Review – Getting Started in Consulting

Getting Started in Consulting, 4th ed

by Alan Weiss, published 2019

Estimate costs to reasonably support yourself and your family for 1 full year and set this money aside as initial startup costs for consulting

10 Key Traits of Successful Consultants

1. Humor and perspective
2. Influence
3. Confidence and self-esteem
4. Fearlessness/honesty
5. Rapid framing (identifying the problem)
6. Value generation (offering ideas and resources without jealousy)
7. Intellect
8. Active listening
9. Instantiation
10. Responsiveness

Finding space

• Needs to be dedicated, private, spacious; need to be able to leave your stuff
• Don’t want to incur large expense; consider professional service firms with unused space for rent (accountants, lawyers, designers, marketing)
• Minimize commute
• Need access at all hours

Startup equipment

• Laptop, speed and capability for 3 years minimum
• Copier
• Postage meter + scale, online Stamps account

Necessary specialist help with professional staff, entrepreneurial bent, accessible, resourceful, same risk-profile:

• Legal; incorporation
• Accounting, finance, tax; deductions of reasonable expenses such as medical fees, director’s fees, director’s meetings, salaries to household members for assistance, business credit, withholding and payroll tax strategy, office + equipment, memberships and subscriptions
• Business banking; a relationship manager to handle questions, expedited banking services, small biz surfaces, SBA-related assistance and opportunities, manage the relationship with the banker and trade business opportunities
• Designer; letterhead, logo, brochure + publicity materials, media kit, web design
• Insurance broker; disability, E&O (malpractice), liability, property, major medical and health, term life insurance, umbrella liability, long-term care, etc.
• Payroll assistance
• Bookkeeping

Marketing, develop market gravity through:

• Press kit
  • Client Results/Expected Benefits, what do they get?
  • Testimonials, what have people said about you?
  • Biographical sketch, who are you? accomplishments, credentials and background
  • Position papers/white papers, 2-6 pages outlining ideas or opinions on relevant topics to your consulting work (copyright it)
  • Reference list + contacts, try to fill a page
• Stationary, letterhead, secondsheets, envelopes, address labels, business cards
• Networking involves providing value to others to generate reciprocity and becoming interesting to others so they’ll direct others to you; try to do something networking-related at least once per week
  • Buyers
  • Media people
  • Key vendors
  • Mentors
  • Recommenders to buyers
  • Endorsers
  • Bankers
  • Key advisors
  • High profile biz people
  • Trade association execs
  • Community leaders
  • Execs planning conferences and meetings
• Pro-bono work should be confined to visible, connected non-profits that engage you with potential paying clients who are also donating their time

Advanced marketing

• Website, as credibility builder, not sales builder or ad
  • clear image about expertise
  • reasons to return (changing content, newsletter)
  • credibility of self and firm
  • personal contact
  • expected results
• Commercial and self-publishing
  • find publications your target audience reads
• Media interviews, print, web, radio, TV– PRLeads.com
• Speaking engagements, National Trade and Professional Associations of the United States
• Newsletters

Key principles of consulting sales

• Clients come from relationships, not sales
• Relationships exist with people, not organizations
• Think from the buyer’s perspective
• Focus on outcomes, not methodology
• Trust comes from convincing people you have their interests at heart
• Provide value to build trust

Gaining conceptual agreement

1. What are the objectives to be achieved through this project?
   1. How would conditions improve as a result of this project?
   2. Ideally, what would you like to accomplish?
   3. What would be the difference in the organization if this was successful?
   4. How would your customers be better served?
   5. What is the ROI/ROE/ROA impact you seek?
   6. What is the shareholder impact you seek?
   7. How will you be evaluated in terms of the results of this project?
   8. What keeps you up at night?
   9. What are the top 3 priorities to accomplish?
2. How will we measure progress and success?
   1. How will you know we’ve accomplished the objective?
   2. Who will be accountable for determining progress and how?
   3. What info would we need from customers, vendors and employees to measure our progress?
   4. How will the environment or culture be improved?
   5. How frequently should we assess progress and how?
   6. What is acceptable improvement? What is ideal improvement?
   7. How will you prove to others the objective has been met?
3. What is the value or impact to the organization?
   1. What would be the impact if you did nothing at all?
   2. What would happen if this project failed?
   3. What does this mean to you personally?
   4. What is the difference for the organization’s customers/employees?
   5. How will this affect performance or productivity?
   6. How will this affect profitability/market share/competitive advantage?
   7. What is this currently costing you annually and what might you gain or save?

