Best Consulting Practices

Why Your Client Needs a To-Do List

If I asked you for a couple of brief case studies showing off your most successful training projects for clients, what are the chances they would sound something like this?

"I did this, then I did that, then I did this, then the client was very happy."

By "sound like this," I mean your story would capture all of your actions and put them front and center. But it might be hard to see what the client did, how they contributed to their own success by building on the training services you provided.

We vs. I

A story about what "we" did, meaning you and your client working together, is inherently more interesting. And if it is true, that is, if you can really identify actions by the client that supported your own contributions to their success, you can probably point to outcomes with some staying power.

Your opportunity to build that more compelling narrative lies at the beginning of your project, at the front end of the client relationship. From the very start, your case study has to shape up as,

Marketing Content Life Span: Consumed, Recycled, or Re-Used?

"Marketing content" refers to a wide range of things. Think of it as anything that a prospect or client could read, listen to, or watch that helps them see how working with you will benefit their business.

For the typical training consultant, this could include white papers, web pages, audio or video, newsletters, e-mail campaigns, blogs, social media, special reports, published articles, direct mail (postcards and sales letters), diagnostic tools, surveys, and more. Indeed, this embarrassment of riches is exactly the problem: there are plenty of options, so you have to choose to do some things, and not do, or at least postpone, others.

Add to that the reluctance many consultants feel about writing or creating content, about coming up with ideas of what to say and finding the time to get it in print (e- or otherwise) or audio or video, and you have a major challenge.

Treats Are a Good Trick

Halloween is a heckuva deal. Walk up to a stranger's house, knock on the door, get treats! If you grew up with this, it seems to make perfect sense, it has always been that way. But try explaining that to someone from a different culture, and you begin to realize this is an odd way to do things.

This "odd way" is a good one to adopt for your training business, however!

Make Every Day Halloween for your Prospects

There's no doubt about it, as a kid, when you walked away from that door with your sack a little heavier with goodies, you felt good.

The Charm Bracelet Approach

Charm bracelets grow in value to the owner over time, and the way that happens has lessons for reluctant marketers of training services.

You know what I'm referring to, bracelets women wear that can have little ornaments or "charms" attached to them. Usually a gift, the bracelet typically comes with the first charm attached, and then people give additional charms over time to attach to the bracelet.

And no doubt, the next time you see someone wearing a charm bracelet, you'll say to yourself, "Oh, there's a nice model for using content-driven marketing to win the trust of prospects!"

The Very Definition of Content-Driven Marketing

Content-driven marketing means repeatedly giving something of value to prospects. That's a simple sentence, but applying it to the charm bracelet can highlight where many training consultants fall short in their marketing efforts.

Would You Like An Article With That?

"Would you like fries with that?" That has become a common catch phrase of our culture, but underlying that simple question is a great sales strategy: adding something to the transaction at just the right moment, when the customer is receptive.

And if you give presentations or seminars for clients, especially for associations and conferences, you have an opportunity to add value to the client relationship by offering something more, at just the right moment.

Paving/Publishing the Way for your Presentation

While some of your training may be required by your clients, in other instances -- especially, say, your presentation at a trade association conference -- participants have some flexibility in which activities they choose to attend.

You probably leave all the promotion for your appearance to the client. They get the word out, perhaps using a descriptive paragraph you provided.

And that means you are:

1. dependent on the quality and quantity of their efforts to drive enrollment, and
2. missing an opportunity to build a stronger, more loyal, client relationship.

Blah, Blah, Blah vs. Blah, Read, Blah

It is hard for many training consultants who hate writing, or who at least find it a very slow process, to understand how written content can save them time and advance the sales process. ("Written content" could include white papers, newsletters, articles, blog posts, give away planning and diagnostic tools, web pages, and even, for our purposes, podcasts and video clips. It is any "canned" information from you or about you.)

They know, if they take the time to think about it, that selling training services is a long process of building trust among prospects. Unlike a machine or furniture or software or any of a host of things that are sold to businesses, training depends on somewhat intangible individual characteristics. Your prospects know that beyond your knowledge (which is the necessary starting point), your style, your communication skills, your enthusiasm and your ability to infect others with that enthusiasm do much to produce whatever results you will achieve for them.

And it takes time and extended contact for the prospect to get a feel for those personal qualities that are going to make all the difference.

The Blah, Blah, Blah Approach

Give Away Some Fun

Giving away content is a great way to build trust with your prospects, to help them get comfortable with you. Given the intangible nature of much of what training consultants do, we need to find ways to share "samples" of our work that demonstrate that we are at home in the client's world.

But those samples don't all have to be serious!

For example, one of my client has a pet peeve about business cliches, overworked phrases that come up again and again and that have lost their meaning. Ask this client to "think outside the box" and blood vessels stand out on his forehead.

So, in addition to white papers and tipsheets and all the rest, he could have a great give away just by pulling together his most hated phrases in a fun little document.

Wouldn't you enjoy reading that? Wouldn't it move you one step closer toward a relationship with that consultant? And wouldn't those phrases clearly demonstrate that he has spent a lot of time in the business world?