ConsultingWithoutSecrets

From SPA Wiki

Workshop

Organizers: WillemvandenEnde, MarcEvers

Participants: RachelDavies, DuncanMcGregor, JohnDaniels, GojkoAdzic, MarekSvoboda, ChrisMorris

Pictures of session and session outcomes 1

Issues and questions we identified:

Process Management

• How to get long term relations with a few large clients?
• Finding time/opportunity to follow up contacts
• Judging the price for consultancy
• Closing business after making a proposal
• Very long sales cycle
• Associate agreements
• Do you measure & track effectivity of marketing
• Becoming an independent consultant
• Do you invest money in marketing?
• How do you organise "Word of Mouth" networks
• How to make better use of my contacts
• Not overcommitting / too busy to maintain network
• [url=http://www.allcustompapers.com]term papers[/url]
• research paper

call center outsourcing

Package it as a Product

• Course customisation
• Newsletter is a help
• Use Purchase Orders instead of contracts - this saves you and your clients the hassle of having to deal with their legal department (and your lawyers). This might create tension, because you are selling a non-commodity as a commodity. On the other hand, this may be a benefit - not everyone in the client's organization needs to know that they are not buying a commodity (e.g. makes life a lot easier for the accounting staff). See also Process Management.

Lead Generation

• How to get more leads
• How to find more clients
• Word of mouth or something more organised
• Where to find people interested in soft skills
• How to market soft skills training
• What is the minimal marketing pack for your activity / prospect
• Dealing through 3rd parties
• Is email the right medium for managing contacts?
• The demise of independent publishing

Results

Lead Generation

Sources of Lead Generation.

Consensus was you need to do several of them, which ones depend partially on your preferences and partially on your target audience and market. One is not enough. Some of these sources can re-inforce each other (e.g. twittering and a blog or book). Effectiveness of these can be difficult or impossible to measure, and some only start working after a long time - it is a complex system.

• WordOfMouth Seems to be key - can not do without. Works well for consultants, because it is reputation based. Asking for a meeting with your clients' boss seems to be a bad idea - higher ups will call you if there is sufficient WordOfMouth in the company. Something that does seem to work well in general is ask your client 'can you introduce me to your peers?'.
• Referrals
• Conferences
• Blog
• Newsletter
• Website
• Brochure
• Books - use Lightning Source [+http://www.lightningsource.com 2] for serious printing on demand. Lulu.com may be nice for brochures, but for serious stuff they are too difficult to contact.
• Open Source Software
• Magazines - seem to have declining effect, no new print magazines, unlike e.g. in the ObjectTechnology days; printed publications: Dr. Dobbs, Better Software, Methods & Tools, Cutter Consortium, InfoQ, IEEE
• Online Ads? - consensus seemed to be that this was only useful for services you can sell globaly. One participant suggested major online ad services might overcharge - he used rare keywords and they still charged 2 pound 5 per click...
• PressReleases
• Events - organizing conferences, or
• Sponsorships / Partnerships with conferences - QWAN is trying it this year and last, not sure about the effect yet.
• Agents - for proper consulting this does not seem to be a valuable channel, most agencies only want to sell contractors for 40 hours a week, does not fit well with e.g. coaches who come in occasionally. Agencies just do not seem to get that.
• Being a media expert (e.g. get on the directory of a newspaper and get called when government IT projects run over budget)
• Partnering with other companies - seems very difficult
• Twitter - noticed during and after SPA many participants created accounts and/or connected on Twitter.
• Podcasts
• Christmas Cards - hand signed with a custom [url=http://www.superiorpapers.com/order.php]essay paper[/url] design (unicef cards are not that effective) - get professional design for this. Gojko mentioned a company that sent personalized calendars with your name in the image of every month, many people had those on their desks the entire year.
• being an editor for a magazine can work wonders for your network
• building long term relationships: after your project is finished, keep on seeing the organization as a client; build and keep a range of contacts withing the client organization
• handing out annual awards
• http://www.hsconsultants.net | http://idiotsandgenious.blogspot.com

Some parts of the side were missing in the photos - anyone know what it said on the sides of this flipchart?

And do not forget to ask yourself who you are marketing to.

Marketing Materials

• T-shirts for you (handing out t-shirts to others is probably not a good idea, but wearing some kind of company or topical t shirt to conferences might work. We were not much in favour of Corporate polo shirts and then wearing them as work attire, as many american companies seem to do).
• Mugs
• Brochure
• Business cards (everybody on the table had them, so they seem to be good for something)
• Direct sales marketing versus awareness
• Collect quotes/recommendations from clients

Process Management

So you have a contact, a lead or a client. What do you do? And how do you what you do when you are busy?

• Proposals with an expiration date, and a cover letter that says when you will call for follow up
• Ask for a reply on receipt, e.g. "Would you be so kind to send me a reply when you've received this". Automated receipt and/or read confirmation was seen by most as annoying. This is also an entry for further contact
• Ask for the name of the person calling - right at the beginning or at the end of the call (learned from marketing folks).
• Send an e-mail to invite for a call (if you do not like calling and if you want to respect the time and energy of your clients. Depends on the person - some clients prefer phone over e-mail, some do not like the phone at all).
• Say your name clearly and slowly, with a pause between your first and last name.
• When you receive e-mail, create a draft response immediately then file the incoming e-mail in a place that makes sense to you. Creating the final response is then a lot easier (and "draft %2b send later" might prevent overly rushed reactions).
• Fees: when a client requests a lower fee, decline, don't engage with that client
• Pass on leads to others and ask a finders fee - generating and managing leads is a lot of work

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