Commando Consulting, September 2011

Are You Rendering Your Consulting Services As A Slave Or As A Real Professional?

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Synopsis

Talk to some consultants and they tell you that getting into consulting was one of the best decisions of their lives.

Talk to some others, and they tell you that getting into consulting was one of the biggest mistakes they've ever made, and they wish they'd taken a mind-numbing bureaucrat job in a government office with exalted titles, union protection, obscene benefits and zero requirements for performance and accountability.

I know several consultants who made it as parts of large "consulting" firms, but when they left and started their own firms, they soon landed in some financial hot water because they didn't know how to acquire clients.

Some got some clients and worked their arses off, turning their careers into 24/7 non-stop drudgery. So, now we discuss, how solo consultants and boutique consulting firms can operate as real consulting professionals and avoid being treated like consulting slaves.

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1940 was an interesting year in Norman Breakey's life. In that year, the innovative Canadian invented the paint roller.

Although it was a great invention, and it increased both the effectiveness and the quality of painting, the labour unions quickly got it banned. The unions feared that as the roller would become popular, the roller-less and less competent union painters would become unemployed and unemployable.

This is interesting because this is the kind of change we can see in the consulting industry too.

Consulting professionals use their proverbial paint rollers, while consulting slaves work harder and harder with their brushes, but still failing to command the same level of trust and respect as consulting professionals.

The good news is that consultants don't have their unions, so they are not bullied to share their self-created wealth with overpaid under-producers just because it's their birthright to receive outrageous compensation for their pathetic performance. Yes, there are some exceptions, but in general people join labour unions in search of state protection, because deep down they know they are breathtakingly incompetent and have no chance of survival in the free market economy.

And since there can be a huge difference between being a consulting professional and a consulting slave, I think it's worth taking a closer look.

Just think about it...

What difference would it make to you in your business and life if you could earn your current income using less of your time and effort? Or you could earn higher income using the same amount time and effort?

I often ask consultants these two questions...

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how busy are you, that is how fast are you running on your proverbial treadmill?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how financially productive are you relative to how productive you'd like to be?

In most cases, the answer to the first question is between 9 and 11. Yes, 11. It means, in some cases they simply cannot do any more.

But the answer to the second question is only between 3 and 5.

Then I ask...

"If you are already maxed out on your time to render more service, what are you planning to do to push your earnings any higher?"

The Separation Of Consulting Professionals And Consulting Slaves

Yes, it is happening every day. Consultants believe just because they are busy, they are productive too.

Well, not exactly.

Many of them are wasting a lot of time and effort on activities like preparing proposals for tyre-kickers and volunteering to attend "brain picking" sessions with self-important opinion-makers with exalted titles who have neither ability nor inclination to hire consultants, but love collecting free information for storage or in-house implementation. Sadly, the conventional wisdom has become that consultants have to bend over backwards for clients and jump as clients whistle. And this is exactly how consulting slaves operate.

Essentially, consulting slaves are hired to perform certain tasks and are compensated in proportion with the amount of manual labour they put in. Their operation is task and activity-based.

The other group is the consulting professionals who are hired to help their clients to achieve amazing things with as little effort as possible, and being compensated for the perceived value received by their clients.

And the two groups of professionals operate drastically differently.

It is common practice among consulting slaves that they accept any client who throws money at them.

The problem is that many of those low-end prospects...

• ...are not terribly serious about working with you. They expect you to put up a dog and pony show and they push you around for reducing your fees
• ...fail to regard you as a consulting professional partly because of the way of conducting your business, and partly because of themselves. What we see in others is a direct reflection of what's in us. They perceive you as a low-end vendor because that's what they are.

The problem is that consulting slaves hang in for dear life with any client as long as money can be earned. They should ditch these bottom-feeder clients faster than a speeding bullet but, instead, they hope and pray that the situation will improve some day. And it won't.

These prospects are collecting information and gathering your valuable advice, but have no intention to retain you and make a fair investment in your expertise.

The other problem is that consulting slaves are so busy doing the work and chasing new sales, that they have no time left to position themselves as sought-after authorities in their fields. They are treated as street peddlers and bazaar hucksters, and traded on price like sacks of potatoes.

Consulting slaves know and practise their tricks of getting clients by

• Chasing, hunting, hounding and wrestling anyone with money...
• Meeting anyone anywhere even if for only 10 minutes over a cup of coffee
• Building rapport
• Arguing, convincing and persuading to make the sale
• Trying to close the sale on the spot by offering discounts in fees and concessions in terms

All in all, they act like peddlers, that is, consulting slaves.

And we all know the end result: Peddlers are hated and thrown out of more offices than you can shake a stick at. Well, not always literally, but proposals that buyers don't even bother to respond to are is as bad as being thrown out of buyers' offices.

We are either a well-positioned consulting professionals sought out by great prospects, or an ill-positioned consulting slaves pounding the pavement peddling our stuff.

When your prospects perceive you as a consulting professional, not a consulting slave, they start treating you with respect, they come to your office to meet you and won't even try to haggle on tour fees.

Just imagine calling your dentist, requesting an appointment at your home in your favourite rocking chair, but then refusing to open your mouth when the dentist is about to start working on your teeth.

Now Let's Compare How Consulting Professionals and Consulting Slaves Sell Their Expertise

Consulting slaves sell pretty much like used car sales people, after all they sell time chunks to perform manual labour. They focus on products, like consulting, coaching, training, market research, sales workshop, etc.

