3 Steps To Building A Stand Out Portfolio With Emma Sharley: Podcast #25

How to build up your portfolio, keep your momentum going, and find the critical work-life balance.

Description:

On this episode, I’m talking with Emma Sharley, an experienced and very successful brand and marketing consultant in Australia. She works with retail, technology, and lifestyle client companies on setting up market and brand strategies, brand positioning, transitioning markets, and marketing new products lines. She also has a complementary start-up in the retail technology sector called ShopYou, which she co-founded in 2016. Emma has worked with both large corporations and smaller operations, and she’s joined me today to talk about the keys to success that have taken her consulting business to the next level. She shares three major tips for building out your portfolio, finding the all-important work-life balance and — you’ll have to hear it to believe it — why 4 a.m. is the magic hour for her most effective work. It just may inspire you to start waking up early as well, and it’s all in this episode of the The Consulting Success Podcast with Emma Sharley.

Transitioning from Employee to Consultant

Prior to beginning her successful consultancy, Emma worked in sports marketing, fashion retail marketing, and telecommunications with companies in England including Westfield, Diane Von Furstenberg, Westpac, and T-Mobile. After returning to Australia, she worked mainly with marketing with fashion retailers, where she identified a need from retailers for accessible consulting and marketing advice. Following her entrepreneurial drive, Emma started her own consulting business and now works independently with retail, technology and lifestyle companies.

As Emma points out, your network looks completely different as a consultant than it does when you are someone else’s employee. There is great value that comes with building up a network of consultants and independents to help support each other and bounce ideas off of each other.  Attending events that connect you with other such consultants will be of great value to your network.

The transition from employee to consultant for Westfield was made easier in part by the relationships that Emma had made in her first seven years with the company. I always recommend to consultants that are just starting out to try and secure work with previous employers whenever possible, and Emma is proof of the validity of this advice. You have already proven yourself to them and you are probably already aware of the needs within the company. By positioning yourself in such a way that you can continue to serve the needs of the company without working as an employee, you have easily created your first consulting project.

Emma’s first project as a consultant with her employer entailed launching a new product into market, which she worked on for five months. During that time she focused only on that one project. By scaling back on her overall involvement with the company, she was able to increase her value to the organization as a consultant.

Emma describes a valuable consultant as someone who brings a single focus to the outcomes that you are delivering. By allowing yourself to focus on one project, there is less noise and fewer distractions to keep you from completing high-quality work. The success she achieved on this first project then gave her the confidence she needed to approach other companies, and ES Consulting was born.

Three Steps to Building Your Portfolio

Emma shares the steps she took to successfully build her portfolio after securing her first client.  First, she set up her own channel on LinkedIn and Twitter and began confidently sharing content with the world. Anytime that you can begin to build a relationship of trust with potential clients, even before your first meeting, you are building your portfolio. If people know what they can expect from you based on the content you have shared through social media, they will be more likely to approach you to fulfill their business needs.

Emma also started attending more events — a feat that was made easier by no longer being tied to her employer’s meeting schedule. Whenever possible, she took advantage of opportunities to build her network in the tech and fashion industries, and partnerships have emerged from her efforts.

As Emma points out, your network looks completely different as a consultant than it does when you are someone else’s employee. There is great value that comes with building up a network of consultants and independents to help support each other and bounce ideas off of each other.  Attending events that connect you with other such consultants will be of great value to your network.

The third step, like the others, is one that you have heard me recommend many times. Building a better portfolio means that you have to position yourself as an expert in as many ways as possible. For Emma, this meant teaching with General Assembly and hosting workshops around digital marketing and brand and marketing technology. In this setting, she is able to share her knowledge with a more intimate group, with just 15 to 20 businesses present, and it was here that she was able to develop and refine her positioning and the value that she has to offer.

By meeting so many businesses in the first few months as a consultant, Emma was able to really understand where she wanted to position herself. The key expanding a successful portfolio is that she did the work and put in the time. She put herself out there and favorably position herself within her field of expertise. She clearly stated the kinds of industries she wanted to work with and how she would work with them, which set both parties up for success long term.

By following these steps and making the same commitment to growing your business, you will create for yourself the opportunity to experience the same kind of success as Emma. Be sure to listen to her story for ways that she found these opportunities and used them to build a stand-out portfolio.

Overcoming Early Challenges

Once her consultancy started taking off, one of the greatest challenges Emma faced in the early stages was accurate pricing. Her answer didn’t surprise me one bit — many new consultants deal with this same issue. Placing a monetary value on your time can be a difficult problem to solve, especially if there is no known pricing structure that you can model your pricing after. It is essential that you know what your weekly time and efforts really look like so that you can more effectively price your time for your clients.

Emma encourages new consultants to not overlook this major aspect of successful consulting.  Yes, it can be difficult to know where exactly to place your pricing at first, but it is essential that you take the time to get it right.

