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FREE Practice Management Black Paper for Management Consulting Firms 
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Tools, Tips and Resources for Consulting Firms
This Tool Shed contains information, tools, templates, concepts and ideas that most often fly in the face of well-established orthodoxy. So, unless you are willing to have your thinking seriously challenged and your beliefs provoked, you'd better paddle off to some more peaceful waters, and not waste any of your precious time at this site.
However keep this in mind from Mark Twain: "The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."
This whole Tool Shed is written by an ignorant antagonist to other ignorant antagonists, who have the vision to see the edge, and the courage get there to shape their futures and to realise their dreams. And to do that you must not wield your sword just like everyone else.
If you decide to stay, all I ask you is just to suspend your judgement and hold back on comments like "tried it, didn't work" or "my industry doesn't work that way", or the most dangerous sentence in the English language that has ruined so many businesses and lives: "I know that". As one of my mentors says at his workshops and seminars, "You know it if you live it". After all, it is not what you do, but how you do it that makes the real difference. There is always space for improvement.
Every truth passes through three distinct stages: First it is ridiculed. Then it is opposed violently. Finally, it is accepted as being evident. If you read something here, and you say to yourself "maybe", then implement it on a small scale.
Just try it for a few days or weeks on a small scale, and monitor your results. Forget stories, excuses and the typical "too busy" bullshit. As the Nike slogan says: "Just do it". If it works, keep it, if not then toss it and move on. Just keep taking action. Look, Babe Ruth did not become the Home Run King by quietly sitting in a corner, being busy preparing for the earth-shattering event. He kept striking out at that ball and some worked out nicely.
Published Articles in Magazines
Small Business Canada - 20 Fantabulous Ways to Raise and Safeguard Professional Fees. Read article here.
Forum - Year End is Coming: Does That Mean It's Client Abandoning Time Again? Read article here.
RainToday - 10 Ways To Increase Your Fees And Improve Your Performance Part 1. Read article here.
RainToday - 10 Ways To Increase Your Fees And Improve Your Performance Part 2. Read article here.
Forum - Hiring the Right Dudes or Dudettes for Occasional Project Work. Read article here.
Forum - Time vs. Value: Which One Do You Get Paid for? Read article here.
BC Business - Cracking the Billable Hours Ceiling. Read article here.
Business Services West - Stop Time-Based Fee For Service Professionals. Read article here.
Business Services West - Ten Ways to Increase Client Value, While Reducing Your Time and Effort of Delivering It. Read article here.
Special Reports, E-books, White Papers, Black Papers
Getting Started In Consulting For New Immigrants In Canada...
Moving to a new country and starting a new life and career always present some difficulties. Just think of it. You set your eye on a career you wanted to pursue. Then you got on the path to get the relevant education and experience. Then you graduated, and then decided to move into a new country.
Then having landed in the new country you realise that your credentials are not recognised. So, you have two options in the new country:
1. Either you go back to school and start re-learning what you've already learnt before and pay a small fortune for another fancy certificate. And then you hope that with local credentials, life gets easier. Or...
2. You unceremoniously appoint yourself as an expert in your field, acquire some clients and start charging them for your knowledge to solve their problems and to earn a living.
I have gone through the immigration process twice. First, when I defected to the United Kingdom from the then still communist Hungary as a penniless, English-less refugee in 1988, and then when I moved to Canada in 1998. At that time I arrived in Canada with a few more pennies in my pocket, but also with a bundle of certificates from the UK, which the Canadian "institution" plainly refused to recognise.
In this booklet you find some specific ideas to start your own consulting practice in Canada. Some stuff applies to British Columbia only, but most of what you read can be used all across Canada. Follow the link to download your copy of Getting Started In Consulting For New Immigrants In Canada.
Buyer's Guide for Consulting Services...
Hiring a consultant is always a big decision for buyers. The question is always whether or not the collaboration with the consultant will be a good investment for a lucrative return or just another expense. There are many books written on the legalities of working with consultants. This buyer's guide is more about the soft issues, like attitudes, mindsets and behaviours when seeking outside help.
