strategic consultant to:  

I am developing a new series of short articles defining the characteristics required to maximize a consultant’s success, based on my work optimizing the practices of established, already-successful consultants.  Here is a preview of the articles that will appear on upcoming Fridays, beginning this week.

1. Expertise – stating your unique value
2. Confidence – working with your personal power & authority
3. Patience & Optimism – sustaining your practice through too much & too little work
4. Back up Capital – having enough to feel safe
5. Talent to pitch and close — finding and closing prospects when networking, speaking in public, when “working a room.”
6. Financial calm – maintaining your balance during the ups & downs, the “free fall” of incoming revenue
7. Public Speaking – honing your ability to speak effectively in public to attract new clients
8. Writing – in a short succinct style (everything ~ email, deal memos, contracts, articles)
9. Zen Distance – allowing your client to fail; cutting your losses on a high-maintenance prospect, moving on to substantial and well-paying work
10. Strong network of referrals – maintaining support from friends, family, colleagues, and prospects
11. Strong pipeline of prospects – maintaining your potential and repeat clients
12. Self-starting – the self-discipline to complete your client deliverables, to manage your practice, to balance your life.

I hope you will stay tuned and find these pieces of value.  You will find them also relevant to small service companies, as well as to the consulting services offered by product and SaaS companies.  I welcome your comments and conversation.

This article is one of a series on the 12 characteristics that are required to succeed as an independent consultant, based on my work with experts optimizing their consultancies.  Here is the link to the entire series.

Your expertise is not enough to ensure your success as a consultant.  You must be clear what is unique about your approach, your depth of knowledge, and (more important) your results, to differentiate yourself from all the other consultants who say they do what you do, or sound like they do what you do.  These other consultants may or may not have your expertise, or even be successful, but they are noise in your marketplace that you must overcome.

So, key to rising above this noise is defining your expertise as a unique value proposition that distinguishes you from the crowd.  This is not a simple task.  In fact, defining your value in short, simple phrases is one of the most difficult tasks, especially when you try it on your own.   I always find it easier to achieve my client’s unique value proposition than I do defining my own.  If you have 5 minutes to say it (rather than 10 seconds, or 30 seconds) you can do it.  But you don’t.  You must be succinct.

Here are some tips:

• Start by writing 3 short, simple sentences.  Not compound sentences, with extra defining clauses — only simple (Subject – Verb – Object) sentences.  Yes, you can have one adjective.
• Use simple language — no “corporate-speak,” no acronyms, no academic tone.
• State what is different about your work from others’ work.
• State the result of your work for your clients.
• Use figures, numbers, facts to define your results.
• Use active verbs and the active (not passive) tense.
• Declare your value; use “I” or “we” with confidence.
• Try it out, test it, see what responses you get, refine the message, then test again.
• Repeat this until it works.

Here’s one of my own examples:

“I’m Joey Tamer.  I consult to expert consultants to improve their consulting practices.  I have 15 unique strategies I have developed over more than 25 years in practice.  My clients generally double their revenues by Year 2, attract and close better clients, and get paid in advance.”

Of course, there is more to it than the first statement.  The system for defining your expertise and its value when prospecting or writing, or speaking in public, includes at least two more steps that are similar, that dig deeper into your value.  But each step follows these basic rules.

Good luck.

A key component to success in consulting is deeply embedded confidence — in your expertise, but even more so, in your belief in your personal value.  You must be unshakable by the behavior of your prospects and clients, by rejection or the “non-answer” to a proposal, and to the “freefall” of never being sure from where or when your next revenue will arrive.

That’s a lot of confidence.

But this confidence must go further:  it must extend to the development of your personal power, and the natural authority that shines through from that personal power.

Of course, you don’t have to have this all together in the beginning of your practice, or even after you are successful.  Most people have “noise” in their heads (that says “Nobody will pay me that!” or “Can I really deliver what I promised?”), but that noise can be trained out of you, or at least quietened enough that you recognize it as a wee voice in the corner that doesn’t mean much anymore.

So you should have the core attributes, and let your experience in the world hone that core confidence into real power over the years.

There are several reasons this deep-seated confidence is necessary for successful consulting.

