Be Brave Not Safe

While there are some who may have been fortunate enough to launch a consulting business and immediately establish (paying) clients, that did NOT happen for me. And, I’m glad for that! It would have been too easy and I would NOT have learned what it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY takes to establish and keep a consulting business going.

A key factor…Since you are taking a leap of faith to step out (as extra curricular activity or to leave your current employment), you must establish business (engagements) with people / companies who may not (yet) have worked with you, or know you in this context. This is where it becomes crucially important to establish 3 reference accounts (people and companies who can recommend you/your services to others, because they have received them from you, in the context of your new business).

Some background…I launched my business in 2002, which was NOT a good year for business (we were in an economic downturn). But, it was the PERFECT time for me.

Prior to the step of leaving the employment of corporate America (which had been a long term goal of mine), I engaged a business launch mentor (for a fee) to work with me (after-hours) on my business plan and lay much of the groundwork we have covered here. And, once I voluntarily left my executive position (in June of 2002) I immediately established a board of advisors, all of which helped me get my consulting business “off the ground.”

At this point (fall of 2002) I had pretty much done EVERYTHING outlined in the prior posts on this topic. The result: I had not yet hit “pay dirt.” To be fair, I did take a good bit of time off that summer to hang out with my family during this rare opportunity when I had no pressing work-related deadlines 🙂

Now that the kids were back to school it was time to land a client. At this point I tried a number of things with NO success. I’ll share these things (which you might consider; or not) and then provide the strategy I used which kicked things into high gear!

During the late summer and early fall of 2002 I:

• Acquired marketing lists (names, titles, companies, email addresses, phone numbers, etc) of target prospects
• Sent letters and emails
• Made a TON of cold calls (always fun 🙂 )
• Paid to be on a business-related radio talk show (I’m glad there weren’t too many listeners, that I am aware of, as it was horrible 🙂 )
• Joined our local Chamber of Commerce and attended events
• Paid for lead generation services and followed-up on “minimally” qualified leads (what a waste of time/money)
• Placed an ad in the Yellow Pages

While the above activities didn’t generate any business (for me), they are things you might consider. The reason: each of the above served as practice, practice and more practice as I honed my message and further deepened my conviction to make something happen – WHATEVER IT TAKES! I was NOT going back to the world of corporate employment!

After doing ALL of the above (it is now November 2002, and I’m sweating a few bullets) I said: “I will do ANYTHING (so long as it is legal, ethical and moral) to land 3 reference accounts.” I just needed to find the missing piece to the puzzle.

At this point, I reviewed my offerings and approach. The approach started with performing an assessment of how a company manages its customer interactions, relationships and overall experiences. Something that is a “for fee” / limited scope / short-term engagement. From there, we help drive the improvement programs recommended in the assessment results (which are medium to longer-term engagements).

Because I had not (yet) landed a paying client for this assessment, and I wasn’t doing anything else (for a fee), I decided to offer a free (yes 100% no-cost) assessment to as many people / companies as it took to establish the 3 reference accounts I was after.

To do so, I began promoting this to my personal network, Board of Advisors, etc. And, within a very short period of time 3 people / companies agreed to receive the free assessment, which had only one condition. Assuming that they enjoyed and benefited from the experience (something that I was obviously 1000% committed to) they would write-up a testimonial that I could post on my website and include within other marketing collateral.

Nailed it! That was the missing piece to the puzzle!

Of the first 3 people / companies that accepted my offer, all 3 provided valuable testimonials and 2 of these turned into longer term, paying clients / engagements. The 3rd company needed and wanted my help, but was too small and could not afford my services 🙂

My investment of time for these 3 (free) assessments: about 3 days each. Not a hardship, considering I wasn’t doing anything else for a fee (at that time).

We are now off to the races!

In future posts we’ll cover approaches to keep things going (and avoiding the “typical” consultant’s experience / challenge of feast vs. famine).

Click here to review the next article in the series.

In the last few posts on Launching a Consulting Business we’ve discussed the general area of Marketing (preparing to make some noise) to attract others to you / your business.

At this point you should have:

• A comprehensive LinkedIn Profile
• A website
• Content which you have begun placing into the tool you have selected to manage your e-Newsletter and/or Blog

If you don’t have ALL of the above stop here and come back when you are ready 🙂

If you do have ALL of the above you are ready to begin the never-ending process of shamelessly promoting your business.

To start, you NEVER know where consulting engagements will come from. They could originate from anywhere: a neighbor, someone at church, the parent of one of the players on the same team as your child, colleagues you worked with and/or for at prior companies, your Board of Advisors, etc. And, because these are the people you will see most frequently and/or are part of your “inner-circle” you’ll want to start here.

