Be Brave Not Safe

Your “pitch” is crucially important to let people know what you do and (more importantly) generate interest for your services. The 2 most important things relating to your pitch is:

1. You need an effective “elevator speech.” That is, a short (30-seconds or less) description of what you do that you can share on an elevator (for example) between 2 floors, in response to someone asking: “So, what do you do?”.
2. You need to understand the nature of your audience and ensure your message resonates with them.

Let’s now cover each of the above.

Elevator Speech

The main guideline is: it must be succinct (briefly and clearly expressed). For example, the “generic” elevator speech for my business is (in response to someone asking what I do):

“We help companies improve the customer experience and operational performance. We do this via 2 offerings:

1. Customer experience assessments to identify what a company is doing well and their opportunities for improvement resulting in a highly pragmatic roadmap to get them where they need to be.
2. Project management services to drive mission critical initiatives to conclusion.”

Your Audience

The first thing to reinforce is that you must go beyond the “technical” description of what you do or you will only create a “yawn factor” for your audience and/or their eyes will glaze over.

Your audience wants to hear what you can specifically do for them (or someone they know). That is, the RESULTS they can expect to achieve by working with you.

At a high-level there are 3 types of audiences which, generally speaking, have a particular area or hot button, as follows:

• Senior Executives / Business Owners – Care most about the dollars and cents (the revenue you can help generate, costs you can help reduce and/or profits you can help increase).
• Middle Management – Metrics as well as the organization and performance of activities (i.e., key performance indicators you can help improve: customer satisfaction and/or loyalty, employee morale, average handle time, mean-time-between-failure, etc.).
• Front line – My specific job (the improvements you can help facilitate to make their job easier, more satisfying and/or higher impact).

As such, a tailored statement I’d make, after sharing my generic elevator speech for each of the above audiences would be:

• Senior Executives – “…For example, we’ve helped companies increase the amount of revenue generated by their inbound call centers by 50% in less than 3 months.”
• Middle Management – “…For example, we’ve helped increase customer satisfaction and employee morale while at the same time reducing operating costs.”
• Front Line – “…For example, we’ve helped management realize that if they can improve the product release and/or sales process “up stream” there will be fewer calls from irate customers into the technical support department after go-live.”

Finally, once you’ve defined the above – practice, practice, practice and practice some more until your elevator speech / statements roll off your lips naturally. And, try it out on a few people (starting with your Board of Advisors) to get their reaction. Do the statements make sense? Are there common questions they ask that could be preemptively answered with a slight tuning of the statement?

In closing, have fun with this! And, don’t wait until you feel it is “perfect” before you start sharing it. Let’er fly and make adjustments as you go! In the next post on Launching a Consulting Business we’ll cover the topic of marketing collateral that you may hand someone who indicates interest in your services after you have effectively delivered your pitch.

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By launching your own consulting business you are “hanging out your own shingle.”

In order to do so you will need to decide what that shingle will say (name of your company and any tagline) as well as what it will look like (the logo).

Since you’ve taken the prior steps of defining your value proposition (you have done this, haven’t you?) you have a punch-list of items (things that you do exceptionally well) that others would be willing to pay you to do. It is now time to (attempt) translating these into a company name and/or tagline. Before doing so, let’s consider the 2 primary objectives for effectively doing so:

1. Provide your market a “sense” of what you do
2. Allow people to easily find you (on the Internet)

When I was putting the final touches on the plan to launch my business, my mentor said: “So, what are you going to call it.”

My value proposition included:

• Helping companies to:
  • Improve the customer experience and operational performance
  • Drive mission-critical projects to conclusion

As such, after being asked the above question I pondered it for a moment and responded with “Customer Centricity?” with a big question…She said: “That sounds like a great name, do you know if it is available?” I responded: “I have no idea, let’s go search the Internet to see if the domain name is in use.” Thankfully, the name was not in use (in the USA). That said, someone in the UK had registered the domain name (www.customercentricity.com) so I went with www.customercentricity.biz. In fact, someone seems to still be “toying” with the “.com” address. They can have it, as I’ve generated enough noise (more about that later) that if you search on my company name (Customer Centricity) via Google I’ve consistently been listed in the #1 to 3 spot for years 🙂 And, this has served me quite well since a significant amount of revenue has been generated by people finding me online upon doing research on “customer centric” and “customer centricity”.

The other element to consider for your shingle is a tagline or short phrase that backs up your name and/or serves to provide more context around what you do. So, if you were to view the shingle of my consulting practice, it says:

Customer Centricity, Inc.

Planning. Execution. Delighted Customers.

Now, Isn’t that just super-duper sexy? NOT! And, it doesn’t have to be.

Finally, once you have your name and a tagline it is recommended you engage a graphic designer to create a logo for you. This step doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. And, if you need a recommendation for a graphic designer feel free to contact my son (Ian) who is doing some really cool stuff. You can check out his shingle at: www.baffirossi.com.

In summary, the more keywords that your company name and/or tagline contains the easier you (your website) will be found online (via search engines – more about that later).

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Now is as good a time as any, in this series on Launching a Consulting Business, to cover the topic of engaging a board of advisors.

It has been said that the loneliest person on earth is the company president (founder, CEO, etc.). An entrepreneur, starting one’s own business, is no different. While you hopefully have your spouse or significant other to bounce ideas off on a daily basis, you’ll need more guidance and insight than this to succeed in your own business.

It is suggested that an effective board of advisors consists of no more than 5-7 people, covering the following areas:

• Demonstrated success in business (in general)
• Someone who has previously launched, grown and managed their own business
• An objective person (or persons) who will “give it to you straight”, not just make you feel good by agreeing with everything you say
• Specific “professional” help you will most likely have to pay for:
  • Marketing-related
    • We often are our own worst critics. As such, marketing guidance and input will be crucial. If the above listed people do not have marketing expertise you may want to consider engaging a marketing consultant.
  •  Financial-related
    • CPA – You are going into business to deliver services / solve problems NOT to do your own books (unless you are a CPA)!
    • Investment counselor – To help you setup your own retirement plan
  • Legal-related to help you:
    • Determine the appropriate business structure (along with your CPA)
    • Create any contractual templates that you may require (for engaging employees and/or subcontractors)
    • To review any contracts your client wishes you to execute
  • Insurance-related to help you:
    • Put in place the appropriate insurance coverage (professional liability, errors and omissions, worker’s comp, health and life)
  • Bottom-line: Ensure you don’t have any blind spots or risks that could jeopardize your business or livelihood.
• Regardless of whether the board of advisor member is paid (for their time or services) or not, you’ll want a handful of people you can bring together on a frequent basis (at least monthly) as they serve as a sounding board with the expressed interest of ensuring YOUR SUCCESS!

The key theme here is two (or several) heads are better than one. As you share your evolving business plans with your Board of Advisors they will undoubtedly ask great questions and provide keen insight that will be invaluable to your success.

Note: for those advisors who aren’t paid you’ll want to make sure they receive some form of benefit for their time and effort. Otherwise, they will likely not continue to find the time to provide you ongoing guidance.

During the early stages of my business launch I worked with a number of people who would potentially perform as consultants on engagements I landed (which turned out to be the case for many). Others (CPA and Legal) were paid for their “professional” services.

To obtain additional insight on this topic you are encouraged to read the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. He referred to this concept as the “Master Mind Group.” More specifically, refer to chapter 10 “Power of the Master Mind.”

Enjoy!

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