Focus on developing “small yeses”

• Initial contact, hear background, read some material, agree to second contact
• Second contact, brief meeting
• Brief meeting, form relationship, substantiative meeting
• Second meeting, conceptual agreement
• Proposal, acceptance and initiation

7 Elements of Great Proposals

1. Situation appraisal (linkage to previous discussions)
2. Conceptual agreement components
   1. Objectives
   2. Measures of success
   3. Expression of value
3. Methodologies and options (provide a menu)
4. Timing, when does the project begin and end
5. Joint accountabilities
6. Terms and conditions
7. Acceptance

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Notes – How To Win The Pitch

The following notes come from a presentation delivered by marketing gurus Tom Patty and John Pietro at a CEO Forum speaker event:

• “the desire” is key to improving your pitch
• getting better at the pitch means getting more business; we’re all pitching, all the time
• 2 ways to grow business
  • get more customers
  • do more business with existing customers
• the pitch is when you persuade someone to give something to you, and it usually involves competition with others trying to do the same
• 7 things you must do to win the pitch
  • know your client; if you don’t know much about them, you’ll probably lose
  • know your competition; do you know who you’re competing against, including the alternative of “No.” or “Not interested.”?
  • know how your client perceives you; look them in the eyes to see how they’re responding to you, engage quickly or the story is over
  • know your client’s business; what do they do well, poorly? “feet on the street”
  • know how their customer’s perceive them; show what you’ve learned from their customers
  • have a great pitch team; look in the mirror, don’t be the “behind the counter manager”
  • be lucky; “the harder I work, the luckier I get” attributed to Lincoln
• why do winners win? because they make a connection; they know what the other person is thinking all the time
• 8 strategies for connecting
  • humor
  • common interest
  • common values
  • common friends
  • common beliefs
  • sincere interest in the other
  • ask questions
  • common enemies
• how to connect: shift the goal from “making a sale” to “making a connection with the other person”
• how to connect
  • know about their business
  • know what’s important to them
  • know who is important to them
  • know how and where they make their money
  • demonstrate that you honestly care about their business
• the simple business model; identify these elements in the client’s business
  • the offering
  • the passion
  • the profit
• Bobby Knight, “Anyone can have the will to win, you have to prepare to win.”

Final comments: John Pietro relates a story about a successful pitch to the Wynn Group on behalf of his client, Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola had been the vendor for the Wynn casinos for many years but they decided to put the contract up for bid with Pepsi-Cola. As John and his client prepared for the final pitch to the group, word came through the grapevine that Wynn’s CFO and another lead decision maker had been informed by Pepsi that they could bid the contract much lower than Coca-Cola which likely made the decision a lock. Not ready to give up, and knowing that Coca-Cola HQ in Atlanta wasn’t willing to budge on their bid price and was confident they’d still win, John and the Coca-Cola VP got to work on a new strategy.

The Coca-Cola VP was good friends with Steve Wynn and his wife and had supported them in various local charity endeavors. They also knew that Steve was a great art lover and was particularly fond of “La Reve” by Picasso, which Steve had recently acquired for his collection at great cost. They decided to produce a special Coca-Cola bottle with the painting reproduced on the label of the bottle, laid inside a velvet case in a specialty wooden box.

After making their pitch covering dollars and cents, product offerings, etc. over a period of several hours, and knowing they were 2nd to present on the final day and Steve Wynn was completely zoned out and bored with the whole process, they finished their presentation by having the Coca-Cola VP walk over to Steve and offer him the box, informing him that he was extremely grateful for their personal and business relationship.

Steve Wynn opened the box, pulled out the bottle and began to tear up as he admired it. On the spot, he announced, “Coca-Cola has won our business.” And like that, the decision was made.

Or so the story goes, but it’s an interesting idea of the principles of the pitch in action to the extent that it is true. It’s also a great example of developing a competitive advantage by some means other than price.