• Without it, the rise and fall of your revenue will make you so nervous you will make bad choices (e.g., take any gig, even one with no margin, to re-assure yourself of gross revenue, when you should be focusing on your profitability).
• Without it, you cannot be a “contender” in the competition for work.  The more powerful competitors will take your prospective gigs from you.
• With this confidence, you will be able to “work a room” filled with strangers, sort quickly and identify your top prospective clients, and deliver your simple but compelling value proposition to them.
• With this confidence, your prospects will become clients because they want to be near you, want to share in the shine of your power and success, no matter what results you may also offer them.  Prospects like winners, and you need to seem like a winner to win the work (even if you are broke).  I call this the prospects “wanting to ride on your magic carpet” to their own success.
• With this confidence, you will be able to simply state your value-pricing (not your wages or your time & materials) and terms for upfront payment schedules, and not move from that serious price and terms.  And you will win the price for your value, because you can assert it, and because it is the price of the magic carpet ride.
• And, when working, and the client pushes the project beyond your agreed scope of work (“scope creep” this is called), you can control your work and your deliverables without succumbing to the scope creep, and protect your profit margins.  Of course you can do more work for the client, as long as there are additional fees to cover the new scope.

So, it is confidence, but it is so much more than confidence.  It is the personal power that respects the value of your expertise to the client, and the value of your self.

This article is one of a series on the 12 characteristics that are required to succeed as an independent consultant, based on my work with experts optimizing their consultancies.  Here is the link to the entire series.

Consulting as a solo entrepreneur, when you must create all your own new client work as the key rainmaker, is a tough gig.  I am surprised at the constant commitment it takes, even after 25 years of doing it.

This kind of creative work, making your own work, insists that you stay aware of market shifts, and adjust to them, often re-positioning yourself (or re-creating yourself) to meet new market demands.  Sometimes this can feel like “starting over.”

If you have no patience, you should not begin.  If you are deeply accustomed to an extensive corporate team to support the work you do (especially bringing in the work for you to do), you may not be suited to the unending diligence this kind of solo career demands.

If you are not deeply optimistic, you should re-consider this kind of work.  If you tend to the bi-polar, this work will drive you nuts.

This optimism and patience is critical to your success.  It is the secret ingredient that keeps you going when the dark days come.  Listed below are common events for the solo consultant, and you need these traits (patience and optimism) to allow these happenings to be part of your daily work.

• Prospects can take months to commit when you need the revenue.
• You can be passed over for speaking at that important national conference, waiting a full year to reach that particular audience.
• Despite your best efforts at getting paid in advance, the client may be slow to pay, hurting your cash flow.
• Folks who were eager to meet with you about your work, when you were speaking at that event, fade away and do not reconnect, victims of “conference fever.”
• Colleagues, prospects and clients can be so busy that it seems they are being rude, or ignoring the plans you made together, re-scheduling at the last minute, or simply not answering your emails and phone calls.

This is a grim but realistic perspective on consulting, which of course is also filled with the rewards of freedom and welcome and celebrity, and your clients saying “Thank you — I couldn’t have done it without you.”

But you must stay optimistic, upbeat, and patient with the world to get to those rewards.

Consulting has its ups and downs.  Even long-time successful consultants can find themselves with minimal or no work, for an extended period.  There are economic and market shifts we just do not control, and they have a direct effect on us.

To succeed at consulting, you must have some source of back-up capital.  When starting out, I suggest coverage of at least a full year’s expenses for your business (which may have low overhead) and your personal life.  Ongoing, when you have momentum in your market and have established your practice, you may find that six months of coverage is enough.

Less than 6 months’ coverage is scary.  Less than 12 months’ coverage if you are just beginning to consult, and must create your positioning and find your first clients, will not sustain your early practice.

How do you find this back-up capital?

• Perhaps you stay at your job while you get started establishing yourself, beginning to speak at conferences, creating your initial outreach materials.
• Perhaps you establish your first retainer client (this might be your current employer) before you begin on your own.
• Perhaps you have a supportive spouse who will carry you through the first year.
• Once established, you create a strict discipline of saving capital in an investment account that can be liquid within 3 days, despite its return on investment.  This account should cover a minimum of 3 months’ cash needs for you and the business. Then establish a second account (which can be liquidated less quickly and perhaps earn a better return) which should cover another three to nine months of your needs.
• Buy disability insurance.  If you cannot create your revenue, you must be covered somehow.  Investigate the best plans for your circumstances with a knowledgeable agent who understands small business as well as disability insurance.
• Buy long-term care insurance.  Combine this with your disability insurance, as the insurance company can determine the extent of your disability that prevents you from working, and pay a partial amount of your coverage.  Adding long-term care, which covers medical care (in-home or otherwise) when you cannot do for yourself, is the added protection you need to return to your practice.  Get the long-term care coverage even if your partner or spouse is available to care for you if you are injured.

