley if I can drive the pumper or aerial truck, so far to no avail.)

One of the nursery’s gorgeously gorgonesque machines was ingenious. It was a loader (technically a New Holland skid steer loader, which my technical genius team should be reproducing here somewhere) designed to operate in tiny spaces. The only way to get the front shovel to lift high enough was to put the other end of the mechanism all the way in the rear, and place the driver up front just behind the shovel! The action was right in front of the driver, but the power was way behind, with the driver in the midst of the action.

This innovative design struck me as wondrous, and I began to think of how it could be applied to my work, and what I teach, and how I coach. And then it hit me.

Many of you have trouble coordinating projects. Some of you actually tell me that you have too much work (no discretionary time, hence, no real wealth). Others have (GASP!!) turned down business.

So here’s the remedy for your healthy work loads: Work from the front. Have the client do a lot of the heavy lifting from the rear, before you even lift the shovel. In other words, set up your projects so that they are officially underway while the client sets the stage and the culture, and you don’t have to show up until much later, when your schedule permits. Examples of what the client can do early while paying you:

• Create schedules for interventions such as focus groups.
• Assemble a steering committee or stakeholder team.
• Develop documentation and historical information.
• Perform an internal survey.
• Request client’s customers’ approval of their involvement.
• Choose a pilot or starting area.
• Inform and involve key employees, management, board.
• Create liaison and involvement with unions.
• Have your subcontractors visit and observe.

After this work has begun and produced results, you can begin your direct involvement, site visits, or whatever. There’s no reason why you have to be available and on site from the time the proposal is signed.

Keep the power behind you. You do the steering.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I also use a neat trick I call “identical differences.” It involves taking two words that many people assume mean approximately the same thing and differentiating them strongly, so that the other person says, “We’ve never considered that. We need you.”

Some examples:

Teams/Committees: These are entirely different structures, with the former requiring everyone to “win or lose” and the latter providing for some to win and some to lose. You can’t engage in “team building” with a committee.

Mentor/Coach: The former is reactive and situational, the latter is proactive and comprehensive. I can mentor a consultant, but no one has created the role of a baseball mentor for the team.

Preventive/Contingent: The first reduces the likelihood of a cause, the second attempts to minimize the effects of a problem. A sprinkler system is contingent, and so is an insurance policy. The fire marshal is preventive.

Problem/Decision: A problem requires a deviation from experienced performance with an unknown cause, and sufficient concern about it. A decision is a choice among options. Two entirely different starting points.

Oral/Verbal: “Verbal” communication is the usual umbrella for these, but that embraces everything to do with words. “Verbal” doesn’t mean “oral,” and it includes writing. These are two separate skills requiring two separate forms of development.

Strategy/Planning: The former is a picture of the future to which you aspire, the latter is an extrapolation of the present. Hence, “strategic planning” is an oxymoron, and a focus on planning will kill strategy.

You get the idea. You want the buyer to stop in place and consider the fact that this is “fresh air” and a new perspective, and needs to be heard and applied.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I’ve often spoken and written about the sequence I discovered over a decade ago: language controls discussion, discussion controls relationships, and relationships control business. The problem is that so many professional services providers don’t use language well or underestimate its impact.

Here’s a specific example of just one of the techniques I coach and teach: changing content into process.

Situation: A buyer says to you, “We have four different insurance products that need promotion, but only enough staff and budget to promote two well, and we need help as to whether that should be a whole life, term, universal, or combination line.”

Don’t debate insurance products. Instead, reply, “It sounds as if you have a critical decision to make, and that will involve clear objectives, creative alternatives, and risk evaluation, as well as all appropriate stakeholders.”

What you’ve done is taken the insurance content and adjusted it to your process strength of decision making.

A buyer says: “We are seeking to improve our already strong ability to create just-in-time product response for our priority customers, especially in the home improvement division.” Your response could be: “My experience overwhelming demonstrates that ‘raising the bar’ as you’re trying to do, should involve four types of people and possibly two others, depending on your business. Would you like to discuss them in priority order?” You’ve taken a very technical delivery issue of a certain product line and changed the discussion into your process strength, consensus decision making (or project management, or whatever).

I call these devices “the martial arts of language” because they take the momentum of the discussion and allow you to alter it in the direction you need to close the business.

Never get sucked into the client’s quicksand of content. Learn to move all routes to your strengths and frame the conversation most beneficially to you. You’ll get to your destination—signed proposals—much faster.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

On May 22 I wrote here that the Australian Chief Justice had recommended that lawyers must charge for value and that hourly billing was inappropriate. I provided a video clip of his comments. At the time, I sent him a copy of Value Based Fees and congratulated him on his remarks and insights.

This morning I received the following note (I’ve removed the personal contact information) and I look forward to hearing from him:

Dear Dr Weiss

This is to acknowledge receipt and thank you for your letter and book to
the Hon Chief Justice Martin. He will be very grateful for your comments
and interest.

His Honour is currently on a court circuit in the north-west of our State
for two weeks, but will respond to you personally as soon as practicable.

Yours sincerely

Christina Curtis
Executive Assistant to the
Hon Wayne Martin
Chief Justice of Western Australia

Cognitive dissonance is a state where two conflicting ideas or experiences collide. Many people in consulting and related professional services are almost incapacitated by this phenomenon, because their frustration and stress are exponentially increased.

And I’m here to tell you why that is.

If you call yourself a “consultant” but are usually hired merely to complete a task for the client, you are not a consultant, you are a subcontractor or part-time employee. This is especially prevalent among “IT consultants.” If you are paid to write code or program some sequence simply because the client has no one around who can do it—and a thousand people like you can do it equally well and exactly the same way—you’re not a consultant. (And you’re subject to enormous price pressures, because you’re a commodity.)

Consequently, if you call yourself a consultant, but find that you can only charge a few dollars an hour, have to work at someone else’s beck and call, and have zero differentiation, you’re facing one heck of a set of conflicting ideas and experiences every waking hour. At the very least, that’s beyond depressing.

Consultants help improve the client’s condition by providing ideas, advice, intellectual property, best practices, proprietary approaches, unique behavior and other interventions which not only make them distinctly attractive, but draw people to them. Consultants are not another pair of hands. They are a new brain.

If you are hired by clients to teach courses the clients have already developed, you’re not a consultant. You are a contract trainer, simply providing help that their own training people (or lack of them) can’t handle. You are one of kibillions of people who could do that. But if you design the program, or bring unique intellectual property to it, or arrange for it to be conducted remotely, then you are a consultant, improving the client’s condition in your distinctive way.

If you contribute a chapter to a book, you are not a book author. If you create a work of 20 chapters contributed by other people you haven’t created a book, you’ve created a compilation. If you have four insurance products to sell in health, property, life, and disability coverage, you’re not an “insurance consultant,” you’re an insurance agent. We scoff at garbage collectors—who perform important work—who call themselves “sanitary engineers.” Why is that ludicrous, but a speaker with a single speech calling himself a “sales consultant” is not?

I found a teacher from nearby Warwick—on strike—in a coffee shop here once calling herself not a teacher, but a “Warwick educator.” Maybe that’s part of the problem.

I wrote an earlier piece here on the blog about not lying to me by first not lying to yourself. If you continue to call yourself one thing but act in a completely different fashion, the lie you try to maintain will cause you great stress, because the goal you seek can’t be found on the road you’re traveling.

Everyone in a bank is a vice president today. Yet most of them can’t even authorize a new set of checks, let alone find you a loan. You are not your fancy business card, no matter how many colors, photos, and cute sayings you print on it.

If you want to reduce the horrific, subliminal stress and agita caused by cognitive dissonance, change your behavior to match your objectives. You can’t call yourself a consultant and act like a hired hand without doing damage to your ego.

You don’t follow your dream by following all the people in front of you and lying to yourself that somehow you’re really different. Move out of the crowd and actually be different.

Try this: Print a business card with just your name and contact information. When someone asks, “Who are you with and what do you do?” tell them, “I’m with me, and I help you.”

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

• Failing to return a legitimate email request within a day. NO ONE is so busy that they can’t return email messages in a day, unless you are allowing all kinds of spam to intrude or are spending all your time on “social medial platforms.”

• Neglecting to establish a future time and date certain. “Let’s make it Tuesday at three, I’ll call you on your private line,” is not a hard language to learn, like Mandarin or Tagalog. Throwing away momentum with “Let’s talk again soon,” or “I’ll wait to hear from you” is simply slovenly.

• Dealing with people who are easy to see but can’t buy, and rationalizing why it’s okay to do that. Virtually no one in training or HR can approve a major project. At best, they have limited “event” budgets or are intermediaries. And they tend to be rude and obnoxious, which is why they’re in HR.

• Consistently making grammatical and punctuation mistakes that reveal the writer is an amateur. In modern printing, only one space is skipped between sentences, not two (which is a throwback to typewriter days). Commas and periods go within quotation marks at the end of the sentence, no exceptions. If you can’t learn to correct poor writing at your age, why should anyone expect you can consult well?

• Procrastination, especially with prospects. There is not reason in the world—no reason—why you can’t turn around a proposal after a meeting within 48 hours.

• A pecuniary mental set, that impels one to use mail instead of Fedex, a raspy old phone instead of a modern model, and to question whether it’s worth spending money to travel to see a legitimate buyer. No one ever made a million in revenue by cutting costs, and you can take THAT to the bank!

• Hanging out with blowhards and bloviators. The people giving the loudest, most inflexible, most complex advice are almost always people who aren’t successful but just claim to be. (Hint: Take a look at their clothing. The sign of a successful person is expensive, well-tailored casual clothes and accessories.)

• CFO: Creating False Overhead. Unless you are running a several million dollar practice, you don’t need a virtual assistant, advisory board, full-time bookkeeper, sales and marketing assistant, or general factotum. Having a staff doesn’t create a consulting practice. It creates a welfare state.

• Spending more than 30 minutes a day on social media sites. I don’t care about those people who claim they landed a $50,000 “deal” on Plexico or Faceup, and I care much less about the “marketing experts” whose source of income is, gee, telling you how to market on social media. (But what have they DONE?). If you’re selling to a corporate buyer you are not going to make a living doing so on Chainedin, but you will be able to spend a lot of time there avoiding things like networking at events, publishing in the trade press, and speaking at conferences.

• Being afraid to ask for repeat business, referrals, references, and testimonials. If you’re working with a true buyer and doing good work, and you’ve prepared that buyer, there’s no reason in the world not to ask for that person’s continuing good will. In our business, that good will is best expressed through referrals (ever send someone to your doctor or accountant?). If you don’t ask, you seldom get. (Or at least you miss out on a lot you should have received.)

• Not establishing a support system. Your spouse, significant other, extended family, close colleagues, friends, or whomever should be assembled into a support unit, so that you know when you’ve done well, you receive candid, solicited feedback when you could have done better, and you have people with whom you can commiserate. Otherwise, unsolicited (usually worthless) feedback will have far too great an influence on you.

• Carrying around too much of others’ baggage and not creating your own. Consultants often have strikingly low self-worth. You can’t live without baggage (we all need clothes and “stuff”) but it should be baggage you create with clothes that fit you today and stuff you can really use tomorrow. I’m weary of consultants lamenting, “Why should they listen to ME?” If you feel that way, then I don’t know why they should listen to you, because I’m getting tired of listening to you. If you don’t think you’re good and act that way, why would I ever be interested in hiring you? The first sale is to yourself. If you can’t make that one, you’re in the wrong business.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I’m hosting the latest Mentor Hall of Fame Meeting at The Palace hotel on Madison Avenue in New York. We had a few hours of free time yesterday afternoon, and my wife said, “Do you need to buy anything while we’re here?”

“Summer shirts,” I suggested, and we agreed to visit Saks, the huge department store, which is less than a block from the hotel.

We selected a few things on the seventh floor, agreed to split up and then meet on the sixth floor, which has a great layout. You can walk around in a huge circle with a dozen designer collections occupying the circumference. If you see something you like, you can wander farther into the displays. I love the concept, and since I saw only two other customers the entire time, it was a leisurely stroll.

I was carrying a Saks shopping bag filled with those other purchases, which tells you I’m a buyer. I was dressed well and any salesman (they were all male) in the business could tell that I could buy whatever I wished to.

YET NO ONE APPROACHED ME! In an empty store, with people working on commission, I was ignored. Some refused to establish eye contact. Others, talking to each other leaning against display cases, never stopped their chat.

Three-quarters of the way around my circuit, I passed Brioni, and a young man said, “Hello, can I be of help?” I put my bag down, told him what I wanted, and he told me to wait there while he rounded up some shirts from Brioni and Zegna down the hall. At this point my wife arrived, I tried on his suggestions, and all but one—which we both loved—fit.