At the end of the day you can have the best legally brilliant contract but a legal document won't buy another person's commitment and dedication to your success. And the traditional "procurement" approach to hire consultants is just an early call for disaster. Yes, legally everything may be in place, but emotionally you have to adversaries trying to screw each other wherever and whenever they can.
This booklet outlines how to collaborate with consultants not merely how to demand certain number of hours of work and a certain pounds of deliverables from them. Follow the link to download the guide here.
Scientific Advertising
by Claude Hopkins
Once upon a time in the early 20th century there was a man who was an expert at increasing almost any business' sales. His name was Claude Hopkins. And in today's hyper-competitive world of commerce his advice is even more relevant than it has ever been before. His great secret to acquiring new business was to educate the market and prospects.
You can no longer just walk in, scream "Buy my stuff. It's the best", and walk out. You have to take time and effort to educate your prospects about how they'll be better off by using your services, so they can attach a perceived value to your offer.
The problem with many professional services providers' marketing today is that they approach the topic from the wrong end. They want to "get".
"How can I get their money?"
"How can I get them as new clients?"
"How can I sell them something?"
And using this idiotic "what can I get" process, they often end up alienating themselves from the marketplace.
When it comes to marketing your services, this book is a must read. It neatly summarises the approach and the mindset you must acquire in order to attract business instead of chasing it. Anyone who is involved in promoting any kind of business must read this book and implement the principles. Follow the link to download your copy of Scientific Advertising.
Why Most Consultants Consistently and Persistently Undercharge for their Services... and What to Do about It
The difference between and contractors and consultants
How time-based fees make consultants overworked and underpaid
Six reasons holding consultants back from raising their fees
Five detrimental aspects of time-based fees
Four conceptual mistakes about fees
Ten steps of establishing your value...and getting paid for it.
Follow the link to download a copy of Why Consultants Consistently and Persistently Undercharge.Articles, Wonderings, Ponderings, Hallucinations and Incidental Brain Farts
Resources on Client Acquisition
The blunt and naked reality is that many consulting firms are breathtakingly lazy, lousy, ignorant and impotent marketers. They are bottomachingly good at what they do, but nipplepiercingly hopeless at promoting and sell their expertise even if their lives depended on it. They get so busy doing client work, until the dreaded feast and famine knocks on the door and now the firm goes into a tailspin.
As management guru, Tom Peters says, "without marketing you're nothing". Based on this statement, it is important to set time, money and effort aside to constantly market your services. But by marketing I don't mean chasing people like a peddler. I do mean creating gravity which attracts buyers to you the way honey attracts bears, so you can pick and choose who you want to do business with.
- Template to Calculate Your Daily Rates (MS Excel File)
- Template to Calculate Your Performance Ratios (MS Excel File)
- Three Elements of Creating the Right Buying Environment
- Some of the Most Common Client Acquisition Mistakes
- 14 Ways of Wasting Your Marketing Budget
- Ten Clients Acquisition Truths
- Some Pragmatic Lead Generation Methods
- Top Ten Benefits of Using External Client Acquisition Help
- Collaboration Fee-Splitting Calculations (MS Excel File)
- Positioning Professional Service Firms
- Ten Clients Acquisition Truths
- Seven Reasons to Pump Your Marketing Muscles Not Your Sales Muscles
- How a Dedicated Sales Force Can Bring Your Professional Firm to Its Knees
- The Hidden Dangers of Being Perceived as a Faceless Firm
- "Unjerking" Your Clientele and to Make Your Business Stress-Free
- TenDeadly Proposal Preparation Pitfalls
- The Book of Boredom, Yawn and Drab: Are You Making These Nine Fatal Mistakes in your Yellow Pages Ads?
- 18 Ways of Acquiring Higher Paying Clients
- Are You Missing These Ten Elements On Your Website's Home Page?
Resources on Consulting
Just as lack of illness is not necessarily means vibrant health, the lack of a full-time job does not mean that you are a consultant. In this section we discuss some concepts about consulting as it is different from being a contract worker (options: outsourced labourer, slave on demand, etc.), or as one of my past university students called it, situational elbow grease.