I realize these suggestions are costly.  But then, if you really mean to create wealth from consulting, you are not just “trying it out.”  You are building a sustainable business.  Treating yourself and your business with the respect necessary to protect it, is key to your long-term success.

“Rainmakers” make rain — they bring in the vital resources to keep things growing — in this instance, clients and billable work.  In sales jargon, “you eat what you kill.”

If you cannot make the rain come, or bring in the food to eat, that is, if you cannot pitch and close your prospects to make them paying clients, then do not become a consultant.

A significant majority of your time consulting is spent pitching and closing (including networking, hunting, and screening your prospects first).  If you are not comfortable “selling,” even high-end, “negative” selling wherein you bring the client to you without chasing after him or her, then you will not be able to successfully consult on your own.

Here is what you must be able to do, in comfort, with confidence, again and again, to network and to “work a room” ~

• Walk into a room filled with professional strangers, confidently, and join a group or an individual and begin a conversation.
• Determine through initial conversation if the group contains any one who might be a prospect for your work.  If not, politely move away to join another group.
• Create conversation that will focus your interest in those strangers who may be prospects, and lead the conversation to business, in particular to your unique value proposition.
• Screen the potential prospect to know if he or she is in a position to need your services, and to receive the message of your value proposition, and if he or she is the decision-maker or check-writer for your services.
• If possible, isolate this most likely prospect from the group for a deeper talk.
• Create easy conversation, low-key, not “salesy,” about your work, the value you deliver to your clients, and a success story or two, without dominating the conversation.  This requires that your value proposition is prepared as a series of sound-bites that build interest and more detail.
• Lead the prospect to ask for more information about your services, and to ask for a meeting to follow up this conversation.
• Follow up contact with the prospect the next day to move the sale forward to a close that brings you billable work.

Now, all of these skills –defining your unique value proposition, working a room, screening the prospect quickly, leading the conversation in a low-key way, creating interest, and following up — all these skills can be learned with the proper training.

What is more difficult to learn is the confidence to self-promote, the ease of talking to strangers, the intrinsic belief in your own value which you will pitch, and the ability to “ask for the sale” (to close), without showing need, without chasing the prospect.

Many of my colleagues are highly skilled and competent in their expertise, and they know it.  But they cannot work a room, cannot lead the conversation into a low-key pitch, and cannot ask for the sale.  They need a rainmaker — some partner or associate to whom they can be a “sub-contractor” to the work that person brings in.  This makes them dependent on another for their livelihood.  Or they should consult in a big, branded consulting firm, where they are assigned projects brought in by the branded firm.  That condition loses both the freedom and the wealth creation available to solo entrepreneurs who consult.

So, much of this can be learned, but if you know yourself to be unable to close, choose another path to using your expertise.

A key to success in consulting lies in simplifying your communication:  no corporate-speak, no academic-speak, just subject-verb-object like you learned in second grade.  Your prospects and clients weary of plowing through your long complex sentences, voiced in the passive tense, with dependent clauses losing their subjects and objects.  They stop reading.  They don’t want to talk to you anymore.

You can un-learn your bad behavior in speaking and writing.  You can achieve simple sentences that take responsibility for what you are saying, promising, and concluding.  It may take some practice, and it certainly requires the discipline of reviewing what you have written, and editing to simplify, until these good behaviors are part of your mind-set.

Here are some guidelines.

1. Return to “See Spot Run.”  When you learned to create a sentence, you were taught to establish the subject (who was doing what), a verb (what the subject was doing), and an object (to what or whom the subject was acting upon).  Remember?  Well, start there.
2. Avoid the passive tense.  If you stick to “see spot run” you will begin with your subject and follow with an active verb.  “Dick showed Jane the letter.”  With this sentence the reader knows who did what with whom.  In the passive tense, the reader would read, “The letter was shown to Jane by Dick.”   The passive tense, when content becomes more complicated, tends to obscure the responsibility of who will promise what to whom, who will be held accountable for certain actions.  In business, the passive tense is the language of avoidance and obscurity, which is why you should avoid it.
3. Use action verbs.  Action verbs are about “doing” and “committing” yourself to a behavior, promises or results.  Say ” I will deliver ….” not “I would deliver…” or “I may include…”   The words “would” and “may” imply that your deliverables  are conditional on some other action (even if there is no other action), whereas the “will” is a direct commitment.  Only use these conditional phrases when you mean to limit your commitment.  And then state clearly the condition of the limits of your commitment.
4. Write shorter sentences.  It is not sophisticated to write long, complex sentences.  You do not prove your intelligence or your education this way.  Laying out in simple short sentences what value you offer, what promises you will make, what deliverables you provide when… this approach gains the confidence of your prospects and clients.
5. When writing a list of values or deliverables, use bullets.  If you are addressing three or more items in a list, create bullets or a numbered list.  This allows your reader to quickly understand what is being said.
6. When writing a list of values or deliverables, repeat the preposition before each item.  If bullets or numbered lists are for some reason unacceptable, and the list is better contained within a long sentence, be diligent about your handing of the preposition that precedes each item — repeat it for clarity.  For example, “The Ongoing Support phase will result in new procedures to reduce document-processing time, to ensure greater reliability of data collection, and to increase profitability.”