“Can we order this in his size?” the salesman asked an older colleague standing around. “No, Brioni won’t send more,” he said dismissing us.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped him, “don’t you have other Saks stores that may still have some of these?” My salesman said, “That’s a good idea, let me check the computer.” The older guy just stared at me, as if I were ruining a nice day in the park.

My salesman arranged for that shirt to be shipped directly to me from another store, packed up the others, gave us his card and told us to call him when we needed anything else.

I will.

People ask me where I get my material as a writer and as a consultant. It’s all around us. How would you like to be the men’s department manager, or the general manager, or the product managers for any of those other designers at Saks? Do you think they need to shop their own business on a regular basis? Do you think they need to throw some of that excess overhead out of there and get some people who really want to work on behalf of the organization and themselves?

This is why some shine and some don’t, in business and in life. If you can’t look a customer in the eye and proactively try to help, you’re not going to be successful.

In fact, you may just lose your shirt.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We’re starting to hear of the outrage of people trapped in Europe or unable to get to Europe due to this unpronounceable Icelandic volcano. And, of course, many are searching for scapegoats.

The Airlines want the European Union to bail them out, because the EU decided there was too much danger to airplanes and passengers. As far as I can see, that was a pretty accurate determination. (A jet fighter launched to test conditions came back looking somewhat worse for the wear.)

Travelers are upset with airlines, hotels, travel agents, local authorities, and just about anyone else who wanders into view. I don’t make light of the lost money, lost opportunities, and lost time. I’ve been marooned and ignored globally in my career.

But this is a volcanic eruption. No one in Iceland caused this, unless someone offended the geologic gods, and no on in business and industry spends much energy planning for a northern European volcano that suddenly blows its top and blankets major airports

Recently Rhode Island experienced historic flooding, the worst in its recorded history. A great many people have experienced tremendous hardship, and even those with flood insurance quickly were apprised that it covers structural damage only, not possessions. Emergency services worked very well, but damns, levees, and drainage structures were overwhelmed. No one built them for floods of this proportion, because the probability doesn’t justify the investment.

As far as I know, no one was killed as a direct result of the volcano’s action. There was more than sufficient reason to decide not to fly through rocks that not too long before were lodged under a glacier. There is no legitimate reason to expect that the travel industry prepare for 100,000 flights being cancelled over the course of a week. And it’s bizarre to expect the government to bail you out when its primary responsibility is public safety.

I’ve done a great deal of strategy work, and I don’t recall ever sitting around with executives saying, “What can we anticipate that’s unanticipated?” or “How much should we invest in protecting ourselves from 10,000 to 1 shots?”

Sometimes, stuff just happens. Spend your energy recovering, not blaming. The former puts you in control, the latter makes you a victim of something uncontrollable blowing its top.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

If you’re new to consulting, don’t worry, just read on. If you’re a veteran, don’t worry, just read on.

1. Never assume the client is damaged unless you receive evidence—observed behavior—to the contrary.
2. Be diagnostic in your marketing and early discussions, but prescriptive in your implementation and execution.
3. The quicker the client is improved, the more valuable you are and the better the client is served. Just because there’s a tool in your kit doesn’t mean you have to use it.
4. People change most readily when you focus on how their self-interest will be improved, not why it’s good for you or others.
5. People become engaged in change when you offer them options for moving forward, not a “take it or leave it.”
6. There is seldom only one good way to do things. However, the easiest and most direct approaches (Occam’s Razor) are generally the best.
7. Never drift away from the buyer. While you will probably develop other relationships, always maintain the engagement relationship with the buyer and debrief regularly.
8. Use technology, client resources, and subcontractors to reduce your labor intensity.
9. When you hit inevitable obstacles, don’t hesitate to use the buyer’s clout to blast them out of the way.
10. You are neither there to be liked nor to make friends. You are there to improve the client’s condition.
11. Raising the bar and elevating standards are far more valuable than simply fixing problems and restoring prior performance levels.
12. Remember that success trumps perfection in every hand of every game.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Here is the thinking of the third Shameless Promotion Workshop (Bart Sayle, Victoria Labalme, Andrew Hollo, Alex Goldfayn, representing the US, UK, and Australia) on the manifestations of REAL thought leadership in consulting:

• You are able to change others’ perspectives.
• People turn to you first as THE authority.
• You are constantly teaching others, formally and informally.
• You coin phrases, metaphors, concepts, and models which others quickly embrace.
• You are quoted and cited often in the media and by distinguished others in the profession.
• You make the complex simple and pragmatic (instantiation).
• You make the explicit implicit, and the implicit explicit. (Create general standards but also enable individuals to use them intuitively.)
• You are known by every knowledgeable person in your field or niche, whether they agree with you or not.
• You have proprietary materials, trademarks, and brands, the strongest of which is your name.
• You have an impressive array of clients, examples, applications, war stories, and a substantial track record of success.
• You regularly generate new intellectual capital which you turn into intellectual property.
• You are in the public eye.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

This list compiled mid-course by Sally Wright and Andrew Hollo:

* A day of group work with Alan is worth weeks or months of struggle by yourself.
* Laughter increases learning.
* Everyone else has self esteem issues, too.
* Practice, practice, practice talking to EBs with your mirror, your dog, your spouse, your friends.
* Speak anytime and anywhere on your value proposition–it gives you practice, publicity, and experience.
* A group of motivated consultants facilitated by Alan creates an incredibly powerful synergy.
* If you are seen as a peer of human resources, you will never be seen as a peer of CEOs.
* If you haven’t gotten a hit on your last 4 proposals, don’t say “I’m not cut out for this business.” Say “I must be doing
something wrong.” And get help.
* You truly do create your own perceptions. Get the baggage off the train.
* Know where the conversation is going before you start it.
* People in the Mentor Program who are the most successful share four commonalities:
a) they are non-defensive
B) they have highly developed senses of humor (laughter increases endorphins)
c) they participate in many of Alan’s activities and have a commitment to lifelong learning.
d) they have no fear of failure—and they’ve LEARNED to be that way.
*Value is ‘how the client is improved’; Brand is ‘what I offer’
* Practice talking about what I do, at the drop of a hat, in a dramatic fashion
* Redefine every corporate objective as a personal objective
* Deliberately abandon old business
* “Be diagnostic in my marketing; prescriptive in my delivery” – in other words, use models / concepts to help clients diagnose their problems BEFORE I make the sale, then prescribe solutions, don’t let them tell me what they need.
* “Build on success; don’t correct weaknesses” – basically, this is Alan’s unwavering philosophy, asking “What just worked? I gotta do more of that!” in a 100% rigorous way. Coupled with this is, “I’m totally unafraid of failure; I don’t experience doubt. Ever. It doesn’t mean I don’t get things wrong; I just do them differently next time”. It’s the purest manifestation of the philosophy of abundance.
* “Unbundle” – rather than offer ‘strategic planning’ I can split what I do into at least 12 different products which I can combine into different options. This means that Option A is affordable but not labour intensive; while Option C may be more labour intensive but very lucrative.
* “Spend 50% of your time marketing” – this means transfer work to the client, subcontract anything that’s not relationship bound, and streamline delivery by only telling clients what they need to know, not what I think they need to know.
* Language controls the discussion. The discussion controls the relationship.
* Be flexible enough to match your social style with the style of the buyer
* Models add enormous value because they engage the buyer in the prescription. You can draw a quick model and then ask the buyer where he thinks his organization is.
* The first sale is to yourself. Get this in your bones.

A famous scientific experiment put honeybees and houseflies in a milk bottle, with the closed end toward a window. The expectation was that since honeybees are known to be far smarter than houseflies, they would more quickly exit.

However, the “smarter” honeybees thronged toward the light, and all eventually perished in the closed end of the bottle. The “less smart” houseflies flew random patterns until every one eventually escaped out the open end of the bottle.

Sometimes, harder work, whether physical or mental, is not the answer. The answer is in an entirely new direction.

I reinvent myself every few years, and I follow the 3M Company’s famous mandate about X% of current revenues coming from products not being produced five years ago. (About 75% of my income last year came from products and services not available even three years prior.) I advocate that all professional services providers similarly reinvent themselves and not allow the market, the competition, or technology to reinvent them.

Hard work: laudable. Working smart: valuable. Setting independent, new directions that constantly put you ahead of the pack: priceless.

Straighten up and fly right.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

When you are talking to a gatekeeper, human resources person, or anyone on a “fishing trip,” refuse to share your approaches, fees, or (heaven forfend) to send a proposal.

Instead, say this: “In order to evaluate whether I’m right for you and you’re right for me, I have to meet the person with the fiduciary responsibility for this project. I must hear from his or her lips what is expected, what will constitute success, and how much they intend to personally participate. I’m happy to spend the time and money to visit you, but I must meet with that person. Frankly, I believe that any consultant who submits fees or a proposal without engaging in that discussion with the decision maker is acting unethically, and I’m surprised that you would consider them for such a project.”

Courage.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I was conducting a workshop recently and the hotel meeting director, who knows me, learned it was my birthday, so she arranged for a cake during the afternoon break. I thanked her, and told her I am 64.

“You don’t look it,” she said tactfully.

“Well, who ever thought I’d be singing that song?”

“What song?”

“When I’m Sixty-Four.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“It was the one by The Beatles.”

“Who are The Beatles?”

With that the room stopped, and everyone stared. Our very competent, charming, and energetic meeting director is 25 years old, and doesn’t know anything about the Beatles. (When her boss came by, only slightly older, she was able to name two of The Beatles and cite about six words to one of their songs.)

My message to you is that we are dealing with demographics with starkly different reference points from our own (and so are our client executives). They don’t know what life is like without texting or cable or Wikipedia, and they view Kennedy’s death in the same way they view Lincoln’s death—distant and remote events in dusty history books. The take the net for granted the way we take electricity for granted.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming everyone has the same contextual connections and reference points that you do. Take pains to ensure that you’re reaching out in relevant, contemporary terms. There are bright, talented people in organizations and entering organizations every day whose greatest influences are in many cases alien to senior management.

Icons only exist over centuries when they are carved into marble. Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles—you can’t rely on any reference point without testing. I notice that I don’t recognize and couldn’t identify about a third of the presenters on major awards shows. Apparently, others can.

We need to be sure the proper translations are in place.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We are all generally aware of the benefits of maintaining a health regimen. Some of us are more faithful than others, and it’s not an easy thing. I’m about to head for my personal trainer, and I’m less than excited by the prospect. (When I see people running vigorously down the road, I usually wonder who’s chasing them.)

Nevertheless, we need equivalent mental workouts. We need to stretch, increase our strength, build our stamina, and try to ensure that we’re in better shape than the week prior.

But too many solo practitioners fall prey to one of the worst downsides of being independent—they don’t talk to anyone but themselves. They get better and better at what they’re already good at (before my personal trainer, I used to do the same exercises at the same weights that I had already mastered and could easily complete). The books on the shelves are old, the methodology is writ in stone, the clients have become few and long-term, and the approaches are no longer contemporary.

We all need to work out mentally. We need to debate our approaches, learn what others are doing, be willing to consider changes to our regimen. Are we providing what’s best for our clients or “merely” what we’re already good at?

I’m constantly surprised by how stupid I was two weeks ago.

I try to engage every day. I’ve formed and am a member of a dozen or more communities. I teach and mentor and coach—activities which demand you stay on top of your craft and not only learn of, but contribute to, the state-of-the-art.

If you’re not stronger and don’t have more stamina than six months ago, your health regimen isn’t working too well. If you’re not smarter and able to provide more value than six months ago, your mental regimen isn’t working too well.

Maybe it’s time to get some guidance and lift some intellectual weight.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We were waiting in the United Airlines Red Carpet Club for our flight to Hawaii from San Francisco. A woman in ragged jeans and unkempt hair took a seat across from us.

Promptly, she fished her cell phone out of her bag and began a conversation with some unknown sponge, because she never stopped talking and complaining, indicating to me that the other person never spoke, but just absorbed. Her harangue was about her failure to be upgraded to first class.

She bemoaned the fact that there were no first class seats available for upgrade. She told the voiceless person on the other end that she alternatively believed that she was lied to, there weren’t enough seats allocated for upgrades, others of lesser status were getting upgrades (Y2K, one-world, seven star, diamond, elite, alliance partners—or something), and that the system was totally unfair.

It turned out that first class was, indeed full (“completely checked in,” as they say on the gate monitor), and, once seated, we saw her trudge by us on her way to the back, apparently eyeing the up-front crowd to try to determine which of her inferiors usurped her spot on the five-hour flight. I tried desperately to establish eye contact, but she had gone on to glower at a flight attendant.

If you want to be assured of a first class seat, buy a first class ticket.

Periodically, Business Week or the Wall Street Journal will run a fluff piece about someone who “plays the system,” gathering points from hotel stays, oil changes, and pay-per-view, as well as “chatting up” gate attendants, flight attendants, and rest room attendants, in order to secure upgrades with amazing rates of success.