Another hurdle Emma faced early on was finding the right people to work with. There is a vast variety of work that consultants can offer businesses — but you can’t offer everything to everyone. It is critical that you set yourself up for success by connecting with the people that best fit with your skill set. This does take time, but like all of the legwork that you put into your consultancy, the rewards will come quickly if you do it right.

Emma shares some of the ways that she has positioned herself for finding like-minded people and has secured new clients as a result. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by organizing events. By bringing people together to talk about the latest developments in the industry, connections are easily made and new clients often appear soon afterward. Tools like meetup.com can help you organize these kinds of events locally, and these collaborations can have a great impact on your network. You’ll want to listen to our conversation to hear how exactly she made this tool work for her.

Finding Balance and Maintaining Momentum

When I asked Emma about the one thing that she had to figure out before she really started enjoying her consulting success, her answer came quickly. You have to set yourself apart. In any industry, your reputation is everything. People want to do business with you based on who you are. Cultivating your personal brand is essential to set yourself apart in your industry and your marketing and content will sell your expertise for you — if you do do it right. When potential clients can get a good feel for who you are and what you have to offer them, you are establishing a relationship of trust before the first contact is ever made.

Additionally, as we discussed before, placing a high value on your time is vital to your success.  For Emma, that means starting the critical focus work at 4 a.m. every day. Blocking out half days or whole days on her calendar — rather than scheduling her work down to the hour — actually enables her to accomplish more work over the course of each project. For anyone who is selling their time, it is critical to determine how to make the most of it throughout the week. You’ll want to hear the details on how this works best for Emma.

Just as important to this is finding ways to step away from the work so that you can exhale. If you are constantly in high-stress work mode, you won’t be able to perform to the best of your ability. Finding ways to balance your work with the other facets of your life is far more effective than constantly operating in deadline mode.

I often observe consultants that think they are too busy to effectively balance their work with personal life, family, or their health. Guaranteed, the first thing that takes a hit when consultants aren’t maintaining a good balance between work and personal life is their marketing. Your marketing is the key to the forward momentum of your business. If you don’t take the time to step away from your business recharge yourself, your work will start to coast. It’s like a car — your business can coast for a period of time, but if you don’t step on the gas, the car will eventually stop moving forward. It’s critical that you find a way that works for you to keep the momentum going.

Prioritizing Your Day

Emma shares the reasons why waking up at 4 AM has been a game changer for her success.  From fitting in exercise and feeling more energetic to maximizing her most creative hours so that she can consistently deliver her best effort work to her clients, Emma has found what works for her and is using it to her advantage. By ensuring that the high priority items are finished at the start of the day, she’s more readily available to handle whatever else the day may throw at her.

My newest book The Elite Consulting Mind is a perfect example of the kind of work that can emerge as a result of harnessing your most creative hours. I rented a hotel room for a few days, removed myself from my family and from other external distractions and was able to make great headway in my book.

For some, creative hours can be found in a new environment, whether it be in a coffee shop or in a new town, and for others, creativity comes in a different time of the day. If your days seem too long with not enough creative work getting done, you just may want to try Emma’s advice of utilizing the early hours of the morning. Whatever it may be, try something new, pinpoint what works and then make it work for you.

I can promise you that the success that follows will make your efforts worth it. Building out your portfolio means expanding your network, positioning yourself as the authority, and then protecting yourself so that you can be the most successful consultant you can be. It’s worked for me, and you can hear how it’s worked for Emma, as well as how to connect with her in this episode of the Consulting Success Podcast with Emma Sharley.

Key Takeaways:

[:14] Introducing Emma Sharley, Australian brand and marketing consultant.
[5:27] Making the transition from employee to consultant.
[7:21] Building your portfolio starts with tapping into your network.
[11:35] Overcoming the early challenges of setting up a consultancy.
[14:08] Ideas for securing additional clients through networking.
[17:00] Finding the critical work-life balance.
[22:04] Why waking up early means success for Emma.
[28:34] Connecting with Emma Sharley.

Mentioned in This Episode:

ES Consulting

Shop You

Emma Sharley on General Assembly

Meetup.com

The Elite Consulting Mind

@emmasharley on Instagram

@emsharley on Twitter

Emma Sharley on LinkedIn

Tweetables:

“Transitioning from employee to consultant really opened my eyes to the value a consultant can bring.” — Emma Sharley

“Your network is extremely different when you consult in comparison to when you’re working for someone.” — Emma Sharley

“Reputation is everything. … People want to do business with you based on who you are.”  ?— Emma Sharley

“It is so critical to find your ‘holy time.’” — Michael Zipursky

 

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Olympic medals: apples-to-apples comparison

Who doesn’t love the Olympics? It’s a chance to see the world’s best compete in a safe environment, free from politicians’ rhetoric and jingoism. It’s inspiring to hear athletes’ stories. It’s good to refresh yourself on all those country flags that we learned in 7th grade, then summarily forgot. Oh, and the medals. Don’t we love […]

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5 Best Practices for Attracting Ideal Consulting Clients

I’m in Mexico as I write this overlooking a beautiful tropical landscape. I just got off a call with a coaching client who has seen significant growth in their business.