The secret here is to be so clear in your language that your reader’s mind never stops absorbing your information (your pitch, your deal, your conclusions or your recommendations), and that your reader never hesitates and thinks “What does that really mean?” or “Am I being tricked here?”  These hesitations are the seeds of distrust.

Your prospect or client may not be able to articulate why your sentence structures and careful use of grammar are effective.  But the clarity of your presentation, written or spoken, will reassure your client that you will do what you say, and that you are trustworthy and honest.

Achieving and maintaining your core “zen distance” from your clients and their decisions may be the most difficult skill you will learn over your years as a consultant.

This distance (sometimes called “disinterestedness” by spiritual folks) allows you to serve your client in the most supportive manner, without judgement, even when your client chooses a path you do not approve of, or which may cause the business to fail.  Does this sound contradictory?  Should you not be rushing in to save the company from its leadership’s wrong direction?

Actually, no.  The zen of it all is to remember that you are the consultant.  Your position is to advise, however strongly you make your point.  What you need to remember is:  this is not your company.  It is your client’s company.  And it is your client’s right to risk and fail as he or she chooses.

Yes, you should make your point.  Loudly if you like.  I tell my clients when they start with me, “If we should disagree, I will insist on my viewpoint and back it up until I know you have heard me and have considered my opinion.  After that, whatever decision you make, I will back you up to the very end — succeed or fail.”  Of course, it must be an ethical and legal decision, but beyond that — my job is to support my client and the path chosen for the company.  And to help it succeed on that path. Why should I think that my opinion of the risk and reward is more savvy than the CEO’s opinion?

My company (and yours) is a consulting practice. We can make whatever choices we like about our practices.

So you have two things to learn about zen distance:

• the first is to communicate clearly with your client, and then support whatever decision is made — cheerfully and in good faith (not in resentment, at your client or turned back upon yourself).   This is discipline.
• The second is to be at peace with yourself when your vision of the company’s future is not put into play.  This may be more difficult than the first discipline, as you must get out of your own way (your own ego’s way) and step back, confronting that you are not the primary mover of your client’s success — that you are an adviser.  You chose to advise and support, not to direct.  You chose to be the shadow, or the number 2 player, not the leader.

You will confront the need for this zen distance again and again, especially if your practice involves you deeply in your client’s business and success, and personally with the team.  This is the most rewarding kind of consulting, and the most challenging.

Maintain a strong network of referrals — avoid erratic work flow.

Most consulting gigs come through someone telling someone else about you and your expertise.  This talking about you constitutes a “warm” introduction and becomes a referred prospect.  Without a strong network of the appropriate people who know potential prospects that meet your ideal client profile, your work is likely to be erratic.  An erratic work flow with long periods of little or no revenue is the killer of your profit margins and your ability to create wealth.

Find the appropriate referral sources: a 5-point profile.

You may know lots of people in your industry, but most of them are not referral sources — they are the source of “buzz.”  Buzz is good general marketing, but buzz is simply a supporting factor in your attracting and closing new clients.

The appropriate referral source is most likely

1. your peer who works in an adjacent part of your market space (or better still, your market niche),
2. providing other services (or products)
3. to a similar client base.  It helps if these colleagues are
4. senior or on par with your expertise, and that they
5. function as trusted advisers.  Then they can recommend you to their clients.

So, look for your referral sources among those who fit this 5-point profile.

Select and assess your networking groups and private referral sources.

Some consultants join networking groups that gather specifically to learn about the other members’ expertise  (and be understood in return), and to exchange referrals.  Other groups are less specific in their expectations for referrals, but allow you to become well-known by a dozen or more of your peers. Generally, a colleague who is a member must introduce you in to such groups.