It always occurred to me that if they had put the same amount of drive, energy, and talent into their own work, they probably would be successful enough to actually afford first class seats. But they’d rather play the system, to the extent they resent it if people paying full fare monopolize their monopoly game.

You and I have seen myriad people who seek recognition without merit; who want promotion without talent; who seek money without providing value; who want to be respected without expertise. They are usually of the mind of the woman on my flight, and sing a victim’s lament when they wind up in the rear, as well.

None of use deserves what we don’t earn. Oh yes, I know that frequenting an airline, flying a lot of miles, gathering points—all of that—makes one a good customer. But if someone is willing to pay more for a first class seat, then they deserve it. (I once watched a late arrival with a first class ticket find an upgrade in his assigned place, who had sweet-talked the gate agent to give him the seat, refusing to budge. What’s next, first one to the bank gets all the money, and it doesn’t matter who deposited it?)

If you’re in business, you reap what you sow, no free rides, no free lunches. You can’t get away with telling the customers to keep coming merely because you’ve been there a long time. Nor can you expect people to choose you over the competition because you open 20 minutes earlier or provide free bottles of water. You have to provide real value to beat the competition.

If you want to be assured of business, then provide more value than the competitors, don’t whine about unfairness in the “system.”

I can also remember when airline clubs were by invitation only, you had to dress properly, and the amenities were superb. But someone filed a lawsuit because he felt that he “deserved” access just as much as those people whom the airline considered its best passengers, and now you’re entertained in these clubs by people in shorts cutting their toenails with their feet on the tables, and the places are jammed. But don’t get me started on that.

If you want to ensure your success, focus on and work at providing more value than anyone else in your field. If you want to ensure your place in first class, then invest in a first class ticket. Otherwise, there’s no logical reason for you to be in front.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I hear a lot of consultants asking themselves (and me!), “What really happened in there?” It’s as if they had an experience in someone’s office, but are fairly certain their perceptions don’t reflect reality.

I have news for you: There is no utter reality, no file under “What actually occurred,” no third party umpiring the game (and, of course, umpires are notoriously subjective in the way they call balls and strikes). There are only your perceptions and the other people’s perceptions.

So how do you know if they match or not? Because, if they do, then you can be certain you’re dealing with reality, since you have a shared, common perception of what occurred. There is no other version.

You need to test before you leave. You must investigate whether what you perceive is the same as what the prospect or client perceived. Here are some excellent testing questions:

• Are we in agreement that I’m responsible for X and you’re responsible for Y?
• What is your impression of our next steps?
• What are the opportunities you see as we conclude this meeting?
• What are the risks you see as we conclude this meeting?
• What remaining obstacles are there that we’ve discussed or haven’t discussed?
• Who else are we going to involve from here?
• What are the deadlines we’ve agreed upon?
• What are the three or four top priorities at this juncture?
• What resources are we missing?
• How are we judging progress from here?
• What are the ultimate outcomes we’re agreeing on?
• The next time we talk will be on this date at that time, correct?

You get the idea. You don’t need a bare light bulb and uncomfortable wooden chair for the interrogation, but you do need to ensure that, before you go out the door, you and the others present agree on these kinds of basic facts. “We’ll talk soon,” and “We have some terrific opportunities,” and “There could be some rough patches,” just don’t cut it. Even statements such as “I’m pleased,” and “This has been a good meeting, good progress,” may mean different things to different people (“better than I had hoped for,” or “but not as good as I expected”).

When a client doesn’t follow through, or you don’t get paid as expected, or you’re not supported as you had intended to be, it’s often not a case of the other person letting you down. It’s frequently a result of your not taking the extra time to make sure that you shared the same reality.

Perception, we’re told is reality. Well, then the converse must be true: Reality is perception. Don’t you agree?

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Here are some marketing indicators that you might take to be highly favorable, but in fact are not very promising:

• The buyer says very quickly in the initial conversation, “Sounds interesting, can you send a proposal?” (If you don’t have a trusting relationship and conceptual agreement, the buyer is just showing you the door, with false hopes.)
• The person you believe is the buyer says, “This is just what I wanted, let me take it to the board to be rubber stamped.” (This is NOT a buyer.)
• You’re told, “Normally, we can’t afford any initiative right now, but if you could do this for just a token fee, it would get you in the door when times are better.” (Are they paying the utility company, their employees, the clean-up crew? Why can’t they pay you?)
• The audience gives you solid top marks on the dumb smile sheets after your speech, but the buyer never calls you again. (You pleased the wrong people, stroked the wrong ego.)
• Someone tells you they “mention you to everyone they meet.” (The problem is that none of those people are buyers, and/or what’s being mentioned isn’t accurate.)
• You’re getting thousands of “hits” on your web site or blog, or your teleconference has 100 people signed, or your newsletter has 50 new subscriptions. (This is not a “numbers game,” but a quality game. You’re better off with 2 of the right “hits” than 200 of the wrong ones. Look at quality, not merely quantity.)
• You’re told that your proposal is the top priority for the next fiscal period. (If it’s so important, why can’t they start it now?)
• The buyer very much wants to follow-up, but is traveling or “out of the office,” or “with customers.” (The buyer doesn’t know how to use a phone or email?)
• Everyone tells you that you have great ideas and a wonderful approach. (Then why aren’t people buying??)

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

ALAN’S TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS FOR CONSULTANTS
By Alan Weiss
(with apologies to everyone from the 16th Century and prior)

On the first day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
A large dose of self-esteem.

On the second day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the third day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the fourth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the fifth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the sixth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the seventh day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the eighth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the ninth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the tenth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing
Eight speaking requests
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the eleventh day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Eleven innovations,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My efforts brought to me,
Twelve vacation days,
Eleven innovations,
Ten agents calling,
Nine columns printing,
Eight speaking requests,
Seven leads a-calling,
Six clients buying,
Five inspirations,
Four great referrals,
Three great colleagues,
Two new ideas,
And a large dose of self-esteem.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Dear Mr. President:

You had requested an executive summary of my analysis of your current ability to influence and create constructive change. I’ve listed the points in no particular order, since they are all important. Sorry we couldn’t meet as planned, but I’m sensitive to the rigor of your schedule.

1. Ironically, perhaps, Americans crave an imperial Presidency. It’s one of the primary reasons that Jimmy Carter served only one term (he wanted to dispense with his limo and stop at red lights, for example). You’re on television too much. You ought to wear a suit and tie more often. No one needs to see you playing basketball all the time. We’ll take your word that you have a good jump shot. Start acting like the leader of the most powerful and freedom-loving country in the history of the world. Americans don’t need another friend, they need a strong leader, and they are looking to you to fill that role. (Note to staff: If unrequited love is deemed essential, elevate executive director of the American Kennel Club to cabinet level.)

2. Stop apologizing. Stop the perception of apologizing. People would rather have your wife place her hands on the arm of the Queen of England than see you bow to an Arab prince or a Japanese Emperor. The United States flag is never, ever dipped or lowered in salute to anyone, anywhere. Take your lead from that protocol. We’ve made mistakes, so has everyone else. We learn better than most, and constantly try to improve. Our country may operate first and foremost in its own self-interest. There is nothing in the Constitution about having to dazzle the Europeans.

3. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. What’s really important? You’re advocating a supposedly historic health care overhaul, but also dashing off to Copenhagen to try for an Olympic decision (that ultimately didn’t even have the U.S. in contention and provided a slap in the face). Why are you interfering with an overzealous cop and a curmudgeonly professor? Let them work it out. You’re not a community organizer any more. Trigger mechanism: Wherever American lives are being lost or are endangered, that’s a priority.

4. When you do communicate, you must provide a higher level of emotional investment. Pretend it’s a basketball game, and you were just fouled but the ref didn’t call it. You create tight intellectual arguments that don’t admit any passion. Logic makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Those folks showing up at town meetings to protest proposed health care changes weren’t organized by the enemy. They were people driven to a high emotional pitch by issues urgent to them. You need commitment, not compliance. You need to recapture the fervor of your campaign while leading.

5. Stop starting sentences with “Look!” It’s condescending and perceived as implying that the listener isn’t paying attention. You keep repeating, “Let me be clear….” You need to be saying, “Let me be specific….” Then people will look. And listen.

6. You must be politically effective, not politically correct, which are often antipodal. A “holiday tree” without religious connotation probably manages to offend most people and cause the rest to believe you’re afraid of offending anyone. You did attend church regularly yourself (remember the Reverend Wright debacle). Christmas is not originally a secular holiday, no matter what historical revisionists say. Either celebrate it or not, but stop trying to please everyone. Incredibly, you seem to lose sight of the historical fact of your election, and often revert to campaigning. Use the fervor of running, but the power of your office.

7. The honeymoon is over, the positive ratings are down, so you have to create a more professional appearance for your administration. That scary jet flyover in New York, the crashers at the state dinner, the complaints about no women in your “insiders” fun and games—the appearance is of amateurism, a meeting of a Toastmasters chapter instead of the Harvard Business School. We have a consulting term for this: taking names and kicking ass.

In summary, you need to reduce your exposure but increase the passion of those appeals you do choose to make, based on clear priorities. Don’t be arrogant in representing us, but do exhibit pride in our accomplishments. It’s time to take accountability as a leader. In the Civil War, the highest proportional mortality of any officer was at Brigadier General level (impossible today) because that officer got on a horse in full view and said to his brigade, “Follow me!” as he galloped off to the enemy lines. Those generals showed great courage which engendered loyal troops.

You need to get back on that horse, Mr. President, and people will follow. We want you to succeed because we want to succeed.

My invoice is in the mail, per our agreement. I’ve waived the expenses, since I simply took the Acela and greatly enjoyed having my picture taken at the dinner with Joe Biden and Michaele Salahi. (However, I thought the chicken was a tad dry.)

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Chronic bad habits:

• Assuming the client himself or herself is the cause of the problem. They were smart enough to hire you, and even good people need help. Never assume your client is damaged unless you see evidence (e.g., they yell at subordinates, badmouth colleagues publicly, etc.).

• Allowing yourself to be ushered out of the office. If the buyer asks for a proposal, for example, prior to a thorough discussion or conceptual agreement, then you’re just pursuing a treat thrown on the floor as if you were a dog. By the time you pick it up, the door has been closed.

• Believing non-original sources. Just because someone says something at a meeting, from the stage, in a loud voice, or with authoritative inflection, doesn’t make it true. Nor does a listing in Wikipedia. Find the original source, especially if you’re going to use the information with a client, as part of your intellectual property, or in writing.

• Telling people everything you know instead of what they need to know. Very few people are as boring as those in prolix discussion of their methodology and exploits. Generally, a “yes or no” question requires a one syllable response.

• Using false pretenses. Don’t tell a buyer you want to “interview” him or her when the intent is really trying to meet them. Don’t approach someone for “help” with the intent of trying to sell them something. (A woman recently asked me how she could best be helped by me. I told her to join my Mentor Program. She responded, unbelievably, that she should be my “life coach” in barter.)

• Going into a meeting without clear expectations. How do you know how successful you are without a calibration against your minimum and maximum (min/max) expectations?

• Failing to provide options and putting the prospect in a “take it or leave it” position. Even for something as minor as the next meeting date or phone call, always provide options to maximize receptivity and responsiveness.

• Lying to yourself and expecting others to believe it! If you’re done pro bono work, that’s not a paying client. If you self-published a book, that’s not a commercially published book. If you introduced as speaker, that’s not a speaking assignment.

Walking across thin ice is dangerous. Carrying a flame thrower while you do so is perilous. Turning the thing on and pointing it at your feet is just crazy.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

At the Million Dollar Club’s meeting in St. Lucia we all present our visions of near-term trends in business and services. I’ll share one of mine here.

Just-in-Time mindsets have been applied to save huge amounts of manufacturing costs, inventory expense, and labor time. The same philosophy is being used for knowledge (Just in Time Knowledge: JITK) when you quickly use Google while writing an article or apply a macro to a common document.

It strikes me that social media platforms often provide the same utility, spreading word of a developing events on a wide basis, or keeping a colleague informed of unfolding issues on a personal level. (I also believe that the future shakeouts of these platforms will result in specialist uses that permit JITK more expeditiously.)

The iPhone is a splendid example of a multitude of ways to acquire JITK with 75,000 apps, many of which are designed for that very purpose. Many of you are reading this on computers with a “help” menu readily available at the top of the screen.

The trend I see is an increasing need to make explicit knowledge implicit, and implicit knowledge explicit. That is, what is available in a manual or tutorial must be rapidly accessible and immediately applicable by an individual when that knowledge is needed; and conversely, the stuff inside my head which I’ve learned on the job and through experience must be institutionalized, so that everyone else can take advantage of my best practices, and I theirs. (If you’re interested, there is a tough-to-read but fascinating book called The Knowledge Creating Company by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi from quite a few years ago.)