• Focusing on tasks and deliverables
• Travelling anytime anywhere to meet prospective clients
• Wasting time on rapport building through small talk and chit-chat
• Convincing everyone that they need what you offer
• Not being willing to walk away from inappropriate prospects and projects
• Wasting time on explaining credentials and the firm's reputation
• Asking some disturbing questions to find pain, then agitating it as much as possible to close the deal
• Matching pain with tasks and products. Dwindling sales = Sales workshop. High customer attrition = CRM software
• Overcoming objections and moving towards the close
• Doing whatever it takes, including stroking the prospect's fear, shame, guilt and/or greed glands, to close the sale
• Relationship is based on tasks and performance of the service. I work FOR you, and I will perform these tasks and create these deliverables for you

This may be a fine approach to sell commodity service, but will never establish trust-based relationships. But since it's the fast lane to grab some quick buck, many consulting firms prefer that approach.

In Contrast, Here Is Service Professionals' Approach

• Accepting only clients who match their "Ideal Client" profile
• Focusing on objectives and outcomes. Process of collaboration and quality of relationship
• Asking prospects (only ones that fit the "Ideal Client" profile) to come to your office. Why? Because neither lawyers nor medical professionals do house calls. Why should you? You are not a professional visitor
• Eliminating small talk and rapport, and opening the discussion with a meaningful and deep conversation
• Politely disqualifying everyone who refuses to co-operate with you in your interview process
• Never talking about your qualifications and credentials. Let people establish their own perceptions of you through your process
• Insisting that prospects bring all of their relevant documents and a cheque for the first payment to the first meeting. No documents, no cheque, no meeting
• Starting asking deep and uncomfortable questions, and start prioritising their objectives. Starting building trust, not rapport
• Using reality and core values to motivate prospects to move into action. If their own core values cannot inspire prospects to take action, then it shows you care more about their success than they do, thus you should politely end the meeting and abandon the prospect once and for all
• Asking only once to take action, and politely disengaging if there is any objection. It shows lack of commitment
• Closing is a natural part of the process, coming from the prospect not from you
• Relationship is based on the process of collaboration and the transparency of the relationship. I work WITH you, and WE create the projected results TOGETHER

Now you may say that you ask an awful lot from people to conform to your process.

Exactly. You ask them all this in their best interest. Can you imagine telling your doctor that you have changed your mind and you want him to perform your heart surgery in your home on your dining table with your favourite bread knife? How would you feel if your surgeon agreed?

People achieve certain results in their businesses and lives by adhering to certain processes. We call them habits. So, by asking them to conform to your process, you ask them to move beyond the limitation of their current processes. That alone is a great value.

Remember you are in the service business. The more clients you have, the less service you can offer to each one. Prospecting for new business eats up both a part of time you are supposed to serve existing clients and some of your personal and family time.

How would you like to work with a select group of clients whom you can schedule fairly loosely, so you can have a fulfilling and meaningful personal life too?

How would you like to reduce your workload while increase your margins?

The relationship between income and free time is another differentiating factor between consulting slaves and consulting professionals. As the years go by, if you are a consulting professional, both your income and free time are going up.

Otherwise you can end up suffering from the workhorse syndrome. You achieve more by pulling heavier loads every year. That is, as the years go by, you're getting busier and busier, working harder and harder to usually earn just marginally higher income than a year before.

Yes, many consultants appear to be financially successful. They just have a couple of divorces, heart attacks and nervous breakdowns behind them, carry an extra 30-50lbs around their waists, an extra 30-50 beats per minute on the heart rates and a 10-15 years of shortage on their lives.

They miss a couple of family anniversaries, some vacations with their spouses and some school events with their kids.

They don't even have their own lives. Their existence - no, it is not a life - is dictated to them by their clients, calendars, mobile phones and emails.

Sadly, for consulting slaves the only way to be successful is to be a workaholic.

Now You May Ask About The Payoffs Of Being A Value-Based Consulting Professional

• Fulfilling your deepest core values
• Earning higher personal income
• Enjoying more time off with your family and friends
• Enjoying better physical health
• Reaching your spiritual fulfilment
• Becoming a better parent and/or spouse
• Being highly respected both in your industry, community and target market
• Having a better sense of achievement and pride
• Leading a significant life (expressing yourself who you truly are) not just an impressive lifestyle (impressing others with possessions you own or use)

I believe being a real pro is more beneficial in the long run, but being hyper busy is hyper impressive in a society that promotes hyper busy-ness.

Erroneously though, but most people equate busy-ness with success. When people see a guy talking on two phones, texting on a third one, checking his email on his laptop and Skyping on his iPad, society calls him supper successful.

The fact that he's late on his mortgage payment again and missed another car payment go unnoticed. He's busy so he's successful.

And even when he's at home, he's not at home but at work. Yes, physically he's in his house but his focus is on his work... at his family's expense.

And just as a good symphony is made up by sounds and pauses, a good life is made up by work and breaks from work. The funny thing is that this is when we get our best ideas both for our clients and for ourselves.

So, if we want to become true consulting professionals, not just consulting slaves, we have to pay attention to both to the sounds and the pauses in the symphonies of our lives.

When you work, you're on stage. When you don't work, and are off stage, that period of time prepares you, so next time you're even better on stage.

Yes, we all need experience, but we can't become better consultants just by doing "more consulting".

I don't think Paula Radcliffe became a world champion Marathoner because she'd been running several Marathons every single day.

So, take a closer look at your approach to your profession. Do you feel your business consumes your life? How could you change that for the better? How could you make your business just one subset of your whole life? What doors of opportunities would open for you if you could pull it off?

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...

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