When selecting such groups to join, ask your colleague to report on the kind of members you will be meeting, and if they meet your profile.  Visit various groups a couple of times without committing.  Take care to see if the members meet the 5-point profile.  Remember that it can take a year or more to know if such a group will be of use to you.

At the end of the first year (or each year), review how many referrals the group provided, and how many of those referrals fit your ideal client profile, and how many you were able to close to become your clients.  Also, of those who became clients, what quality of client came from those referral sources — in terms of length and amount of contract, high-maintenance, margin, and retainer-based or repeat business.

Beyond established groups, of course, is your own collection of colleagues who understanding your work, including (most importantly) your satisfied current and former clients.  You must stay in touch with this group through regular contact by phone, email or other contact points.  You should manage this group and your connection to it as part of your marketing and prospecting outreach.  Use whatever tools (databases, newsletters,  “trinkets” or other sharing, phone calls or coffee meetings) are most suitable to your practice.

Make it easy for others to refer you.

Beyond knowing how to “work the room” with referral sources (as you do with prospects), you must also do your part to stay “top of mind” with your referral network.  This means mastering your unique value proposition into a memorable soundbite, and having two or three very short examples of your successes to share with those who will refer you.  These materials must include a word or two (no more) defining your target clients.  Defining your own soundbites is perhaps the most difficult of your marketing challenges, but it can be done.  The secret is to simplify.

Establish an ongoing discipline.

Like most outreach, these tactics require an ongoing discipline of refining your value proposition and soundbite, managing your outreach to your private and group networks, and continuing to study and refine the profiles of your target referral sources, and your ideal client profile.  This discipline is one of the key characteristics of maintaining your successful consulting practice.

Every strong consulting practice maintains a strong pipeline of prospects so that new work is always pending and closing.  As this new work layers on top of your existing client work, you can project your revenues, profit margins and work schedules into the future.  You can assess how much more marketing is required to fill the pipeline, and how much closing you need to do with the prospects that are pending.

Deals close when the client is ready to close, not when your schedule allows, or when you need the revenue.  Often too much work threatens to overwhelm your ability to fulfill it.  This seeming lack of control can worry you, either from too little pending work or from too much.

But worry is of no help, and discipline is useful here.  A few recommendations:

1. Control & manage your pipeline.  This means you should establish some form of tracking “who/ what/ when/ last contact/ next action,” and refer to this tracking document regularly.  Many of my clients use an Excel spreadsheet, others use an Intranet established just for the two of us, and others track on their calendars.  It doesn’t matter how you maintain it — it matters that is is always up-to-date, and that you reference it every day to make certain you are managing the tasks required to close the prospects.
2. Build templates to ease each step.   Be sure to create templates that cover many of your responses to your prospects, and the materials your share with them –particularly standard deal memos, and proposals or contracts you write for them, which can be modified for each new situation.  One of my clients spent 4 hours on each proposal before he began working with me: when I showed him what he needed to write to get the work, and helped build his templates, he could send a proposal in less than 30 minutes (sometimes in 15 minutes).  Over time you should build templates for each of your expert specialties.
3. Maintain the discipline of checking in, updating and responding to the action items on your pipeline every day.   This discipline can challenge you, especially when you are busy with current client work, but it must be done.  Failing to maintain your efforts to close new work is the downfall of many consultants:  those who do not market and close new work while the current work is in hand lose their profit margins (for the year or longer) and often negotiate badly when they are out of work and needing the next gig.  Don’t let this be you.  I find this is the most common error of consultants with mediocre or failing practices.
4. Do not worry that too much work will come in all at once.  In the 25 years of my successful practice, I have only once been booked at 110% billable time.  And I got through it.  What happens when too much work is pending, is that the schedules you do not control take care of the threat for you.  The prospect is not ready to begin when scheduled; one more budget review is delaying the project; a re-organization threatens the entire project until new management can get on board; the urgency expressed turns out to be panic that is not necessary to the real time-frame for delivery.  Be available, but let the client’s needs run their course.
5. Take control of the time-frame for starting.   And, you can control (or delay) your start date by carefully setting your proposed start-date at a certain number of days or weeks following signature on the contract and receipt of the initial up-front payment.  This way, you begin to control the calendar once the deal is actually real.

Working your private and referral network to gain access to new prospects, maintaining regular outreach in public speaking and publishing, and then managing your prospect pipeline will create a flow of work that becomes continuous.  This steady flow of work is the beginning of real success in your practice.