As consultants, we can provide huge value in helping clients to employ modern technology, incentives (people have to volunteer their implicit knowledge in most cases), and processes to maximize these transfusions. The more employees do not have to reinvent the wheel, labor through instructions meant to cover every contingency (ever go to a technical company’s “help” page?!), and tediously teach everyone everything they know, the more effective and efficient the operation.

Think about helping this cross-pollination, no matter what kind of consulting or coaching you engage in. Rapid response and the elimination of failure and repetitive work are extraordinarily valuable in virtually every business and non-profit. You can add value to your services by ensuring that accessible knowledge from both the organization and the individual is in the right place at the right time.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

St. Lucia: We had a fascinating discussion today that revolved around the “wholesale” and “retail” nature of consulting. In brief, the wholesale application is to organizational entities, and the retail to individuals. Many consultants (and speakers, coaches, and so on) can address the needs of both constituencies. That diversification can be critical. For example, in tough times, the individual development (retail) area grows very strong. I’ve been constantly amazed at how much of my organizational development background can be applied to individual mentoring and coaching. It’s an interesting approach to maximizing the value you can bring to the marketplace in any economy.

Thanks to my Million Dollar Club buddies: Mark Smith, Molly Smith, Chad Barr, Rob Nixon, Guido Quelle, Suzanne Bates, Michael Sheargold, Andrew Sobel, and all of our terrific partners who are with us here.

My wife and I had to pick up our truck, which had been “naked” without radar and laser detection, so we decided to go hunt out a mini-fridge so long as we had the cargo capability with us. The fridge in our bedroom was starting to go after ten years.

The two of us pulled into an appliance place at 6:30, the only two vehicles in the lot. The store, as big as half a football field, is deserted, with salesmen waiting in line for the next customer, as is the protocol. Promptly, a 30-something man with a tie but no jacket politely welcomes us and asks how he can help. Four other salesmen and two cashiers are standing around watching.

My wife explains our needs and he swiftly escorts us to the small refrigerators. There must be a dozen. I will pause here, for these are mere simulacrums.

All of you consultants out there: What would a customer want to know about mini-fridges? Only three things, really: size, capacity, and price. I’ve piloted a half-dozen planes without a pilot’s license, because you only need to know three things: altitude, speed, and horizon. I’ve flown bombers, the Goodyear Blimp, trainers, you name it. A mini-fridge is no different. Back to my story.

Not one fridge has the capacity or size on it. We can look at and guess the capacity, but it’s tough to judge exact size so, what would a customer want to do? Those of you who said, “measure it,” are still in the running for our big prize. And you know what is about to happen.

No ruler, no tape, no yardstick, nothing. So, our salesmen enlists his colleagues (who are not occupied anyway) and it takes ten minutes to turn up a tape measure! My wife says to me that this is ridiculous but I tell her, “Are you crazy? This is going to be a great story!” (Mid-story lesson: This happens to you every day, are you capturing it for your speeches and/or articles?)

All of the mini-fridges are a couple of inches too big for the furniture in which we must install it. We depart and head for Ward’s Public House, where they have the world’s best stuffies (stuffed quahogs, for the gastronomically-challenged), a great burger, fries, and Johnny Walker black (you don’t drink martinis with quahogs and burgers). Anyway, we decide over this feast that we will check the Internet.

At home we actually put into Google “mini-refrigerators” and are quickly exposed to about 700. We narrow it down, find the capacity, size, color and manufacturer that seem to make sense, eliminate one finalist when the online reviews are unanimous in having received damaged models, and make a choice. Amazingly, the choice turns out to be on Amazon, which we order with “one click” without even inputting our names or credit card. We quickly received a confirmation with delivery date estimation and a number to call should we have questions or problems.

Now, herein lies my moral tale.

If you want to compete at the local level, make use of your unique qualities: touch and feel the merchandise, provide immediate gratification in taking home the purchase on the spot, supply a face and means to return anything that doesn’t measure up, be prompt and efficient, and so forth. When it’s easier to buy something on line that you made an effort to purchase locally, you might as well get out of the business.

At that store, the numbers should have been on the product, and the salesman should have said, “We can order different sizes from the catalog right here, let me suggest some alternatives.” All of those manufacturers made different sizes.

Consulting isn’t difficult. I can improve almost any organization having been in it for less than an hour. It doesn’t require complex methodology, or a series of steps, or (heaven forfend) a needs analysis. It requires common sense, and these questions: What does your customer need? How can I most valuably provide it the first time?

You may be thinking this is easy. You’re right. That doesn’t make it any less valuable.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I’m waiting in line at the bank. There’s only one person in line ahead of me, and four tellers.

However.

One teller is occupied by a man who is a small business owner doing a transaction, and claiming he did not get enough money back. A second teller is called over to review the situation, while the first one just watches. A third teller puts the “next window, please” sign up while she tends to the obscure paperwork that persists in a computerized world of electronic banking. That leaves the fourth teller, who is taking care of someone who is in training to run with the glaciers.

I say to the person ahead of me: “Down to one teller.”

Her: “Well, I’m not in a hurry, and it’s good to just relax. They’ll get to us when they can.”

Me: “That’s a nice, peaceful attitude, except if you are in a hurry, since some people have schedules.”

Her: “You have to expect these things.”

Me: “You have to expect two tellers to tend to one person and another to close her window while there are people in line?” (More people have now formed a queue behind me.)

Her: “I’m sure there is a good reason for it. You can’t always be efficient.”

Me: “There is every reason to be efficient whenever you can with customers in line who could take their business down the street to three other banks. Isn’t this about customer service?”

Her: “I’ve spent 20 years in retail, and I know that things just happen and the customer has to wait until you’re done.”

Me: “If that’s your attitude, I’m glad you didn’t work 20 years for me in a store that I owned!”

Her: “You can’t understand these transactions unless you’ve been in the position. I’m well versed in retail from the inside, and I know the priorities.”

Me: “Did I mention I’m a consultant? I believe I outrank you.”

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Umwelt (oom-velt) refers to an organism’s self-life. It’s the opposite of anthropomorphism, in that we try to understand an animal’s personal point of view, rather than assigning it human points of view. Or as John Muir once explained, when asked why something as dreadful as poison ivy was even created, “Perhaps it was made for itself.” (Alexandra Horowitz talks about this brilliantly in her new book, Inside Of A Dog.

There is an umwelt in our business and social dealings which, if understood, can lead to far greater success. We tend to assign our own traits, preferences, and proclivities to those around us, and this tendency is not very successful. Sometimes called “projection,” we assign positives and negatives to others based on our own experiences and traits.

For example, if I had a hard time learning to ski and you told me you were about to take lessons, I might recommend that you never descend on a black diamond hill, because I still can’t do it and they are not for the average skier. One of my purposes in this remark is to maintain my self-identity, since if you immediately took to black diamonds like an Alpine native I might believe that I’m simply not that adept a skier (which I’m actually not). The same applies to college courses, food choices, and dating conundrums.

Personal goals are more valuable than common features and benefits

In marketing—and in merely influencing others—it’s better to investigate the umwelt. The buyer, or receiver, or important other may not respond to the same stimuli, motivators, or comforts that you do. The problem with most “features and benefits” sales approaches is that they are immersed in a commodity mindset—what one person finds attractive will surely strike others the same way. That’s blatantly false, which is why we have both Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbuck’s, and PCs and Macs.

You have to put yourself in the others’ shoes. How are they likely to view the world, your offerings, your suggestions? How can you vary your approach to suit their needs, their values, their expectations, all of which may well be starkly difference from your own and even from the prior buyer?

The finest speakers, consultants, coaches, sales people, teachers, and marketers I’ve seen don’t project; they don’t “anthropomorphize” their interactions with others. Instead, they try to get inside others’ points of view, see the world and the situation through others’ eyes and with others’ personal goals in mind.

The same car will not appeal to an unmarried 25-year-old with a small rent payment, and to a couple with three children, married for ten years, with a substantial mortgage. Vacation alternatives differ, depending upon preferences for travel, ocean, cultural events, bargains, and so forth. I swear by my iPhone while others refuse to buy one, yet we all have the need for wireless communications.

Your dog is hungry, not worried

What is it that your client wants to achieve? Don’t propose a fixed, arbitrary alternative to meet those needs. Propose a more tailored approach that isn’t a commodity. Ironically, you’ll get larger sales from transactions based on meeting need without a fixed methodology than you will from a highly polished, highly rehearsed, and highly irrelevant pitch for a commodity.

To understand others’ points of view, you need to understand their world. Have you asked yourself what it’s like to be the CEO of a community bank in these times? Or what the priorities are for the vice president of nursing in a major hospital? Or what a development director in a non-profit is looking for these days in terms of alternative funding sources? Put yourself in the other person’s shoes, but also look through their eyes, hear through their ears.

This isn’t a bad technique in your personal life, as well. Your kids are not living the life you lived at an equivalent age (not unless you had a cell phone, lap top, and 7000 friends on Facebook). Your spouse has a different view of shared experiences, not better or worse, but different. Your dog isn’t licking you because he’s worried about your well being, but because you spilled a part of your lunch and/or haven’t used any breath mints.

If you want to know what the other person is thinking, and you want to gain some traction with a recommendation or proposal, then determine how he or she views the world. They may well be sailing down that black diamond hill, and your best approach is to propose an even better mountain.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The future of newspapers is in one of two directions: The will form national networks, as have radio and TV stations, or they will grow small and serve localities. A good friend of mine and media expert agrees with me about this, over lunch and a couple of glasses of wine. So we know it’s true.

Apparently, very few in the newspaper business do.

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USAToday are already networked. They serve the nation (and beyond) with national news and some localized flavor. People in Phoenix will be purchasing the local editions of those networks, as will the good people in San Francisco, Boston, and Cincinnati.

So what happens to the Boston Globe (which the New York Times is unloading at a huge loss) or the Hartford Courant, or the Philadelphia Enquirer? They had better understand that no one cares whether they have a bureau in London or a reporter in Kabul. We don’t need national business reports from them. We need stories on the local school system, the governor’s fight with the legislature, and who will be named to the state’s football all-star team.

Yet what brilliant strategies have such newspapers embarked upon? They’ve CUT local staffs and local coverage. (The Hartford Courant, as just one example, is engaged in the curious practice of “aggregation,” which essentially means you take other, local media coverage and reprint it yourself, sometimes with attribution, sometimes not. When I was taking journalism courses they called that “plagiarism.”)

Just as Kodak was still hiring chemists as film was being made obsolete by electronics, just as no vacuum tube manufacturer successfully entered the transistor business, newspapers have decided that it’s all about whether or not they cooperate with the Internet (their particular monster in the closet, even though they never really handled radio or TV all that well). The market model has changed, and has been changing for decades. Finally, newspapers are down to a few last fingers clinging to the branch, but the branch is cracking. (And they’ve had their chance, because they’ve made some huge profits in the past, but those simply went to the owning families or chains.)

This isn’t an issue of whether people enjoy holding a physical newspaper, kicking back, and reading with a cup of coffee or something stronger (they do). It’s about value and who is willing to pay for what kind of value.

When I edited our high school newspaper, I would tour the school in the morning to make sure the distribution was efficient. And I inevitably found absolute quiet, once a month, during those tours. A lack of cacaphony was otherwise unthinkable in this rowdy, inner city school. But everyone was hunkered down with the newspaper open—looking for their names. (So were most of the teachers.)

Locally, people want to see their name, their kids’ names, their neighbors’ names. The don’t need local news to tell them about national unemployment but rather about local jobs. The can learn about the country’s health care debate elsewhere, but not where to go to get a flu shot.

Don’t let anyone tell you that strategy is an esoteric or unnecessary or unworkable exercise. It’s vital to do it right, almost always with someone from outside the organization, untainted by history, politics, superiors, and a vested retirement plan. This is where consultants are worth their weight in platinum. It’s too bad for the industry that newspapers never thought to hire more of them.

But, then again, that’s old news.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

This originally appeared on AlansForums.com, but I think it has utility for my larger community:

Short and Sweet

Okay, so what makes people successful in the solo consulting business? Who else would know as well as I?!

• The self-confidence to help others with the belief that your value is an asset and needs to be shared.

• Obvious manifestation of value and expertise in the form of identifiable intellectual property and testimonials to your ability.

• Using value and outputs as the barometers of worth, and not time, tasks, and inputs.

• Ongoing learning and development. The capacity to ask more questions than to provide “answers” and solutions.

• Continual reinvention, wherein your learning and intellectual capital evolve and are recombined to create new products, services, and relationships.

• The belief that you are a peer of buyers and an insistence, from square zero, that your relationships be with buyers.

• The ability to communicate superbly in writing and speech, and to convince and influence others in a two-person meeting or a conference of three hundred.

• The recognition and exploitation of discretionary time as wealth, and the successful engagement in “one life” (not a business and a personal life).