One of the main reasons for this has been due to the work we’ve done around Client Selection — attracting ideal consulting clients. 

Most consultants know they should only work with ideal clients, but few actually put this into practice. 

Why? 

Because it’s much easier to say yes to every opportunity with a dollar sign attached to it that comes your way.

You can’t create a streamlined and consistent process if you’re working with many different kinds of companies that don’t have similar criteria.

3 common reasons for taking on less than ideal clients are:

1. Revenue – you increase your sales and revenue
2. Schedule – you fill your schedule with work that creates a sense of accomplishment and productivity
3. Experience – you develop your experience by working with more clients

The problem is revenue, schedule and experience aren’t one-sided.

There is much more to each one than what some see at face value.

In fact, more revenue isn’t always good.

There are many firms and professionals with high levels of revenue, yet their margin is so tight that they hardly make enough to enjoy life, never mind building wealth for themselves and their family.

Filling your schedule can be counterproductive.

If you’re spending all your time working on projects that you don’t enjoy, aren’t passionate about, or aren’t high-value, it doesn’t matter how busy you are – it’s the wrong kind of busy.

When your schedule is full with low-value clients or projects (those that aren’t ideal for you), it means you have less time available to accept and work on attracting ideal consulting clients.

Not all experience is helpful to build your business.

If your ideal client is a $50M manufacturing company and you’re accepting projects from $1M startups, the experience you’ll develop won’t be relevant or much desired by a larger organization.

So what are the best practices and the reasons why Client Selection and attracting ideal consulting clients is important in a consulting business?

Here are five:

1. Develop and refine your process

The more you work with a specific type of client the better you’ll be able to develop a process that is repeatable. This creates more leverage, efficiency and creates better results for clients. You can’t create a streamlined and consistent process if you’re working with many different kinds of companies that don’t have similar criteria.

2. Better case studies

When you work with your ideal clients and apply your process consistently you’ll achieve better results. This allows you to create great case studies that resonate with the same type of ideal client and leads to attracting ideal consulting clients and winning more business.

3. Become a true expert

As you continue to work with your ideal client, you get to know their type of business, industry, challenges, opportunities and everything else – better than almost anyone else. That makes you an expert. And someone that ‘gets them’. Which means you become sought after. It is much more challenging to be seen as an authority and expert if you don’t have clear criteria for your ideal clients and who you choose to work with.

4. Easier to say No, so you can say Yes

When you apply Client Selection to your business you’ll say No to the wrong opportunities. Which means you’ll be able to say Yes to the right ones.

Though scary when you’re in the early stages of your business, once applied this has a compounding impact and will help you to focus on, find and attract more ideal clients – without clogging up your business with the wrong types of consulting clients.

5. Singular simple messaging

Consultants that don’t apply Client Selection try to be all things to all people. Their messaging and value propositions are weak and undifferentiated.

As a result, their marketing suffers and they feel like they are spinning their wheels and not seeing the level of traction or progress they desire. They’re not attracting ideal consulting clients — they’re attracting any type of client that will come their way. 

Once you’ve committed to Client Selection your messaging becomes laser targeted. It points out and speaks to your ideal client.

It resonates better. It gets their attention and interest so they respond. Your marketing works better, you start to build a pipeline of opportunities and your business grows.

If you aren’t applying Client Selection to your business you have a huge opportunity waiting for you.

We work exclusively with consultants in our Coaching Program and guide them through this process, step-by-step, to attracting ideal consulting clients, earn higher fees, and win more proposals and business. If you’re interested, apply for a complimentary Strategic Planning Session to explore how together we can grow your consulting business.

 

5 Best Practices for Attracting Ideal Consulting Clients is a post from: Consulting Success

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The Mindset That Wins Work With Fortune 500 Companies with Mindy Millward: Podcast #24

Long-term strategies in marketing and networking offer the greatest rewards for the most successful consultants.

Description:

Today’s guest is Mindy Millward, a veteran consultant with over 20 years of experience from Navalent. You may remember my guest Ron Carucci, from episode 21, who recommended Mindy as an outstanding and insightful consultant, and he was right. I’m delighted to have her join me today. In this episode, we are discussing the importance of maintaining a long-term strategy and vision for your marketing and networking. We talk about how to find clients that are really ready to make lasting change, how to most effectively market your services, and whether it’s worth your time to compete with larger consultancy firms, particularly for the business of Fortune 500 companies. Mindy shares insights into how to correctly size your firm, the importance of getting connected with the decision makers of the company and how to spot the red flags that prove it’s time to walk away from a project. I think you’ll learn just as much from her insights and experiences as I did in this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Mindy Millward.

Marketing To The Ideal Client

As you are shaping and building up your consulting business, a majority of your time has to be spent on marketing. It is a widely accepted best practice idea to stay narrowly focused on both the company size and industry of your ideal client. This focus tends to narrow in the playing field and help you more easily locate companies that will benefit from your expertise.

