Best Consulting Practices

Heaven's Marketing Department

One thing I know: the phrase "Virtue is its own reward" was not coined by a successful salesperson!

There are many religious organizations that have drawn followers by the millions, over the ages. What they "sell" is a more virtuous lifestyle: kindness, compassion, honesty, and so on.

That's an excellent "product," but it just does not seem to be enough for most of us. Perhaps that's why Heaven's marketing department has come up with its own version of the late night infomercial cry, "But wait! There's more!"

Promoting the virtuous life often references benefits based on, shall we say, more temporal matters. There's that little item, a wonderful afterlife, for instance. This ultimate way to "redeem your reward points" for being good is an extension of something we already understand, namely, being alive. Heaven, as most people visualize it, is filled with pleasures that are extensions of our worldly life.

The Challenge of the Virtuous Sale

Many training consultants are trying to help their clients develop virtues, if you will. Training in physical safety on the job is inherently good, if it makes it less likely that an employee will suffer an injury or death on the job. Training in fiscal safety, say at banks, is also good, pointing the way to responsible management of shareholders' money.

Prospective clients really do want to be virtuous, in these and other ways, but virtue is rarely enough. They need a few "temporal benefits" to help remind them of their virtuous aims.

Safe practices in the workplace greatly reduce compensation claims, lost time and productivity, and even legal costs. Well-behaved financial management ... well, we have seen the real-world results of behaving badly, or at least sloppily, as one bank after another has disappeared in recent years.

Virtue + Benefit

Some consultants feel that emphasizing practical and financial benefits of good behavior is a shoddy compromise, that doing the right thing should be enough in itself.

Others accept the idea that a sincere interest in virtuous business practices and the right procedures is very important, but more likely to be sustained over the long haul if it is supported by some additional "carrots" in the form of clearly identifiable benefits to the business. They help their clients be smart, do good, and ultimately, do well by providing additional motivation to support virtue, and they are not ashamed to take that approach.

In the end, which type of consultant sparks more virtuous behavior among their clients?

Does Your Prospect Have a Name?

Nothing makes us feel more virtuous than announcing (to ourselves) our intentions to market and sell our services. This week, or this month, or this whatever, we are going to "e-mail prospects" and "call potential clients" and "prepare that mailing piece for prospects" and more.

So let me ask you: what are the names of those prospects and potential clients? Are you thinking of "Mary Smith" and "George Brown"? Are you talking about "the training director at XYZ" and the "owner of Small Business, LLC"?

If not, will you have anything to show for your marketing efforts, at the end of the week or month, beyond failed good intentions?

Why We Don't Make It Personal

There's a reason that so many consultants are happy planning their contacts with "prospects" but hide under the bed when contemplating "calling Mary" and "e-mailing George."

The simple fact is that vague definitions of "marketing activity" make us less accountable to ourselves for actually pulling the trigger on those activities. Preparation is important, of course, but I'm willing to bet that you know from your own experience how easy it is to prepare and prepare and prepare as a way to avoid actually doing anything.

Much of that comes down to fear of rejection, to anticipated embarrassment. When you think of doing a mailing to "prospects" it is easy to visualize some of them (albeit as shadowy, silhouette figures) responding to you. When you visualize Mary or George, it becomes easy to see them saying "No" to your overtures, and that hurts, even before it happens.

To tell the truth, that's one reason why so many consultants are pinning all their hopes on online marketing -- web sites and Twitter and Facebook. It's a matter of relief. Those things make you feel like you're getting your message in front of a lot of prospects, but it is easy to get a lot of "hits" without getting any business. It is easy to attract a lot of "tire kickers" that are not qualified to be included in your target market.

Individualize Your Targets

It takes guts, frankly, to make your marketing a more personal activity. You have to be willing to attempt to build a relationship with an individual, not with a vague pool of visitors or crowd of followers.

When you start looking for individual prospects, of course, you return to your target market, you start qualifying your prospects ... and you stop wasting a lot of effort on people who are never, ever going to pay for your services.