• Prudent risk-taking, the acceptance of failure, and the ability to cut losses without cutting one’s wrists.

• The avoidance of both scope creep and scope seep as excuses to justify value, price, and presence.

• The creation and participation in peer and professional communities so that a “lone wolf” doesn’t become a crazed hermit.

• A total gratitude for the physical, emotional, and spiritual conditions which have guided you to such a place in your life.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Agenda: A list or outline of things to be done, subjects to be discussed, business to be transacted; a program. — Webster’s Third New International Unabridged (For those of you lost in Wikipedia, that’s a “dictionary.”)

You have to beware of people with an agenda. It directs all of their speech, their conversation, their philosophy, their outlook, their debate, even their reasoning.

When I finished a very well received speech at GE one time, two women approached me five minutes apart. The first said that I used equal numbers of masculine and feminine pronouns and examples, which was, to her, the mark of a good speaker. The second told me that I made light of women’s questions and didn’t give them as detailed answers as I did for men’s questions, which was the mark, or course, of a poor speaker.

I ignored both. Two agendas. One was a noncom in the infamous “pronoun police,” where content takes a second seat to form according to the evaluator. The second was the “timing terror” where content is totally ignored so that “equal time,” on her conditions, was provided.

I’ve read inputs on my private chat room (alansforums.com), on this blog, and on social media platforms where every comment is prefaced by or captive of a political, religious, or conspiratorial belief system. An example: “It may be unfair for some athletes to use steroids, but don’t forget that George Bush left National Guard training early.” (I have no agenda, except against agendas, so fill in whomever you would like for George Bush in the example!)

Clients will have agendas about any number of things. Many think that every single issue can be addressed through a “lean” approach, or Six Sigma, or Nine Delta. It’s nothing more than Maslow’s old “hammer/nail” analogy. Others will begin with a question about how to achieve consensus, or engage existing teams, or involve the customer, as though those alternatives were Holy Writ. One woman (oops) famously asked me, “Can you describe the binders you’ll be using because we win awards for our materials.”

People approach almost any issue with a certain, personal worldview, created by their education, acculturation, nurturing, experiences, family, associations, and so forth. That’s normal. But healthy people are flexible, learn, and add to those formative factors through interactions with others. There is an old, extreme rubric which maintains that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. On a softer note, I find intelligent people are constantly changing views as they grow, learn, and interact. Note that President Obama has been both praised and condemned for such change and learning. It depends upon the observer’s agenda. (I’ve noted for years that I’m constantly surprised by how stupid I was two weeks ago.)

It’s tough to argue with an entrenched agenda because the other party has a list of points that must be covered, a tight parameter around the issue, and a tendentious adherence to the program. I remember pointing out to a Loch Ness Monster advocate that the toys and photo equipment used for the most famous, faked shot were turned over to authorities on the perpetrator’s death bed. The Monster Man told me that it was a conspiracy, and the toys and photo were created to discredit the “real” photo of the “real” monster. Okay, agenda item number 14….

Beware of “agendanomics.” It’s an approach with admirable rigor and discipline, but not much fresh air or intellect. And it’s been around forever. As Oscar Wilde reported during a visit to the American South in the late 1860s, during the aftermath of the Civil War, his hosts were bemoaning the fact that everything was better antebellum.

To try to break the morose mood, Wilde commented, “But what a beautiful moon tonight!”

“You think so?” asked his host. “Well, sir, you should have seen it before the war!”

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The economic signs are clearly improving. There will be continued bumps in the road, but the right vehicle should be able to handle them well. Here’s what you should be doing IF you are optimistic about the future:

• Contact ALL past clients to let them know what you’re doing these days (see below) and find out what they’re doing.
• Reformulate your value proposition (broaden, widen, add depth, diversify, etc.) so that you can justifiably present new value to existing clients. (It’s a “new day” and you don’t need the “same old, same old.”)
• Update and change your photos, web pages, blog, listings, and other public image factors.
• Gather examples of firms, organizations, sectors, clients, etc. that are investing at this point to good advantage. (Example: The mortgage lending industry recently had one of its best quarters ever. Example: Health care and related services are aggressively hiring.)
• Critically and honestly ask yourself where the greatest return is for your marketing time. Have you become “lazy” during slack periods, and are you mistaking Facebook postings for real marketing (e.g., publishing, speaking, networking with true buyers, etc.)?
• Begin a NEW mastermind group with different and diverse people. Try not to be the leader of it if at all possible once its organized.
• Stop reading the “doom and gloom” books and start reading the (relatively few) pragmatic books on how to innovatively and aggressively market and sell.
• Identify and articulate the specific industries, firms, and buyers you intent to try to reach, and enable to reach you, over the next 12 months. If they’re exactly the same as the prior 12 months, ask a trusted advisor to critique your choices.
• Plan and schedule a major project: A commercial book proposal; a new workshop; work abroad; a new web site or blog; a media campaign; a major self-development endeavor.

If you believe in yourself and act as if there is a recovery going on, guess what, you may just find yourself in better shape than ever before. The only stimulus package you need is to get your own mind and energy oriented toward providing value for your buyers. Enthusiasm is contagious.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The members of the Million Dollar Club, which I host, have come up with an “accelerant curve” (presented by Mark Smith), which we’ve embraced and expanded upon to demonstrate the connection among products and services ranging from ease of entry/low fee, to high intimacy/high fee. But it’s a two dimensional model, basically, and I’ve also tended to think in terms of a “web” of interaction among members of a community. (My value proposition is that “I create community,” and “The Architect of Professional Communities®” is a registered trademark.)

Anyway, I got to thinking on the beach (always dangerous) and I realized that there is an exponential and reciprocating value growth in communities. So as to appear scholarly, academic, and “deep,” I’ve decided to call this REV: reciprocating, exponential value.

What the kid from Union City actually means is this: The more valuable a community becomes—because of intellectual property, resources, networking, interactions, speed of response, status, peer reinforcement, etc.—the more valuable it becomes to be a member of that community. As the fee increases for being a part of a constantly, increasingly valuable community, more and more people are drawn to it (as many of you have seen in my process visual where fee follows value until the lines cross, and value actually then follows fee, because people expect to get what they pay for—this is the very essence of a strong brand).

This community “engine” becomes self-reinforcing—reciprocating. The more people entering at increasingly high levels, the more value THEY bring to the community, making it still MORE valuable. And people are apt to ensure that the quality they perceived or desired is indeed delivered, and those responsible for the community are motivated to not only meet, but exceed those expectations.

You can create community with your clients; your prospects; your members; your audience; your suppliers; and so on. Too many professional associations falter because the don’t have REV. Instead, they just have people bragging to each other, or taking while not giving, or just putting initials after their names.

I’m sure some of you in this community will find ways to use this for your own growth and prosperity. And so I mention it here, as my thoughts continue to formulate about REV.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Everyone seems to talk about another lesson in futility in wandering through their days. Let’s look at what smart consultants (and any professional services provider) can pragmatically do to effectively and efficiently attract clients and customers.

I learn these things from merely walking around and observing. This is easy for an introvert, I have no need to start conversations with anyone.

1. People like to be heard, to finish a sentence, and to express themselves. Keep quiet. Let the other person talk. I’ve been led to the wrong places in the same store three times because the clerk merely hears a word (“music”) and takes me to the wrong place, all the while babbling on. (This is especially tough for speakers, who feel they need to speak even when not actually being paid to do so.)

2. Discriminate amongst those complaints, requests, and whinings which are legitimate and illegitimate. Nor every gravamen is valid or worth action. I’ll replace a damaged book even if it’s the postal service’s fault, but I’m not moving a workshop location because someone has a tough plane connection. Don’t allow yourself to be a ping pong ball. Be the referee.

3. Responsiveness is the heart and soul of service and building relationships. My observation is that virtually no one expects to actually reach the person they are calling these days. However, your willingness and ability to respond to phone and email messages within a reasonably short time will win you admiration and set the tone for what clients can come to expect from you.

4. Never take things personally. An unhappy client, a complaint, a clear setback—none is a personal reflection on you or your value as a human being. Separate your efficacy from you self-worth. Just because something isn’t done well or doesn’t meet expectations doesn’t mean you are a failure or didn’t put forth your best effort. (Women are worse at this than men, in my experience. Please send your letters to the complaint department, where they will be carefully read.) Distinguish between your intent and your result. The latter sometimes isn’t what we hope for, but so long as the former is correct and legitimate, you can always try again.

5. Be seen and be present. The best of brands constantly maintain a public image, and the worst of brands are at least trying to do so. Don’t shy away from a fight or debate in a good cause. I responded to a reporter’s inquiry yesterday about measuring training by telling her it was seldom measured, and then the wrong way, because there is a vested interest NOT to measure it. This is beyond stochastic. The result was that she was on the phone within 30 minutes interviewing me. Take your place among thought leaders in your field, or think of something else.

6. Be accessible. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about Mercedes dealerships that close at 5 pm in California, so that business people can’t get there after work. Funny, I thought car sales were down. There are banks and pharmacies here open almost 24 hours a day. That’s how you build loyalty. Do people know how to find you? Are you still using generic domains like yahoo and AOL (“amateurs on line”), or do you have your own domain? If I type your name into search engines will I find you? Do you personally respond to comments on your blog and elsewhere? Is your contact information obvious on your web site, and do you have a physical address in your signature file (or should I somehow shove the book you wanted into the computer)?

7. Act with speed. Don’t be distrait when not appropriate. My auto people respond immediately. My cable people do not. The bank has short lines and very polite tellers who enjoy their work. The post office does not. Guess who gets the benefit of the doubt with me any time something goes haywire? Fedex does what it says it will. The phone company is another matter. Are you highly responsive and accurate? Are you gaining people’s trust?

The silliest event I ever attended was an IMC (Institute of Management Consultants) chapter meeting in Princeton, NJ about 10 years or so ago. (I had a red Ferrari, that’s how I measure time. And I’m not unhappy with the IMC—I’m keynoting their annual conference in Reno later this year.) But at this meeting, where about 50 people had turned out to hear me (presumably), the president asked EVERY person to introduce themselves and explain their business.

So they took well over an hour basically telling lies to other people who were not their customers in any way, shape, or form. What would have been better would have been their best 10 seconds on how they improve the client’s condition. (And still better, simply introducing me.) My wife, a sharp analyst of human nature, was outraged at the wasted time and inanity (we had driven five hours to be there). “These people,” she said, “can’t possibly be successful if this is what they think is important.”

Amen to that. Start to engage in an exercise in utility. See what you can do to think of the client, welcome the client, and develop the client. That’s the road to thriving.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

We’re just about at mid-year, and the market is up by 40%.

A lawyer was whining to me at a board meeting a couple of months ago that the Dow had fallen by 50% from its high point, and would have to gain by 100% to reach its former levels. I’m no mathematician, but if we gained 40% for this entire year, and another 40% next year, gee, that’s back to where we were.

There will be more turmoil, housing certainly looks grim, but there is a LOT of opportunity out there. I was listening to two network financial experts this morning speculating that stocks were following the bond market. They have NO idea. (Even Koufax was moaning.) Find organizations doing well which want to do still better, and provide them with value. Don’t let the gloom and doom, “poverty mentality” types get you down.

If there are consultants doing what you do and succeeding, then the problem is NOT the economy, technology, society, or Bill Maher (well, it could be Bill Maher): It’s YOU.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Here are just a few of the gems, personal observations, regrets, and improvement points in the summary reports from the participants in the Six Figures to Seven Workshop just concluded in Newport:

• I’ve worked much too hard at “not failing.”
• I’m going to stop working each day at 4, because I now work until 7.
• I have to fuel my work, my life, and my soul.
• My business is filled with latent profit.
• Rewarding myself is something I almost never do.
• My “quality family time” revolves around questions such as, “Why are you working so much?”
• Relationships lead to wealth.
• I’m my own bottleneck. I have to get out of my own way.

This link was forwarded by one of my Mentor Program members, David Lahey, who runs a business in excess of $2 million. While it’s a bit “Successories” in part, it does prove the point that I’ve long made in my speaking: The horse that wins the race by a nose wins ten times the purse. Yet it didn’t train ten times as hard, or ten times as long. It merely needed the extra effort to win by a few inches. Take a look:

For consultants and their clients, it’s helpful to try to get a grip on risk, since the “fear of fear” is driving people into bunkers these days. (Did YOU know that the stock market is up about 30% since its March low point? How could you, no one talks about it much!)

Here are some criteria to decide if risk is real or imagined (or pandemic) for you and your clients:

• What is the source? Has the source been accurate more than it’s been inaccurate?
• Separate probability and seriousness. It’s probable I’ll slip on ice in the winter, but the seriousness is always minor. It’s improbable that a plane will crash, but the seriousness is catastrophic.
• Use a “risk/reward” ratio (I’ve written about this in several of my books). What is the relative reward vs. the relative risk? Does the former outweigh the latter by a significant factor?
• Can you reduce the probability or mitigate the seriousness (preventive and/or contingent actions)?
• How many assumptions went into the risk assessment? (The more assumptions it will happen, the less likely it is.)
• Does it really affect you directly? Does it even affect you indirectly?
• Is the potential loss tangible, or merely ego-based?