The question you may be asking yourself then is how can you effectively market to your ideal client? If the size of business or particular industry doesn’t have to matter as much as you once thought it did, marketing can become a complicated hurdle to overcome.

At Navalent, however, the consultants aren’t worried about the size of client they take on or the industry they are in. From Fortune 500 companies down to small start-ups, their main focus has always been simply to connect with the leaders of the company that are willing to make actual change within their organization.

The common denominator of every ideal client at Navalent is the presence of a decision maker.  Many companies tend to not have decision makers readily available. Even though they desperately need the services consultants can offer them, they don’t have the liberty to institute the changes recommended to them.

This can create a host of problems for consultants like you that are trying to make change happen. So rather than focusing on a particular size or industry of business, Mindy and her colleagues at Navalent maintain their focus on the complexities of problems within any company and their subsequent willingness and ability to solve those problems.

The question you may be asking yourself then is how can you effectively market to your ideal client? If the size of business or particular industry doesn’t have to matter as much as you once thought it did, marketing can become a complicated hurdle to overcome. Mindy shares several insights into effective marketing, starting with correcting your focus.

From pharmaceutical companies to financial firms, government agencies to educational institutions, any company that you focus on needs to have a desire for change. Starting with the hearts of the individual and working up to the entire organization as a whole, your work will only be effective if you are connecting with people and businesses that are ready to make a change.

Your Network Is Your Greatest Marketing Tool

Developing long-term relationships with collaborators or people that are connected to the CEO — and decision maker — of a company will be very beneficial. Any time that you make the effort to expand your network is time well invested in your consultancy. Companies will begin to come to you for help as they trust the relationship that you have formed with them. They will view your expertise as a beneficial business partner relationship rather than just as a consultant for hire. and as that trust in your work increases, clients will start to recommend you by word of mouth. Soon you will find yourself being passed from satisfied client to client with the requests for work coming directly to you.

In addition to the networking side of marketing your consultancy, there is great value in writing. Providing high-quality and authority-based content that is readily available to clients and easily shared through social media is one of the best ways that you can build trust with potential clients.

Both networking and writing work to create a long-term approach to marketing. These are not simple actions, but over time these efforts will be compounded to create greater opportunities for you to work with your ideal clients. Also, by identifying specific types of people that you want to work with, regardless of the company size, you will more easily be guided to your ideal clients.

Mindy shares one experience in which these efforts worked for her, even though it took four years to complete the sale. That may seem like too long of a time to wait for your efforts to bring in revenue, but the long-term approach to marketing through networking is always going to offer you the greatest returns on your efforts. She explains the situation that Navalent is currently facing as both consultants and their networks are aging out. It is not possible to sustain solely a network-to-relationships ratio without creating major gaps for yourself that are not sustainable over the long run.

Mindy explains why it is essential that you pursue both short-term and long-term opportunities in order to cover all aspects of your marketing. One easy way to do this is to ask yourself, “How am I adding value to this relationship or conversation?” regardless of whether it is paid work or not. Oftentimes a relationship may feel like it is not a good fit at first but can turn into something bigger as you’ve continued to add value to it.

Another essential step is to market yourself in such a way that people can easily find you. Podcasts, blog posts, social media, and speaking engagements are all interactions that give people a chance to get familiar with your name and the work that you do. Look for ways to expand the value that you provide and the opportunities will more readily come to you. And once you are in a system, don’t limit yourself to being just the coaching people — position yourself as the organizational design or strategy expert as well. These steps will help secure more work for you in the future.

Should You Compete With Larger Firms?

If you are a smaller sized firm and have ever felt unsure about whether a larger company would take you seriously when competing with larger firms, Mindy has some checkpoints and words of advice that you need to listen to.

First, it’s critical that you be realistic about the capacity of work you are able to take on. You are not entirely limited by your firm’s size; you can lean on associated resources and networks to help you successfully accomplish a larger scope of work when needed. Don’t shy away from selling huge pieces of work — instead, you can rely on your network to help you get the bigger jobs done.

Second, don’t waste your time trying to compete in ways that you know you’re not going to win. Mindy shares an experience she recently had in which she turned down an RFP but was still able to position her firm in a place of authority despite competing against much larger consulting firms.

Third, find the qualities of your firm that are unique to you and play them to the client. You don’t have to waste your time — or theirs — trying to be something that you’re not. Be honest about what you have to offer. If clients are looking for something entirely different from what you have to offer them, they will just be disappointed by your efforts. Don’t waste your time or theirs!

You will always find greater success as a consultant when you focus on what you have to offer and don’t worry about the rest. If there are a good fit and the potential for adding real value to your clients, you have to help the client see that. Regardless of what other sized firms may be going after the work, your confidence will prove that you are the right choice for the job.