To do so you will want to let them know what you are up to. You can do so as follows:

• In conversation – remember your elevator speech?
• Send them an (individual) email message summarizing what you are up to (your elevator speech and value proposition) encouraging them to visit your website to learn more.
• Invite them to subscribe to your e-Newsletter and/or Blog
• Encourage them to forward your e-Newsletter and/or Blog to others who may benefit

And, because they are in your inner-circle, you should ALWAYS ask them for their honest opinion and feedback, offering to help them if there is any way that you can (related to their own personal or professional endeavors).

In addition, be sure to update your email signature (that you use outside the company that you may still be employed at) to share your:

• Name
• Company Name and it’s tagline
• Website
• Phone number

By doing so, EVERY email that you send whether it is personal (to friends, relatives, neighbors, etc.) or professional (for your business) you are sharing your e-business card reminding people what you are up to and providing an easy way for them to “check you out.”

Finally, in a prior post I mentioned that I place marketing collateral on a USB memory stick which I hand out as business cards. In addition to this, I’ve had a bunch of (very nice) hooded sweatshirts made up with my company logo, that I wear and give out as gifts. For example, a few years ago we hosted a neighborhood Christmas party which included a Yankee Swap. Guess what my gift was: A Customer Centricity sweatshirt. Everyone got a kick out of it and (if it hasn’t worn out yet) there is someone else in this world promoting my business…

In closing, get creative – make it yours!

In a future post I’ll share marketing strategies that didn’t work (for me) and how I FINALLY landed my first consulting engagement (cha-ching!)

Click here to review the next article in the series.

In the prior 2 posts on the topic of Launching a Consulting Business we’ve covered establishing a:

• Comprehensive LinkedIn Profile
• Website

The 3rd element of your online presence is the icing on the cake: An e-Newsletter and/or Blog.

That is, your e-Newsletter and/or Blog becomes the “active” part of your online presence drawing people to you/your website. To support this, you’ll want to publish / post on a recurring basis to remain top-of-mind, reminding people you are “out here.”

In this post we will cover the following areas:

1. The content
2. Creating leverage
3. The tool(s)

The content

Your e-Newsletter and/or Blog can include:

• Your own material – If you’ve been “keeping up” you have content ready to “get started.” That is, in a prior post you were encouraged to “begin” generating content around your 3-5 areas of expertise (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to [insert your value proposition here]” or “How to [insert your value proposition here]”).
• Recommended readings – In order to remain at the top of your game it is important to read relevant books, articles published by others and/or visiting applicable websites that share information and approaches useful to you / your field. When you come across something especially insightful you can write an article encouraging others to check out the material (book, article, website, etc.).
• Upcoming events – Building on the above, you are also encouraged to attend relevant events related to your industry and/or profession. And, working with industry / professional association leaders to promote their events is an important step in getting invited to speak at such events to further generate business (the topic of a future post).

Keep in mind that the attention span of “most of us” is fairly limited. As such, you’ll want to ensure that each article/post is “bite-sized.” Something that can be consumed in just a few minutes. Otherwise, you may lose your audience. While they may receive the “reminder” (notification) that you’ve again published, they may not take the time to review the content and benefit accordingly. An approach for doing so I’ve found effective is:

• Initially publishing an introductory article / post on the topic, including the punch-list of items to be covered
• Following up (every few days, weekly or every other week) with articles / posts covering individual items on the punch-list

Once you have completed the series (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to [insert your value proposition here]) you are now ready to leverage this content…

Creating leverage

By preparing individual articles (based on your own content) you can further leverage this content to:

• Generate whitepapers – These are valuable marketing tools you can publish in print and/or pdf form and provide to your prospects and customers. And, make available on your website for download.
• Publish in trade rags – One of the newsletter series we published (resulting in a whitepaper) ended up as a cover story on an industry trade rag. And, we received an industry award for doing so. All great “noise” for the business.
• Prepare a presentation that you can deliver to an audience which may benefit from your expertise.

The tools

As you might imagine, there are numerous (online) tools available for managing an e-Newsletter and/or Blog.

We’ve used Campaigner for my business e-Newsletter for a number of years. One of the best things about this tool (and most others like it) is that it allows individuals to manage their own subscription (to subscribe or unsubscribe). For example, we provide an option on our website to allow visitors to subscribe to our newsletter making it “hands free” for us.

For this blog (and it’s website) I’m using WordPress which is very easy to use and cost-effective. In fact, at some point I may convert my business website (and e-Newsletter) to this tool. One of the best things about this tool is that it allows you to easily “push” your posts / articles into LinkedIn and other social media tools further generating visibility for you / your business.

In closing…Once you have done all of the above (and what we have outlined in prior posts on the topic of “Launching a Consulting Business”) you are ready to begin making some noise, which will be covered in the next post on this topic.

To prepare for this next step, you are encouraged to begin placing your content (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to…) into one of the tools in preparation for posting / publishing.

Click here to review the next article in the series.