You get the idea. Don’t allow yourself or others to crawl into burrows because the world is a dangerous place. We get up every morning on a hunk of rock traveling at 85,000 MPH around an unstable, exploding star.

If you can live with that, and you must, you can live with just about anything, if you choose.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

1. In any times, but especially these, stop whining and find out how to get things done. Believe it or not, there is no one hiding around the corner conspiring against you. The solution is generally within your grasp. I love it when people write me and open with, “Your download doesn’t work,” or, “You’ve neglected to send what you promised,” when they actually failed to follow the download instructions or my email wound up in their overly zealous spam filter. My favorite: “You didn’t send the download within 48 hours, please do so immediately.” The problem was that the teleconference is still four weeks away, but she wanted the download within 48 hours of registering! I was supposed to shift time for her!

2. Remember that you influence change by appealing to the other person’s self-interest. If your starting point is that YOU have a great technique, or YOU need a favor, or YOU expect their support, then YOU have a big problem. What’s in it for them? If you find that out and begin with it, you’ll get their attention: “How would you like to decrease the costs of acquisition?” Recently, a consultant who had never written a book and has a “great” idea on his “specialty of the future” asked if I’d co-author a book with him on a subject I have zero passion for. Of course, he wanted my brand and my name on the book. He was irritated when I asked what was in it for me. That should have been his first thought before writing.

3. Outstanding problem solvers always ask this question: “Has this process (or procedure or initiative, etc.) ever been done to this standard anywhere, at any time?” If so, then that’s telling evidence that you can achieve it. If not, the standard may be incorrect. (“Day-one deviations are problems that began from inception and the performance has never hit the expectation.) Keeping that in mind, there are thousands of consultants doing very, very well in this economy in your areas of expertise. Consequently, it can be done. If you’re not doing well, why aren’t you doing better? It’s not an issue with the environment, the issue is with you.

4. Everyone laughs about the bromide of doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. Yet many people quoting it are in the midst of the act. If you are not investing time, energy, focus, and money on developing yourself to master changing and complex times, how do you expect to ever do better? Doctors constantly take advantage of learning best practices in medicine and in their specialty. (Apparently, they’ve now learned to wash their hands.) What are you doing to master the best practices in marketing and delivery in this profession? Hint: If you have not substantially decreased your labor intensity in areas of your expertise over the past few years, you’re working in isolation and inefficiently.

What’s your attitude for consulting success? Are you following the same advice you’re providing for your coaching and consulting clients? Or are you advising them to do as you say and not as you do?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I’m learning more on the train every day.

On my way to New York last week, I overheard the conductor processing an upgrade to first class. When he got to me to collect my ticket, I asked under what conditions could that be done, since I had not known it was possible for people to do it.

He told me that when the first class car wasn’t filled, he was authorized to allow upgrades, but it was harder than ever now, and he had to guess about whether it would be filled in the two stops before New York.

“Why is it harder now?” the consultant asked.

“Because ever since the freight train wreck, where they found the engineer was text messaging at the time of the accident, the government has prohibited train employees from using cell phones, so I can no longer call ahead to check on passenger capacity.”

“But you’re a conductor, not an engineer.”

“The government doesn’t discriminate in its laws. The penalty is 30 days suspension without pay. I can’t risk that.”

The late, great Peter Drucker commented once that laws created to foil one miscreant are always bad laws because they punish 100 innocents.

You can’t legislate judgment. It’s bad enough we have to suffer being seen as criminals and semi-strip before being judged as innocent in airport security lines. For 50 years, people have been afraid to remove mattress tags that forebodingly declare, “Do not remove under penalty of law.”

When you hire well, train well, reward appropriately, monitor and evaluate performance frequently, and provide proper management, people are able to synthesize rules and judgment. A non-refundable ticket is refunded because of exceptional circumstances. An improperly completed form is still accepted because to deny it would create undue hardship. Someone understands that engineers shouldn’t be on the phone but conductors need to be.

The auto executives and newspaper executives and airline executives have made a mess of their industries. To think that the government running any of them would improve things requires a suspension of belief and access to certain controlled substances.

There is no replacement for leadership, competence, and good judgment. What I’ve been applying throughout my consulting career is common sense, and I’ve made a fortune doing so.

Astoundingly, it’s in very short supply.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Apropos of “Consulting Wisdom” posted here recently, life imitates art.

A guy named Todd ordered two of my books in the Ultimate Consultant series. The publisher, Jossey-Bass, has chosen to change the format from hard cover to soft cover, which is the publisher’s right. There are no other changes—the jacket art, contents, and so on are all the same—except there is a difference of about 8 pages because of the larger page size on the paperback.

Todd writes me on receipt of the books and points out that my web site describes them as hard cover, and of slightly longer length. This is absolutely true, since I forgot to change the description when the publisher changed the format.

Then old Todd goes on to tell me that “there is a significant difference between hard cover and soft cover, and there are a dozen fewer pages.” He demands an explanation, immediately, and accuses me of “fraud.” (The price of the book has not changed at retail from the publisher, so he was not overcharged.)

I told him that Todd was a tad anal-retentive, and asked: Did he bother to appreciate the content? Humorless, as anal-retentive people always are, he told me he had just opened the package, how could he have read them? (He apparently immediately felt the cover, however.)

If you want to stand out in a crowd, just hold your ground. The crowd will recede around you. Todd is representative of some of the people you are “competing” against. I really wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll be too outraged when a prospect has told him he has an hour, but only provided 58.6 minutes.

You can’t make this stuff up. And he’s expecting to help others?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

If you visited Amazon’s consulting book list today you would have found that I have 5 of the top 25 books on consulting, and, oh yes, the Number One in the country (the third edition of Getting Started in Consulting).

These listings are quite dynamic, and I won’t hold onto #1 consistently, but I almost always have five books up there someplace, because I’ve written more books for solo practitioners than anyone else in history. I think that’s because of my philosophy: I strive for volume, not accuracy. (I wanted to see if you’re paying attention.)

A few of the readers’ reviews are not complimentary (my books average 4.5 stars of 5) because they think I’m arrogant (viz.: they either can’t write like I write or can’t understand what I write). Everyone’s a critic on Amazon. Nevertheless, the books do well enough, and the fourth edition of Million Dollar Consulting, appearing in the fall, will probably see the 200,000th sale of that book alone. Not bad when you consider that I believe there are only about 250,000 serious (e.g., not “between jobs”) solo consultants in the US, and maybe twice that number globally.

I share all of this because this profession has zero barriers to entry, which is both wonderful and depressing. The way to tilt your plate toward the wonderful side is to keep growing and developing. I’m weary of conferences in the profession which feature concurrent sessions on how to charge by the hour (calculate your lifestyle expenses, divide by available hours, and there’s your rate—you might as well just slit your wrists now). If there is such a thing as “unintellectual property,” you’ll find it in the literature surrounding this profession, with retread articles on six points to make a point, or how to use the telephone, and so on. One “expert” with a big name actually was also advertising his used luggage for sale at one point. (He also had published a plagiarized book.) If you’re successful, do you really have to sell your household goods?

You don’t have to agree with me or anyone else, but you do have to understand what I and a few learned others are really talking about. Then you have the right to disagree. Frankly, if you’re starting out in this profession and haven’t read Getting Started in Consulting, or if you’re a veteran and haven’t read Million Dollar Consulting, then you’re just kidding around. It’s like majoring in psychology and not taking the 101 course. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, I suppose, but you must have the grounding.

There are free articles, checklists, and tools on http://www.summitconsulting.com, which you are welcome to download. There are print, video, and audio resources here on this blog which is free. You can read postings from my global community at AlansForums.com without joining it (you just can’t post unless you join). I frequently speak for free at various National Speakers Association Chapters (Los Angeles recently, New Jersey on May 15, Oklahoma on May 9, Dallas on June 13) where the admission price they charge is quite low.

There is a lot of data out there that many of you can turn into information. Synthesizing the information into knowledge takes experience and help. And utilizing knowledge until it’s innate wisdom it harder still.

It’s a great time to be a consultant. It’s even a better time to be a great consultant. What are you doing to accelerate your progress down that path?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I’ve been looking and listening, gathering material for new projects. Here are some excerpts:

1. Wal•Mart has a new tag line, “Save Money. Live Better.” It is elegant in its simplicity. And whether you like the company or not, whether you shop the stores or not, it’s brilliant. Everyone should have a sharp point on their “arrow.” How do you want to be known? I create community. What result do you provide? Or do you have a flying barn rather than an arrow?

2. Sweden, apparently, is not going to intervene to try to save Saab, one of the preeminent icons of the country. They make good cars and have crafted highly effective jet fighters, among other things, impressive in a small country. Yet Sweden, often cited for its socialistic bent, is deciding that it’s better for the company to fail than for the government to save it. We once made televisions in the US, but no longer do. No big deal. We’ve allowed airlines, steel mills, textile firms, and paper companies—once all stalwarts of the economy—to fail. Why are current auto companies immune from this treatment in this country? I don’t see any Studebaker or DeSoto dealers around. As consultants, we have to do what’s in the client’s best interests, and that often means acknowledging that long histories don’t justify long futures, for people, for processes, or for businesses.

3. Mother Teresa was cited after her death as “doubting” her faith, which created great press among those citing the weaknesses of organized religion. They all missed the point, which is that doubt is common and necessary. We should all be willing to doubt what the client tells us, doubt what we hear, and doubt that an off-the-shelf or generic response will work. Counterintuitively, it’s a sign of confidence to be able to doubt (or else the doubt is overwhelming and terrifying). People free to doubt, who then voluntarily pursue a belief or course of action, are the freest people there are.

4. Life is about options. George Will, the conservative pundit who is the resident intellect on ABC’s “This Week,” often comments that the two political parties are supposed to disagree, are supposed to oppose the other, and are supposed to be tough to create alliances with. That’s the nature of the system, the “loyal opposition.” There is nothing disloyal about questioning your client, your colleagues, or your collaborations. Don’t allow inertia to pull you into an undesirable future, as if it’s the default position.

5. The two primary factors in building self-esteem and confidence are successfully managing time and successfully managing relationships. If you can go through life in control of your time and not burdened by festering sores from diseased relationships, you are a free person. You can always make another dollar, but you can’t make another minute. Wealth is discretionary time. Are you working so hard, or brooding so much, that you are making more and more money while decreasing your wealth?

6. Remember the “ski instructor principle,” which I write about in my books and columns. You want that instructor who is just a few yards ahead of you on the slope, demonstrating what you should do, giving you expert help in the midst of the action, and commenting on what was done immediately after. You don’t want the instructor who talks a good game over brandy in the chalet, takes your money, and sends you up the hill by yourself, waiting to hear how it went. A great many people today are offering advice and coaching—certificates, initials, equipment, and all—who have never gone up the hill. Caveat emptor.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Some of my random observations that became too long for my note pad:

1. Always build, don’t destroy. The Democrats seem too intent, for example, on destroying the Republicans, who have done a pretty good job of doing that to themselves. When you work on a project, fix or improve the conditions, don’t assess blame or gloat about how the internal people blew it. Help the internal people to get it right the next time and you’ll be even more valuable and likely to prolong the relationship.

2. Stop thinking and act. Ninety percent of people who tell me they will “think about joining one of my programs” never do. They are just giving themselves an excuse not to act, usually out of fear of what they’ll find. We’re not talking about brain surgery here. Take action, and then fine-tune. Endless studies and the dreaded “needs analysis” rob you and the client: you of energy, the client of money, both of you of lost opportunity.

3. Get your approach in order. Engage the prospect in the diagnostic during the marketing process, then become prescriptive during the intervention, AFTER you have the proposal signed. Don’t become prescriptive at the outset, because the buyer will gag at the arrogance of your determining solutions in five minutes while the client couldn’t resolve the issue in five months, and don’t become diagnostic during the intervention because the client IS the one who screwed it up and needs an outside blast of air. Direction follows consensus.

4. Stop listening to overpowering bad news, take your eyes off the television, and look out the window. What do you see? People going about their lives. Go about yours. Our profession’s mission is to engage and help people and organizations to improve their condition, by providing powerful value. If you do that well, eventually the television news will change.

5. Engage in real and meaningful actions, not symbolism. If you want to volunteer at a shelter, contribute to a charity, or provide pro bono help to non-profits, that’s great. But refraining from buying a new suit, or taking a colleague to lunch, is just silly (and hurts the clothing and restaurant business).