How to Connect With The Ultimate Decision Maker

There is nothing more frustrating as a consultant than discovering that the work you have been hired to do will never make a lasting impact on a company. If you aren’t connected with the people in a company that actually have the power to affect change, you are wasting your time as their consultant. Mindy shares some of the best practices that have worked for her and her partners at Navalent to make sure that they are working with the people that have the decision making power necessary to effect change.

You’ll want to hear some of the strategies she uses to effectively connect with the decision makers. From asking the right questions to conducting diagnostic interviews with clients before getting paid, Mindy has several examples that prove that her methods work. She highlights some of the red flags that keep her from pitching work to a company that isn’t really ready to make changes and outlines the characteristics of the client employees that will work as a consultant’s champions to get them in touch with the decision makers of the organization.

Finding The Right Size Firm

Now that you’ve learned how to reach your ideal clients, you have to grow your firm to just the right size to get the work done. The ideal company size is different for everyone, but as a firm that serves Fortune 500 companies, Navalent has grown to seven full-time consultants. Mindy shares the reasoning behind their current size as well as steps they have had to take to get the right fit consultants on their team. Not surprisingly, when you’re looking for partners, you will find that the best consultants for your firm will come from your network. As Mindy says, “know them before you need them.” It’s essential that you know the skills and capacity of other consultants before you sell the work that you need them to do. By doing this, you’re securing for yourself the capacity to conquer any size of a project that comes your way.

Long-term thinking has the potential to pay off in so many ways in your consultancy firm, from developing your network to securing your ideal clients. As a successful consultant who has seen the benefits of long-term thinking in her work, Mindy Millward is full of great advice for anyone that is looking for the next step to securing work with a startup business or a Fortune 500 company. You’ll definitely want to hear her insights and learn from her experiences in this episode of the Consulting Success Podcast with Mindy Millward.

Key Takeaways:

[:17] Introducing Navalent partner and consulting expert Mindy Millward.
[4:40] Targeting your ideal client, regardless of company size.
[10:16] How to generate revenue while embracing long-term marketing opportunities.
[14:10] Competing with larger firms means doing these three things.
[20:05] The mindset required to secure the work with Fortune 500 companies.
[24:02] Connecting with the ultimate decision maker within an organization.
[31:06] Enlarging your firm’s capacity and finding the best consultants.
[37:10] Connecting with Mindy Millward.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Mindy Millward

Navalent

Tweetables:

“It’s not about the size of the institution, it’s about the complexity of the problems.” ?— Mindy Millward

“We have never shied away from selling huge pieces of work.”  — Mindy Millward

“Find things that are unique about you and don’t be afraid to play that to the client.” ?— Mindy Millward

“Focus on your strengths and don’t try to compensate for your weaknesses.” ?— Michael Zipursky

“Coming in cold never works.” — Mindy Millward

 

The Mindset That Wins Work With Fortune 500 Companies with Mindy Millward: Podcast #24 is a post from: Consulting Success

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How to download Linkedin data

Huge fan of Linkedin. It’s the primary way I stay in touch my friends and work colleagues from the last 20 years. Barely use Facebook, but use Linkedin daily. So, when I was trying to filter some of my connections – frustrated, and not working well – I decided to simply download a CSV list […]

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How to Avoid the Marketing and Consulting Roller Coaster: Video

Transcript:

Hey, it’s Michael Zipursky from ConsultingSuccess.com. Let’s talk about the rollercoaster. This is an effect, something that happens that a lot of consultants find themselves in, and it looks like this.

You start off in your business. You pick up a client. Then, you end up looking for the next client. You pick up a client. You end up looking for the next client. You pick up a client. Up and down, up and down.

If you find yourself in a place where you love the ups but you’re also having too many downs, things are start-stop, start-stop, there’s no predictability, there’s not enough sustainability in your business, how do you solve that problem? The best way to solve that problem is by getting a foundation in place into your business.

Not only clients, but also income. As this roller coaster goes up and down, your income goes up and down, and that causes a lot of people to feel very uncomfortable about their business. It can cause a lot of doubt and also fear. It’s not fun when you’re in a position where you don’t know where your next client is going to be coming from, especially when you have family and loved ones that depend on you if you’re a big source of the revenue.

If you find yourself in a place where you love the ups but you’re also having too many downs, things are start-stop, start-stop, there’s no predictability, there’s not enough sustainability in your business, how do you solve that problem? The best way to solve that problem is by getting a foundation in place into your business. There’s three things that I’ll talk about specifically in this video that will help you to get out of this position, and into a position where you have a lot more stability.

There still may be some ups and downs, but they’re not going to be as dramatic as you go and you’re building your business towards greater and greater success. How do you do these?

Number One is what we call “ideal clients clarity”. This means that you know who your ideal clients really are. Where are they located? What industry are they in? Who is the decision-making? What’s the title of the decision-maker? There’s a lot of factors that you want to consider. Who are you best positioned to serve? Where do you have the most experience? What are you most passionate about?