If you plan to take action, in the next week or two, to build your consulting business, you can put out some Tweets that might -- might! -- be seen by a good number of followers. You can send materials to lists of companies ("ABC Corp, Attention: Training Dept.").

Or you can identify three specific names of qualified prospects and choose a way of getting in front of them.

The latter approach will take a lot more work, and -- very, very important -- will be emotionally challenging. It is much more stressful, and you have to face that.

Sell Your Clients More Than Money

Some time ago, I was hired to develop training materials for a large company that was itself contracted to provide training for a healthcare product firm, located in another city. Since we were not all in the same place, a series of conference calls brought me, my direct client, and their client together to manage the project.

When the project manager was delayed for one of these calls, he put an assistant in charge. But in the end, I was the one who knew what was happening, what was needed, and I was the one who really guided the meeting.

After that meeting, and again after another one where the same thing happened, my client explicitly acknowledged that my ability to keep the project going when he wasn't available was a big benefit to them. It wasn't just avoiding a delay. It was that the project manager could have confidence that I would represent his views accurately and professionally to their client in all my interactions with anyone involved in the project.

In other words, the benefit was not just "productivity" or some kind of "output" that had financial ramifications.

Intentions and Goals, Resolutions and Plans

"Choose bold targets for your business!"

"Embrace ambitious goals, challenge yourself!"

"Think big!"

You get this advice a lot, and it is good, as far as it goes. Mostly, it is an antidote to just drifting along without any real direction. And this advice usually comes with standard hints about measurable and realistic goals, and so on.

he problem is, too many of us are setting goals for, say, the next business year, but we are not really making specific plans to achieve them. And without the plans, you should expect next year's review of your list of goals to be a disappointing affair.

Getting There

One problem is that often goals, being "big and ambitious," are long term targets, and few consultants manage to build a schedule of activities and an arsenal of tools that operate in the short term to achieve progress.

Excited by these bold visions, we set up targets across the field, but then we do not bother with any bows or arrows. We just admire the targets all year, hoping that by the sheer power of inspiration, they will change the way we market and sell our services.

Good luck with that!

Rethinking "Measurable"

Your Marketing "Baby Steps" Are Not "Babyish" Enough!

Marketing and selling services often seems like an overwhelming task for many a training consultant. That's one reason we avoid marketing activities. We quickly feel in over our heads, or lost among options and "to-do" items, and we find something else to do instead.

Common wisdom suggests that breaking that huge burden -- marketing yourself -- down into small steps, and then knocking them off one by one is the way to go.

But my experience, in my own work and with the consultants who are my clients, is that this "baby steps" approach often fails.

And that's usually because the baby is too big!

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie ...

Why You Should Keep the Snail in your Marketing Mail

However you get the word out to prospects (and customers) about your training business, there's a good chance you think the days of real, physical mail are long gone. But if you are relying entirely on electronic methods to deliver your message, you could be making a big mistake.

Mail Is Valued

We assume that because the volume of physical mail is declining, the value of mail is also declining, but that's just not the case. Both soft and hard data point to the value people place on receiving items in the mail.

One survey showed that a little over one-third of businesses asked thought consumers "value their mail," but when the consumers themselves were surveyed, two-thirds of them said it had value. Businesses are abandoning mail, as one marketing strategy, faster than their recipients are.

Consider:

Marketing Your Training Business: Education Vs. Execution

Are you disappointed, even frustrated, with your past marketing/selling efforts? Do you seem to be trapped in a cycle where you "commit" to more deliberate marketing efforts, where you even boost your activity for a while, only to find yourself at your next quarterly or annual or whenever you review your business results, back where you started?

If you want to make your next review of your marketing efforts more satisfying, a little learning can certainly help if you learn about the right thing. Do you need:

1. Learning about marketing options, strategies, methods, and so on?
2. Learning about how to get yourself to do things you don't want to do?

Ignorance: Fact or Excuse?