6. Reducing your fees is not a required or intelligent move, it is an enabling move for those who use the economy as an excuse for their own inept management. You deserve to be paid commensurate with your value, and rending your garments or degrading your worth isn’t necessary or noble. Your duty is not to enable those who have poor habits. (Fortunately, we are not government agencies where poor management just results in more money being granted to cover our mistakes.)

7. Everyone I know who is doing very well—and that is a majority of people in my community—is diversified. I’ve been urging this for years, but now it’s mandatory. People who are solely non-celebrity, keynote speakers, for example, are desperate. Use your intellectual capital to consult, coach, speak, publish, facilitate, create products, train, and so forth. No one is going to do that for you. Pretend you’re your own client.

8. Get used to the ambiguity of the times. No one knows—in government, in universities, in the media, in the coffee shops, in think tanks, in executive suites, not anywhere—what is going to happen next. The current conditions could continue for years, or we may see a greater decline and a 5,000 DOW, or we might see a startling recovery in a year. No one knows. Get used to it. Focus: What is your value, who can best utilize it, how do you reach them, how do they reach you?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

PS: “How to Accelerate Business in A Dismal Economy” was my most successful teleconference of 70 I’ve delivered. It’s available as a download on my site.

But keep you eye out for my next Special Event Teleconference: “From Panic to Profit: How to build your life and your business during tough times.”

1. Never assume the other party is damaged. Assume they are as healthy as you and intent on improvement unless they demonstrate otherwise.

2. Never focus on a sale, a fee, or “business.” Focus on the value you provide and the extent to which you can improve the client’s condition.

3. Do not develop close relationships with non-buyers, including virtually everyone in human resources and training, or you will be seen as their peer, and they are virtually never buyers of consulting services.

4. Hold a conversation, don’t make a “pitch.” If you’re using any kind of slides or visuals, then you’re making a sales call, not having a peer-to-peer conversation.

5. There is no such thing as an “elevator pitch.” Anyone who helps you perfect one is an amateur.

6. If you can’t quickly cite the value you bring to people and who the most likely clients are, then you haven’t thought carefully about your business or its impact.

7. Be prepared for success. Most consultants prepare for failure.

8. Self-worth and efficacy are independent variables. That is, you can be good at something and not feel that you have much worth, and you can be bad at something but nonetheless feel good about yourself. The point is to have both where it counts.

9. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying. If you’re afraid of failing, then you’re in the wrong business.

10. Language skills are by far the most critical, particularly in the use of proper grammar, wide vocabulary, metaphors, and analogies. Language controls discussion, discussion controls relationships, and relationships control business.

11. Never listen to advice from people who have not done in quality and quantity what they are advising you about.

12. Ignore unsolicited feedback. It’s for the sender, not the receiver. Find people whom you trust, and solicit feedback from them.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the television you’re apt to read and hear bad news. That’s because the media thrive on misery. And that’s because everyone likes to point fingers at everyone else—from political parties to entire countries, from labor to management, from regulators to the regulated—rather than accept accountability and actually try to improve things.

As a consultant, you’re in the improvement business. So you might as well get good at it. And blaming people doesn’t help.

Here are some guidelines to improve your own morale and find new business during these rather fascinating times:

1. Never assume at the outset that the prospect (or anyone else) whom you meet is damaged. That is, never default to the belief that he or she is the problem. Look for evidence and assume the person to whom you’re speaking is as healthy as you are, unless proved otherwise by observed behavior.

2. You must spend money to make money. This is the time to invest in self-development, your brand, your web site and collateral, your outbound marketing, and so forth. You will not grow your business, nor even increase the likelihood of survival, by cutting expenses, selling your desk, or taking the bus. Would you hire someone who is obviously cutting back or someone who is clearly confident and investing in the business?

3. End co-dependency and commiseration. DO NOT GO to meetings wherein the participants have reached Ciceronian oratory about how bad things are and there’s nothing to be done about it, because it’s “their fault.” There is no “they.” YOU are “they.” Stay away from people who try to camouflage their own ineptitude with rants against the fates.

4. Seek out the best, most successful organizations you can find, even if they may not be in your basic market or strategy. They are the ones WITH MONEY. It’s easier to adjust and adapt your services to them, than it is to try to sell your services to struggling outfits. Results are results. Focus on their improvement, and not on your methodology.

5. Use the martial arts of language. When someone says, “You’ve never worked in our industry before,” or “What do you know about sheepherding?” (I’ve actually been asked that, stop smirking), don’t tap dance all over the room uttering banalities such as, “I’ve never worked in the computer business but I have owned them,” or “I wear wool.” Simply say something like this, “Why do you ask?” or “Why is that important at this juncture?” Because they don’t need another content expert, they are tripping over them in the rest rooms. They need your outside, objective, and process approach.

6. Use any excessive “down time” to begin or extend the long term projects you’ve been procrastinating about: write the book proposal, upgrade your web site, clean out your files, create a mass mailing to past contacts, design a new workshop or intervention. If you’re too busy to do them when things are hectic, and you don’t get around to them when things are slow, they will NEVER get done at all.

7. Contact everyone you know in some kind of priority: current clients; current prospects; past clients; past prospects; professional colleagues; friends; family; others. Tell every single one what kind of value you’re providing today, and ask every single one if you can be of help to them AND/OR if they know a few people to whom you may be of help. This is concurrently one of the best ways to generate leads and one of the most neglected by consultants. Why? Because of low self-esteem. Too many consultants think they are trying to sell something, take money, and inconvenience people, instead of providing value, improving conditions, and helping people.

8. Raise your visibility. In an electronic age, it’s a crime not to, and it’s easy to stand out since most blogs and newsletters are rend-your-garments-awful. It’s easy to stand out in this crowd IF you offer originality, free help, easy access, consistency, and boldness. (I have had a mathematics major at Brown University calculate that one posting on my blog is worth 7.8 million contacts on linkedin. Don’t forget, I’m the King of Social Media.) Make yourself so valuable that you’re irresistible.

9. Diversify your offerings. Turn your workshop into a speech, your speech into an booklet, your booklet into a consulting intervention, your consulting methodology into a workshop. Facilitate meetings. Audit operations. Create benchmarks and best practices. Consider teleconferences and podcasts.

I’m stopping here because top ten lists are too David Letterman. But I’ll tell you true: This is a great time to be a consultant, because talent and courage stand out now more than ever. And to paraphrase the inestimable impresario, Mike Todd, “Boldness is not about smoking cheaper cigars.”

© Alan Weiss 2009, at 40,000 feet. All rights reserved.

A woman asked me to visit a blog I had never heard of the other day to lend my expertise to a debate. What I found was a blog owner, who is a speaker, who had posted this situation: In leaving the stage, a man came over to him and requested help with some difficulty he was having, based on the talk. The speaker mentioned that he did not provide such help for free.

There was then a raging debate on the blog about the speaker’s “obligation” to provide help, and/or the “market advantages” of providing such help. Several writers felt he was being rude and arrogant in his response.

My comment was that this was the most insane debates I’d recently seen (if we discount the vice presidential debates). NO ONE is “entitled” to get free help from an expert. Just yesterday, someone wanted to enter my Mentor Program for free in return for my hearing his “incredible and original ideas” on some technical matters. Why him? Why should I? (I often provide scholarships and free help, but NEVER to anyone who asks, only to those I know can use the help and I choose to help.)

In the past, someone wanted the charter membership package for my Society for Advancement of Consulting® TWO YEARS after I founded it, because it was the first time he had heard of it and decided he was therefore entitled to charter membership! (I’m sure he would want to be a founding member of a club started 100 years ago if he first heard of it today.). A woman yesterday, seeking to buy my download of the teleconference “Accelerating Business In A Dismal Economy,” told me that charging her $150 for it was unfair, since it was only $100 for those who registered in advance, EVEN THOUGH she didn’t register in advance. “How would you like to settle this?” she imperiously demanded!

Here’s a hint or two for everyone. Don’t spend $2,000 trying to save $50. Don’t beg. Don’t expect that you are so unique that people should give you things for free. If you want to make it in the tough world of the entrepreneur, learn to fend for yourself. Don’t expect entitlements.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Having just completed conducting the 11th Million Dollar Consulting® College, and always learning more than anyone else, I’ll share some insights:

• If you don’t understand something, do two things. First, question it immediately, because otherwise the ensuing structure will have a weak foundation. Second, try to apply it in your circumstances to integrate the learning.
• People learn in different ways, so notes, recordings, mind maps, and holographic telepathy are all fine with me. But if you don’t have three things (or less) emphasized for you to move forward at the end of the day, you may have quantity but nto quality.
• The 1% solution: tools for change® says that if you improve by 1% a day, in 70 days you’re twice as good. But if you don’t learn carefully and instead become confused, the opposite can actually occur. People can get dumber.
• When creating pragmatic representations of conceptual images, whether brands or graphics or process visuals, it is ALWAYS better to work with a small team you trust for quicker and higher quality results.
• Failing, and learning as a result, among peers is better than mindlessly succeeding among inferiors.
• Emotion is as important as intellect in integrating learning.
• The female advantage in learning: less ego investment and more openness. The male advantage: less tendency to take disagreement personally and to focus on the issue not the person.
• Groups don’t bond through dumb ice-breaking exercises. They bond through sharing challenge, contributions, disagreements, and socializing.
• All groups claim that they want to stay in touch and reconnect. The ones that do most successfully always have an organizer or organizers who take on that responsibility.
• If the facilitator isn’t learning constantly, he or she should go into another line of work. Simply doing something well and receiving plaudits is like watching people applaud a movie you’ve already made years ago.

I’m asked why I left organizational consulting after such success, and my reply is that I got bored, because there are primarily 11 things that are going on, and to say to a CEO, “It’s numbers 3, 7, and 10, that will be $245,000,” was not going to fly.

1. Leadership is inept in that key people are not serving as avatars of the behavior they are seeking in others.
2. Team building is sought when, in actuality, the organization has committees and needs committees, not teams.
3. There are silos headed by powerful people defending turf.
4. Problem solving is prized over innovation and “black belt nine delta” nonsense takes over people’s minds like a bad science fiction movie from the 50s.
5. There is excessive staff interference instead of support, typically from HR, finance, IT, and/or legal.
6. There are too many meetings that take too long and are overwhelmingly focused on sharing information, the worst possible reason to have a meeting. The organization’s talent and energy are squandered internally instead of applied externally.
7. The customer’s perceptions of the organization’s products, services, and relationships are different from the organization’s perception.
8. The reward and feedback systems are not aligned with strategy and are not encouraging and discouraging the appropriate behaviors.
9. Strategy and planning are mistaken for each other.
10. Career development and succession planning are not wedded.
11. The organization is bureaucratic, in that is focuses on means and not ends.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Q1. You are well known for generating a seven figure income on a 20 hour week as a independent sole consultant. A phenomenal effort. How long did it take to get to that level, and what specific advice would you give to consultants wanting to follow your example?

I was fired in 1985. I wrote Million Dollar Consulting in 1991. But it took me until about 2000 or 2001 to seriously reduce my labor intensity while making more money, thereby increasing discretionary time, which is the real wealth. Advice: Focus on outcomes, not tasks; never let the client dictate your methodology; never charge by a time unit; don’t fall in love with your own methodology; remember that the easiest way is usually the best (Occam’s Razor).

Q2. I have read and applied your gravity concepts of marketing. And it works, undoubtedly. But what marketing advice can you give to people who need to get their pipelines full today? People who don’t have the time it takes to build a “gravity focused” approach to generating a brand.

That’s a fallacy. You’d better make the time WHILE you’re also looking for short-term cash, or you’ll ALWAYS be looking for short-term cash. The only really quality ways to generate short-term income: Call everyone you know and ask if they need your value or they can give you the names of people who do (most consultants are too embarrassed or have low self-esteem); organize a breakfast or lunch with prospects where you do nothing but provide value; find a firm or other consultant who needs subcontracting work. This is not a good profession for short-term cash.

Q3. The people you see in your mentoring college (Million Dollar Consulting® College) are self selected. They are motivated people who have thought through this enough to seek you out. Can everybody who has that level of motivation do this?

I don’t understand this question. The people who seek me out for any of my programs, e.g., zero to $300,000, realize that they need to invest in their own development, and they need to do so with someone who has personally and obviously had that success. There are too many “coaches” who are only coaches with no track record of success. Would you learn to ski from someone who has never traversed a hill? My Mentor Program has had over 700 participants, which is a lot, but what about the other 200,000 consultants? Life is short. Why take five years to learn something you can in five days, or why have ten years of experience which is the same year repeated ten times? If as a solo you are not making a minimum of $300,000 in this business with ample free time for yourself, you’re just kidding around. And your business is on shaky ground.

Q4. You are the thought leader on Value Based Fees. An approach aimed at charging as per the value that you deliver, not based on the work required to achieve it. How do you deal with clients who want to tie your revenue (payment) to the results? What is your opinion on these risk sharing approaches?