You want to be able to identify your ideal clients. If you can’t identify them, then you’re not going to be able to effectively engage them and do marketing to them. So, having real clarity around a specific ideal client is key. Yet, most people that are riding this rollercoaster don’t have that, or at least that’s one of the factors.

The other factor is the “magnetic message.” The magnetic message, also known as a value proposition or a USP, it’s your marketing statement that gets the attention and interest of your ideal clients. It resonates with them. It has them raising their hand because they say that they want to learn more about what you just told them. You’ve got them hooked. So, they want to have a conversation.

Here’s the thing. In order to develop an effective magnetic message, you have to have real clarity around your ideal client. If you don’t, your message is going to be very diluted. It’s going to be too general, too broad, to really attract the attention interest of an ideal client. So, it’s critical that you have clarity around your ideal client to be able to develop a really effective magnetic message.

The third part of this, and this is really, really important, it is the “marketing engine”. The marketing engine is putting a system, a process, in place in your business that allows you to consistently attract your ideal clients, to consistently get in front of your ideal clients so that you’re creating more conversations with them.

When you do that, as you’re having this very consistent system and process in place, what happens is you start to build a pipeline. You have opportunities. If you look at a pipeline of business, you’re going to have different columns. As you move people through your pipeline, from initial leads to actually paying clients, you’re going to move them through. If you don’t have enough people in your pipeline, then you’re in this position where you’re riding this rollercoaster. You have to build up enough people in your pipeline, enough opportunities to get the next one [inaudible 00:04:19] find yourself here because you’re not working these three things consistently.

These two actually, once they’re in place, you’re not going to change them that often. You still will probably change them depending on maybe every couple of years. It might be a little bit more, it might be a little bit less, depending on what you’re finding in the market place and how you’re feeling, but the marketing engine is critical because you want to build up enough momentum so that you’re able to carry your business. Even when you have that momentum, you don’t want to stop. You want to always be working your marketing.

That’s what’s going to move you to get from this up and down, to really flattening it out like we this line here, where there’s just a lot more predictability in your business. If you’re not taking the steps required to, first of all, put this system and process in place, but if you’re not taking the steps to actually move this forward every day, or on a regular basis, then you’re going to find yourself in this position of the income and marketing rollercoaster.

Work through ideal client clarity, magnetic message, marketing engine. If you need some help, reach out with those. These three will be really beneficial for you in creating a much more sustainable and predictable consulting business and also your income and revenue.

 

How to Avoid the Marketing and Consulting Roller Coaster: Video is a post from: Consulting Success

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Why roses? They’re the toughest

Happy Valentine’s. For those of you who gave / received roses, bravo. Life is short, enjoy. Indulge yourself and make others happy. So do you know why roses are so popular? B2C: It’s the epitome of beautiful and elegance. It’s what people want B2B: They can survive international shipment For those impatient readers, I’ll cut […]

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Deloitte interviews Thomas Friedman: The Future of Work

Just read a 5,000 word interview with Thomas Friedman here. To say that I am a Friedman fan, would be an understatement. The Pulitzer Prize winning author is beyond wise.  Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat (affiliate links) are incredibly important books. 5 Stars. The interview was conducted by Deloitte CEO, Cathy Engelbert, and John Hagel. So much […]

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Deloitte and Thomas Friedman: Future of Work

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Doubling a $400,000 Revenue Model With Business Trainer Blair Enns: Podcast #22

Find your focus, share your knowledge, and write to win your place as a consulting expert.

Description:

Self-described “recovering consultant” Blair Enns is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals in the design, advertising, and public relations fields. When he wasn’t satisfied with his $400,000 business, he decided to expand it into an organization that now makes exponentially more money that he once thought possible. In this episode, we are talking about ways that you can effectively position yourself as an expert in your field, how to get your expertise recognized, and the danger of productizing your work, as well as what you should be doing instead. Blair has achieved a level of success that many consultants only dream of, and he’s here to share practical ideas on how you, too, can take your consulting business to the next level. Join us to hear solid advice for increasing your revenue from Blair Enns in this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast.

Finding Consulting Success in the Wilderness

After finding himself expelled from university, Blair’s lucky break came when he stumbled upon advertising. His boss recognized he had a knack for new business, and just six months into the work, at age 22, Blair was put in charge of business development. He began working with some of the largest ad agencies and some of the smallest design firms in the world. Well-experienced and thick in the work of account management and business development, Blair realized that he wanted something entirely different from the advertising world. In order to realize his dream of raising his family in the backwoods of British Columbia, something had to change.

At that point Win Without Pitching was born, and Blair’s success has been realized in a wilderness town of just 900 people. He tells the story of how he decided to relocate to such a remote location, and how he was able to successfully turn his consulting dream into his new reality. Many people believe that success can’t be achieved in a remote location without direct access to clients, but Blair’s success proves them wrong.

