Be Your Own Consultant

By Michael W. McLaughlin

At some point every year you should make time to look closely at your practice and reflect on the past year and the one ahead. Be your own consultant and ask yourself those hard questions that you regularly lob at clients about their businesses.

Question #1: Did the past year turn out for your practice like you thought it would?

Every year has its ups and downs. Planning is like that; some things work and others don’t. But looking forward is always more interesting and exciting than kicking yourself about the past. So think like a consultant and figure out what plans you’d like to execute now, and then evaluate them at this time next year.

If a client asked you to help guide a business to success for the next few years, where would you start? What if that client was you and the business was yours?

You’d probably begin by defining what makes your business financially successful and personally rewarding. I often remind myself what a colleague once said to me about what it takes to make it in this business: “If you want to succeed in consulting, you have to have something to say and someone to say it to.”

To me, this simple-sounding aphorism means that, to achieve extraordinary results for your business, you need three essential ingredients:

• A service offer of unrivaled value
• The consistent ability to reach clients to generate real sales opportunities
• And the skill to discern and win high-profit work.

It sounds easy enough, but the devil is in the details.

Question #2: Who Do You Want to Work With?

If you are uncertain about the market validity of your service offerings, stop now. You’ll waste your time and money marketing a flawed service. You may close some sales, but it will likely be low-value, low-profit work.

Let’s assume you have a service offer that is second to none, and that there’s a market for what you do. The first question is who do you want to work with? Maybe you are happy with your clients and your current target market. If so, your answer to this question is clear.

If you’re not sure which clients you want to work with, evaluate whether or not your existing clients and markets are helping you reach your financial and career goals. If not, it’s time to rethink your client strategy. And, once you answer that question, your marketing strategy begins to fall into place.

Think about attracting the clients you want in two steps: First, focus some of your marketing efforts on a particular industry, geography, or on specific processes as your area of expertise. The point is to find target markets that will work for your business–that is, they have a proven need for what you do and will pay for it. Second, identify a handful of client organizations within that target market that you’d like to work with and market directly to them.

For example, if you have a service offer for clients in the banking industry, you would aim to increase your visibility at banking industry events and with appropriate industry associations. You would also pick specific companies in the banking sector and market to them.

These targets are especially important for this “secret” of selling services: Top sellers don’t wait for clients to call; they create demand for their services by working on the tough issues in their areas of expertise long before the herd rolls in with sales pitches. Without these targets, you have little ability to forge new relationships with clients and generate demand for your services. You’ll have to settle for traveling with the pack.

Question #3: Is Your Marketing Program Serving You?

The best consultants know that successful marketing has two requirements. First, your marketing message, in whatever form you deliver it, must be of high value and compel action. And second, your program must give you enough market exposure to grab the attention of the clients you want.

It’s possible to do too much marketing or too little. Some consultants aren’t visible in the market because they don’t try to be. With the demands of daily work, some don’t make time to market their businesses. Others avoid marketing either because they don’t like it, or they are not sure what to do. Whatever the reason, these consultants are most susceptible to the feast or famine syndrome, when long periods of inactivity follow times of sustained work. If that’s you, get your marketing in gear, or you could find yourself without a practice.

Then you see others who do too much marketing. Some consultant have all of the marketing tools going full steam at once, like writing articles, giving speeches, sending direct mail, and publishing a newsletter. And even with all that activity, sales leads dribble in. If that is happening to you, most likely you have not found the right combination of marketing tactics for your target market. The problem may well be the lack of a focused message.

That lack of focus often cascades into every part of a practice. But it shows up most distinctly on consultants’ Web sites. Some sites offer such diluted messages that you can’t tell what the consultants actually do.

If you’re not getting the results you need from your marketing efforts, scrutinize your message and methods. Challenge yourself with questions about your perceived market value. Maybe what you accomplish for clients is far better than what you say you do. In that case, small changes to your marketing communication can pay big dividends.

You may also need to reconsider how you’re getting through to the market. For some consultants, a focused message, offered to a targeted audience with reasonable frequency is all it takes to compel action. But focus is the imperative. Think depth, not breadth.

Question #4: How Compelling Is Your Service?

The final question is whether or not your services are still compelling to clients–and to you. How can you sustain the level of intensity you need if you are not thoroughly engaged with what you do? You’ve probably seen what happens to people who have lost that fire. Clients recognize it too, and run in the other direction.

Is your service offering still the right one, or do you need to change or scrap it altogether? The answer shouldn’t be too hard figure out. After all, you’re in the market and know what’s selling and what’s lagging. Your biggest challenge to objective decisions about your services may be your own bias toward what you do. If you fear that’s the case, ask a colleague for help.

You have to keep up with the times. After all, our clients expect the latest and greatest, and that is what they will pay for it. We don’t get too many chances to reflect on what we’re doing, so put on your long-range thinking hat and make sure you are clear on what you have to say and who you want to say it to. Now is the time.