- Year End is Coming - It Is Client Abandoning Time Again
- Guaranteeing Professional Services
- Three Roles Consultants Can Take with Their Clients
- Checking Client's Commitment to Make Certain the Buyer is Ready for the Proposed Change
- Getting Clear on Clients' Expectations to Maximise Both the Client's and Consultant's Performance
- Tactics to Build High Octane Relationships
- Setting Your Professional Boundaries
- Are You an IT Consultant or a Computer Repair Person?
- The Value of Zero-Based Thinking to See the Forest Beyond the Tree
- Creating Long-Term Partnerships with Clients
- Evaluating Consulting Projects
- Building and Maintaining Your Consulting Power
- The Major Differences Between Strategies and Tactics
- The Six Basic Problems of Traditional Consulting
- 14 Ways Clients Resist to Consultants' Ideas and How to Handle Them
- Deliverables in Professional Service Businesses - Part 1: Tangibles
- Deliverables in Professional Service Businesses - Part 2: Intangibles
- Input vs. Output-Based Consulting
- Anatomy of Traditional Consulting
- Five Ways of Elevating Your Innate Creativity for Higher Value
- The Four Cs of Change, and How Easily We Can Get In the Way
- Seven Potential Conflict Sources Between Clients and Consultants
Resources on Firm Management
This section deals with various issues of growing your firm by recruiting staff. So now beyond being a professional in a certain field, you have to face the leading, managing and supporting your people in their and your success.
This section deals with various issues of growing your firm by recruiting staff. So now beyond being a professional in a certain field, you have to face the leading, managing and supporting your people in their and your success.
- Planning Potholes Professional Service Businesses Can Fall Into
- How to Foster Firm-Wide Creativity
- Nine Ways of Attracting and Retaining Loyal Professionals Who Can Sell
- The Inherent Lunacies of Human Resources Departments in Professional Service Firms
- Are You Slowly Killing Your Firm with Commission-Based People?
- Some Basic Flaws of Assessing Resumes
- Recruitment Made Simple and Effective
- - and then a Lunatic Invented Full-Time Employment
- The Fundamental Flaws of Recruiting through Headhunters
- Seven Ways to Destroy Job Satisfaction in Service Firms
- Ten Ways of Building Values in Your Firm
- Six Factors Determining Service Professionals' Productivity
- Five Indicators of a Troubled Service Firm
- How Complacency is Created in Service Firms
- Run, Hide, Even Bury Yourself or You Will Get Trained
- Ten Reasons Why You Should Keep Investing, When You Say "I Can't Afford It"
- Creating Your Advisory Board
- Four Sources of Mismanagement at Professional Service Firms
- Techniques to Become More Valuable to Clients... And Raising Your Fees Commensurably
- Are You a Service Slave (Task-Based) or a Service Professional (Value-Based)?
- Seven Distinctions for Outstanding Professional Service Firms
- Ten Real Causes of Low Morale in Professional Service Firms
- Seven Managerial Headaches in Professional Service Firms
- A Bodybuilder or an Athlete: Are You Growing Your Firm For Show or Dough?
Resources on Values and Fees
There is a huge difference between performing tasks and creating deliverables for competitive (low) fees and improving your clients' circumstances for premium fees. Are you positioned as a Timex or as a Rolex?
- How Are You Doing with Fee Objections?
- The Inherent Lose-Lose Dynamics Of Time-Based Per Diem Fees
- Service Professional or a Service Workhorse: Ten Ways of Increasing Client Value, thus Your Fees, While Reducing Your Time and Effort of Delivering Them
- Seven Pricing Considerations for Professional Services
- The Inherent Lunacies of Commonly Used Compensation Techniques
Commando Consulting Newsletter Archive
All other newsletter articles are somewhere above as articles.
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Copyright 2007 Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan & Dynamic Innovations Squad, All rights reserved. Vancouver, BC, Canada
As you grow your people, in return, so they grow your firm