Articles

Learn more about our perspectives on the essential issues facing professional service organizations and practitioners. These articles by Michael McLaughlin address topics such as client relationship management, the consulting process, practice management, marketing, pricing, selling, and more.

Client Relationships

• Three Conversations That Can Make or Break Your Business
• Got Champions?
• Breaking Through Relationship Walls
• What’s Your Point of View?
• A Letter from Your Client
• A Letter to Your Client
• The Client Relationship Challenge
• The Downside of Client Relationships
• How to Sell While Serving
• When a Client Says “No”
• Is Client Loyalty an Oxymoron?
• No More Root Canals: The Power of the Client Experience
• Making the Second Sale and Beyond
• What Clients Want
• What You Can Learn from the Airlines

Consulting Process

• Dispelling Gloom and Doom
• Lessons of the Leaders
• Through the Looking Glass: Perception Is Not Reality
• The Worst Thing about Best Practices
• The Power of Simplicity
• When Clients Put You on the Hot Seat
• The Information Advantage
• Just the Facts
• One Question to Ask Every Client
• Delivering Bad News
• The One Service Every Consultant Should Offer
• What’s the Real Problem?
• When Projects Go Sideways
• When a Client Says “Yes”
• The Need for Speed
• It’s a Slippery Scope
• Averting Project Meltdown

Marketing

• The Perfect Testimonial
• Client-Specific Differentiation
• The Thought Leadership Race
• Rethinking Thought Leadership
• Cattle Call Marketing
• Is Your Service Offer Compelling?
• 360 Degree Marketing
• Should You Blog?
• Fire Up Your About Page
• Be a Thought Leader—Not a Follower
• 20 Ways to Float Your Firm to the Top
• Four Tips to Beat Feast or Famine
• Eleven Principles for Great Consulting Web Sites
• Rethinking Referrals
• Five Myths of Professional Services Marketing
• Six Steps to Make Web Marketing Work
• The Ultimate Differentiator
• Write for Results
• A Service Offer They Can’t Refuse

Practice Management

• How’s Your Foundation?
• Are You in a Comfort Zone?
• Be Your Own Consultant
• Secrets of the Big Firms
• Before You Quit Your Day Job
• Get Your Practice on the Right Track
• Four Ways to Lose Your Best People
• How to Land Your First Client

Proposal Writing

• Why You Should Ignore RFPs
• Will Anyone Read Your Proposal?
• How to Write a Killer Proposal
• Seven Tips for a Winning Proposal
• How to Blow a Sale with Your Proposal
• Three Myths of the Sales Proposal

Selling

• The Top 3 Reasons Why Clients Don’t Buy
• The Tyranny of Techniques
• No Cold Calling Required
• Five Sales Challenges You’ll Face
• Nudging Clients toward Commitment
• Why Not You?
• Counterintuitive Selling
• The Seven by Seven Seller
• Are Your Sales Questions Holding You Back?
• Natural Born Sellers
• The One Sales Skill You Must Master
• Sellers Are Buyers Too
• Show and Tell: Make Your Presentations Memorable
• Nine Questions to Qualify Every Sales Lead
• Six Strategies to Get Paid What You’re Worth
• “I Guarantee It”
• Four Realities of Value-Based Pricing
• Stop Closing and Start Selling
• The Trouble with Elevator Speeches
• Unseating an Incumbent
• Cold Calling: Lower Head, Ram Wall, and Repeat
• The Art of the Client Interview
• PowerPoint Rules
• Risky Business
• Rules for Rainmakers
• Selling in a Bull Market