I tell them that I can’t control the variables, such as key people leaving or competitors’ technology, those are strategic concerns and that’s why THEY are being paid what they are. I don’t like “performance fees” for that very reason. I’ll deliver my value and you pay me. Why should I incur risk that is not within my control to influence?

Q5. With the economy tightening up, and some sectors already starting to see contractions many of our readers are feeling challenged. You have written and spoken a lot about finding work in tough times, but what is the value that consultants can offer now to companies that are really feeling the pinch?

Don’t start preaching survival, preach how to thrive. Use your normal value to show that this is the time to gain on the competition. I recently did a teleconference on How to Accelerate Business in a Dismal Economy. It sold out (downloads are available). But I’m shocked that not every consultant making under, say, $250,000 didn’t try to get on that call. A lot of millionaires were on that call. You have to be aggressive, and learn the best techniques from others.

I’m at the Million Dollar Club at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida (relocated after Hurricane Omar closed the Four Seasons in Nevis) We’re having a great time and being treated royally.

We work only in the mornings, so Maria and I were on the beach this afternoon, where we’ve seen turtles, dolphins, all kinds of birds, and fish. (One of our group, Guido Quelle, saw a shark.)

I watched a flight of three pelicans race by my entrenched position in single file. When the first bird changed its orientation—flapping wings, or gliding without flapping—the second and then third bird in line did the same in sequence with the discipline of an air force acrobatic team.

I don’t know if each bird sensed a change in currents a second apart, or if the bird behind simply emulated the attitude of the bird in front of it. But I do know this, having observed the maneuvers a dozen times by the time I left the beach: The third bird was always the last to change.

What order do you want to fly in?

Many racers, whether race car drivers, or cyclists, or marathoners, try to “draft” by allowing the person ahead to bear the brunt of the wind and resistance, and gain a bit of relief by cruising in their wake. That may save energy when you’re racing, but you can’t win in third place and you can’t see very well what’s up front when you’re staring at someone else’s caboose.

I’d rather be the lead bird, taking my chances with the currents and thermals, being nimble and quick, and finding the destination before those behind me.

Guess which bird saw the fish first?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

“We’ve cut back on all consulting in this economy.”

• That’s what a lot of my current clients first said to me.
• I don’t blame you. The key is which ones you retain.
• You don’t grow through reducing.
• Have you replaced the external expertise you’re losing with internal resources?
• But I’m not talking about paying for consulting, I’m talking about investing in results. Are you now ignoring ROI?
• Let’s not even talk about a fee or a project. Just tell me the three priorities for your organization right now.
• You haven’t eliminated your insurance, have you? I’m the same type of investment, a small expense to protect a huge asset.
• Who is “we”? Is that you, the division, the organization?
• What if we established a value and return so powerful that it had to be funded?
• Are you employees going to be performing at their highest potential, which you need now more than ever, if you’re not making an investment to ensure that happens?
• Are your clients going to remain loyal if you decrease your attention to them? Wouldn’t you be interested in low-cost, high-return methods to enhance loyalty?
• Don’t you think some of your competitors are using this opportunity to “steal a march” on you while you decrease your efforts to compete?
• Are you cutting back on all your investments? Are you reducing employee benefits, cutting client responsiveness, reducing hours of operation? If so, you need me more than ever.
• What next? Are you going to sell your desk? Cut your phone service?
• If I created a proposal that showed a conservative 20:1 return on investment, are you telling me you wouldn’t consider it? Isn’t this the time you need those returns?
• What if I gave you a very favorable fee and payment terms?
• Don’t you need best practices from an outside source to help you ensure maximum productivity during these times?
• Tell me what you’d need from me that would change your mind and treat both of us equitably as partners in your improvement?
• Don’t you want to invest in your all-stars and best assets to help pull you through these tough times?
• That’s what these four organizations that went bankrupt said.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I’ve been on Linkedin for a couple of months, I guess, as a test after stirring up the “social networking” cult which seems to believe that constant contact on the Internet is the answer to all human needs. (You can read some of the vociferous posts elsewhere on the blog, but not the ones we deleted because they were obscene, incomprehensible, or just vacuous.)

Here is my experience on Linkedin with 144 connections and 1,841,000 linked to them, or so the site claims. There are 2,733 new people on my network since September 23, whatever that means. I’ve posted questions and responded, started one group (for my mentor program) and conscientiously replied to all invitations and queries.

• With the exception of staying in touch and perhaps finding traditional employment, I see zero benefit to Linkedin as a marketing tool for consultants.
• It has the potential to be a huge time waster. Most postings are irrelevant.
• There are mostly inanities brought to your attention, such as two people you’ve never heard of who are now “connected,” or the really stupid notifications such as, “Roger is staying up late to work tonight.” Oh, great, now my day is complete.
• Exactly two people inquired about any kind of business with me, for coaching in both cases, and both said that they were going to contact me through my web site but happened to see me on Linkedin. One joined the Mentor Program, the other did not.
• The questions posted were 95% pretty sound and useful, but were also overwhelmingly (at least in my case) low level human resources type of inquiries.
• People with whom I interacted were unfailingly polite and professional. Not one exception.
• I received buying solicitations from others who invariably replied, when I protested, either “My assistant made a mistake with my list,” or “I never sent that to you” (then how did I get it?).
• Some people collect connections like stamps, and told me that the entire idea was to maximize their “network.” I refused to link with “collectors.”
• The technology is surprisingly primitive and unreliable, such as when I click on an invitation and its says, “This was not intended for you.” I had to go to customer service to have a duplicate of me removed, which the system inexplicably created.

I could go on, but I won’t. This is a mild diversion with limited utility for serious entrepreneurs and consultants in a world where time is a non-renewable resource. Worse, it has created a cultish behavior among many of its adherents who see the leaf and not the tree or the forest. I’m still awaiting my secret decoder ring.

Contrarian consulting advice: Use your time to network qualitatively, and don’t rely on technological shortcuts which don’t immediately involve you with real buyers. I know some people will write in ignoring the fact that I am writing about consultants, because the cult blinds them. They need to spend less time staring at Linkedin on their computer screens and go taste the coffee.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Note: For years I’ve been the most widely read columnist in ManagementConsultingNews.com. When I turned in this column, from the high seas no less, the editor told me that he doesn’t allow people in the news to be used in columns, even when non-partisan, as this one. He said I could skip this month or write a new one. (I have been doing him a favor, of course, writing for free all this time.) I told him there was another option, and that was that I’d simply end the column. You’ll find below a non-partisan lesson for consultants from watching Ms. Palin. I hardly think that intelligent consultants would find this inappropriate, and I see no need to “protect them” from contemporary examples. So such articles will now go on the blog, where I happen to know the editor quite well.

Why Sarah Palin Holds Lessons for Consultants

I don’t care what your politics are—I’m an independent and don’t know for whom I’ll vote yet in November—the Republican vice presidential candidate has a great deal to offer to consultants as a role model.

Whoa, you’re awfully confident!

The most important aspect of her presence is that she exudes confidence. She was on the greatest stage of her life with a minimum of preparation (or even notification) time, and she conducted herself as though she had been doing this weekly, for years. (At times, her TelePrompTer failed to provide the top two lines of a passage, and she simply extemporized them to lead into her point.)
Picture the consultant in the formidable office, in front of the dominant personality, without much opportunity to prepare. I’ve seen meetings and read follow-ups from too many consultants who profusely thank the prospect as though they had been granted an audience with a medieval emperor, bowing and scraping and happy to have escaped, instead of eager to go back.
Ms. Palin wasn’t intimidated. Failure on her part (and some people would claim she’d failed no matter how well she did, as though if she walked on water they’d merely point out that she can’t swim) would be severe for others, yet she didn’t succumb to what could have been crushing pressure.
Why? Well, she has terrific language skills. She has a close and loving family and a clearly wonderful support system. She has a track record of success in lesser venues which she could extend to this grander one. And she didn’t let the inevitable microscopic scrutiny of her life and family put her on the defensive.
Can you create that?

How do you do all that?

Moreover, she has a diverse life. She has interests and hobbies. She shares some interests with her husband, but not others. She has elected to raise a family. She decided to be a maverick—a contrarian—in her political positions.
She’s very threatening because, in a time when some claim that a woman can’t have it all, she is making a mighty fine argument that you can.
She eliminates excuses and just gets things done.
I would suggest to you, again, irrespective of politics, that consultants could do a lot worse than develop and adopt these traits. You can’t be intimidated, can’t be a sycophant, can’t be obsequious; you need a diverse life and multifaceted support system; must develop superb communications skills, and the ability to extemporize; extend prior successes to current and future environments; and not be afraid to fail.
The prospect is not your superior. Your failure to engage in a relationship will not endanger the fate of the civilized world. Your time is a valuable as the buyer’s. You are not “taking,” you are giving. You are involved in a collaborative act, not an adversarial one. No one can make you fail except you. It doesn’t matter what the inevitable critics say, all that matters is that you tried your best.

And so….

Could you have performed as well as she under those conditions? If not, you need to arrive at a point where you could. Is that unreasonable? Ms. Palin is from a small town, with a lot of demands on her time. She’s “everyperson.”
Top consultants have been in pressurized environments with powerful people and critical audiences. That’s when they perform best, when the chips are on the table and the deadlines draw near. Adrenaline flows and a sense of urgency prevails.
Don’t simply watch the performance of people in the spotlight and assume they are better than you, or better supported, or more carefully prepared. Put yourself in their shoes. Could you perform? Could you pull it together?
Most of the Hollywood stars I’ve heard speak are functionally inarticulate, in that they are accustomed to scripts and directors and simply reshooting errors. They are completely unaccustomed to performing “live.” You and I perform “live” all the time, just like the politicians. That’s not going to change, so we might as well get good at it.
Oh, yeah. Ms. Palin has an 85% approval rating among her constituents. Do you?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Here is a tip sheet that goes out monthly to members of SAC® which I thought I’d share with a more general audience. You can receive these regularly by joining SAC (www.consultingsociety.com).

The Society for Advancement of Consulting®

Weiss Advice

Monthly tips to improve the business and practice
of members of the
Society for Advancement of Consulting
Issue #60: September 2008

These are signs and comments of non-buyers:

• My boss will rubber stamp whatever I recommend.
• I put it in the budget, and now we have to wait for approval.
• The other partners have asked me to find the right help for us.
• I’m the one tasked to take it to the committee.
• We’re sharing the budget, but I have the priority.
• Can you provide me with a discussion document?
• Can you send me materials for distribution?
• Please provide some references before we begin discussions.
• What is your fee structure?
• I’ve been tasked to lead this initiative.
• I should be able to get back to you once we’ve discussed this.
• Do you want your parking validated?

Your response should be consistent:

“As you can imagine, I have an ethical obligation to meet with the person actually deciding on the investment and who has fiduciary responsibility for the project. Nor is it fair to have you serve as my marketing person.”

“Who is the key decision maker who can approve this, and would you prefer that I go alone or would you like to accompany me?”

Those simple phrases, which so many people are afraid to utter, will save you years of time in both gaining access to a buyer and in eliminating prospects who have no intention of doing business with you to your benefit.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I had begun working out when I hit 50 as part of an agreement with myself not to completely freak-out over the overpowering nature of that number. (Other agreements included a very fast car and permission not to learn to play golf, but those are other stories.)

However, after quite a few years of “working out,” I knew I needed a personal trainer because I was cheating: the weights were too light, the repetitions too low, the frequency too little.

My personal trainer beats the heck out of me. We do cardio stuff, which I loathe, and stability ball weight lifting (more accurately, it’s an “instability” ball), and at the end of an hour I’m a better person, though if I had any energy left at all I’d try to hit somebody.

He makes me a better person, physically, emotionally, and attitudinally. And I’ve realized that’s exactly what I do for my coaching and mentoring clients.

I don’t pat heads and tell them how good they are. I insist on repetitions and discipline. I don’t let them cheat. I take them to the next level when they’ve mastered the existing one. I allow them to vent, but it doesn’t matter to me at all. They can always leave. They’re adults.

In an age of complexity we need a mental personal trainer. People have to be able to do the fundamentals well, repeatedly, before trying more sophisticated techniques. (You can’t write a book if you can’t write a cogent sentence, and you can’t convince a buyer if you haven’t convinced yourself.) I’ve found very few successful people able to do this effectively and efficiently with no external help.

It takes mental stamina to be successful in consulting, so you’d better be able to build it up by dealing with your coach in the safe haven of your virtual “gym.” If you can do the heavy lifting with a coach or mentor, you’ll find work with a prospect or client to be a walk on the beach.

I don’t feel guilty when I’m on the road and don’t work out, because the work with my trainer is sufficient. I’ll be back again before long. You can work for given periods without reinforcement by your coach or mentor, so long as you intend to go back before too long.

No pain, no gain. Feel the burn?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.