When he started out, Blair didn’t have access to any clients within hundreds of miles of his remote location. This unique situation forced him to expand his reach. Once he narrowed in on the markets that he was going to serve and strategically positioned himself in their path, the physical distance between them became less of an issue. For Blair, these moves have actually contributed to greater success than he would have experienced otherwise. With the groundwork for his career path laid, we dive into the details of Blair’s success, starting with his collaboration with fellow consultant David Baker.

Should You Share Your Knowledge With Your Competition?

It may seem counterintuitive, but sharing your knowledge with other consultants can actually be one of the smartest career moves you can make. Blair and David Baker are both successful creative entrepreneurs who have joined forces to produce the 2Bobs Podcast, in which you can hear conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. Although Blair and David are competitors, their collaborations have actually brought them both greater success.

Blair lays out the benefits and drawbacks of working with your competition. But before you can consider teaming up with another consultant, you need to examine your own work. If there appears to be very little difference from the work that you offer and the work that your competition offers, you have a significant business problem. Teaming up with another consultant is not going to be helpful for you at all. Positioning and strategy can both set you apart and keep you securely positioned within your area of expertise. While it isn’t a good idea to eliminate all competition, it is in your favor to strategically place yourself separate and above most of your competition.

The number one key to deciding whether to collaborate with your competition is whether or not your philosophical ideas line up with them. Blair admits that he doesn’t play quite as nicely with all of his competitors as he does with David Baker, but he also recognizes that they both benefit from their working relationship. Sharing knowledge with each other and collaborating on projects has been mutually beneficial for both of them, as well as for their clients.

However, there is a fine line to be drawn when it comes to collaborating with your competition. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s a good idea or one that will bring your business down, be sure to listen to Blair’s take on it. What’s worked for him will most likely work for you as well, so you won’t want to miss his ideas and checkpoints for the best approach to sharing your knowledge with your competition.

Finding Your Consulting Focus

In the Win Without Pitching business model, clientele can be won without doing a “dog and pony” show to prove your worth. There are steps that you can take to differentiate yourself and position yourself in a place where a greater chance of winning consulting business.

First — you have to find your focus. Who do you want to be a consultant for? What area are you going to be a consultant on? What are the issues that you want to focus on? If you promise to do everything for everyone, there is no way that you can become an expert in any one given area. In order to become a subject matter expert, it is essential that you narrow your focus.

Once your focus is narrowed, your expertise will grow as you are repeatedly faced with similar problems that can be solved with similar solutions. Patterns will emerge and become the basis for your expertise. As you force yourself to narrow your expertise, you will be able to dig deeper and truly set yourself apart from — and above — your competition.

Blair shares the classic example of the client who will approach you with no idea of how they should solve a problem that they have never had before. Because of your focus, you will have seen similar problems many times over again and the solution they are seeking will be an easy one for you to identify. This is the essential key to becoming a focused expert in your field — it’s worked for Blair and he guarantees it will work for you, too.

The Challenges of Productizing Your Business

If you’ve been in the consulting business for any amount of time, chances are that you have been faced with the challenges of accurately and competitively pricing your work. Blair spent 13 years of his career as a consultant, and more recently, the last five years as a training company, and there is one common mistake that he has seen over and over again. Every consultant struggles to find the best way to price their services. There are two basic approaches to pricing your work — you can either productize or customize the work that you do for each client, and he details both.

By productizing your work, you have a fixed set of solutions that you can offer to clients, regardless of what their individual needs are, similar to ordering off of a menu. Customized consulting work offers greater value to your clients and allows you to remain more deeply involved in both the work and the solutions.

Your pricing may have shifted in one direction or the other, and you need to ask yourself — are you productizing your services when you really should be customizing the work that you are doing for each client? Most consultants should be in the customized business service. If you find that you’re creeping toward offering your clients a one-size-fits-all product as the solution to their problems, it’s time to correct your business model.

For Blair, the decision to switch over to productizing his work came when he realized he was value-pricing most of his highly customized offerings to his clients. He shares the impact that that switch has made on his business, and the success he now enjoys may make you want to consider altering your business model as well.

Secure New Clients Through Your Writing

The last step Blair shares to gain greater success in your consulting field, after finding your focus and deciding whether to share your knowledge in collaboration with other consultants, is to become an expert writer. The most successful consultants are also writers. In order to get your ideas heard, you need to write from a point of view that is beneficially polarizing in your market. Although it’s a harsh truth, there is simply no use for you in a field in which you can’t find a novel way to tackle the problems within it. By finding a point of view that is less common but more beneficial, you will position yourself as the expert that clients need to get their problems solved.

The reactions that readers have to your work will increase their trust in you and your ability to help them find the solutions they are seeking. The content in your blog posts, emails, newsletters, and articles will draw potential clients to you. Even more important though, is the fact that the point of view that you share with them will convince them to hire you. Once your perspective separates you from your competition, you have the foundation of a business that will be successful.

When you are just starting out, finding clients and getting your ideas out there can seem like a daunting task. In order to get your ideas and content out to new clients, Blair recommends starting with putting all of your marketing chips into one area. Whether it be podcasts, writing books, or social media, find one area that you can focus on, and soon you will be dominating it as the lead expert.

For Blair, the area of greatest focus has been his writing. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto was written nearly eight years ago, but he is still seeing the rewards from producing the book today. He offers ideas on how to effectively promote a book and reflects on ways that a book written eight years ago is still benefitting his work today.

Blair shares a glimpse into his forthcoming book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. The book is available in several formats, including as an ebook and in manual format. You can learn more about the book on his website, as well as sign up for his free newsletter, and learn more about his business philosophies and approach. This episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Blair Enns is filled with practical ideas on how you can improve your status as an industry expert, starting today.

Key Takeaways:

[:17] Welcoming Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching.
[4:47] Growing a business from a remote location.
[6:20] The benefits of sharing your knowledge with the competition.
[10:50] How finding your focus will increase the demand for your expertise.
[14:03] Customizing or productizing your business — which model is best for you?
[24:10] You can get new clients by writing from a new point-of-view.
[28:47] Ways to effectively share your content.
[33:28] All about Blair’s new book, and how you can connect with him.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Win Without Pitching
2Bobs Podcast with Blair Enns and David Baker
The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns
Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns
@BlairEnns on Twitter
Blair Enns on LinkedIn

Tweetables:

“If you want to expand your geographic reach, you need to narrow your focus.”  — Blair Enns

“We’re not trying to eliminate all competition, but we are trying to eliminate most competition.”  — Blair Enns

“Most consultants should be in the customized business service.” — Blair Enns

“People will come for the content … but they’ll hire you for your point of view.” — Blair Enns

Doubling a $400,000 Revenue Model With Business Trainer Blair Enns: Podcast #22 is a post from: Consulting Success

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The Real Shortcut to Consulting Success

Transcript:

I want to talk about a shortcut to success, and I want to share this with you because I believe that a lot of people these days are looking for a shortcut to success. They’re looking for the secret to create more fame, to create more riches, to create just greater levels of success in a very short period of time, and I want to suggest that you actually know what that shortcut is. You actually know what that secret is. You might not see it as that, but you actually know what you need to do to become successful.

They’re trying all these different things but they’re never really committing to any of them and they’re jumping around and they’re wondering why they’re not making progress and when it comes down to it it’s because they’re not working through a process.

I’ve worked with hundreds of consultants around the world in many different industries, and I continue to see this theme pop up and that’s why I wanted to take a little bit of time here to share it with you, which is that you know what you need to do. To attract clients, you know that you probably need to go out there and make some phone calls or send some emails or leverage your network or go to events or find different associations or places to speak or write articles or write a book. There’s many different tactics, many different steps that you can take, but they all will get you in the direction of creating opportunities to have conversations with your ideal clients but if you’re not doing those things, then you’re not gonna get the result that you want.

So many people, say to themselves well I want to find the shortcut, I want to find this secret so I’m gonna go on a hunt for it and then they spend a great deal of time searching for the secret, for the shortcut. They buy courses, they test them out a little bit. Then they find the next one that comes up online that people are talking about and then they try that and so whether it’s some kind of Facebook ads or funnel or whatever it is. They’re trying all these different things but they’re never really committing to any of them and they’re jumping around and they’re wondering why they’re not making progress and when it comes down to it it’s because they’re not working through a process. They’re just tasting things, they’re trying things but they’re no committing to anything and if you don’t commit to really being intentional and take the steps that are required to build your business, well then frankly you’re not going to get the ultimate results. You’re not going to see the level of success that you want so while you might feel that I need to find this magical shortcut or this secret to success.

I want to suggest that you already know, that’s it already within you to do what you need to do to become successful. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain paths or strategies or mindsets that can help you to get there faster, right there always will be and you can learn those from people who have walked that path before but instead of hunting and just testing and trying the latest fads that come about ask yourself, what is it that I really want to accomplish? And then figure out what is the most direct path for me to get there and then commit to it.

Don’t jump off that path when something new comes your way or when a challenge confronts you. Keep working through it, keep taking that action, do what you need to do even if it’s uncomfortable. Maybe you don’t like making phone calls, maybe you don’t like going to network working events, maybe don’t like writing or creating content but if that is what you need to do … when I say need, I mean that if deep down inside you know that, that’s what’s going to get the result that you want even if you don’t like it, maybe it’s worthwhile or maybe you don’t want what you think that you want badly enough to put in the work to get there. And I’m not saying that you need to spend countless hours and work 12 hour days to accomplish your goals and be successful. You don’t but you do need to be intentional and I would suggest that you really must be committed to it, to do what’s needed to be done.

So ask yourself, what do you need to do to create the results that you want, if you don’t know what you need to do then find someone that can help you to create that plan or that map for you but you are the only one that create success for yourself. So if you’re prepared to take action on it be committed to it, be intentional, go after it. It’s yours.

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