Welcome back to work, everyone…hoping that everyone took some good family time off over the holidays since it sure seemed like our clients did!

The great thing about taking a little break is that it gives perspective–and I come back optimistic and eager about the new year…I saw trends over the holiday that are quite promising…I was asked to submit 3 different proposals, which doesn’t normally happen…I have 3 projects booked for this month, which doesn’t normally happen.  With those kinds of things happening, it’s easy to forget about all that doom and gloom ‘R’ word talk…

But I’m not going to get TOO comfy even with such good signs–this is a year to go back to basics and to really get clear on my target customers and how I can help them…especially in times like these.

Some thoughts that I’m having and have already begun to implement:

- Update my website (it’s been awhile…and it’s looking dated, especially re: resources I have links to as well as my products/services sheet which doesn’t represent my most favorite new service I’m providing!).  Check out the topic of the S. Bay WIC Luncheon on March 9: 10 Tricks for Updating Your Website.

- Keep my eye out for news/trends that would be helpful for my customers to know about–and tell them (I did this over the weekend and got a big thank you from my customer for keeping them in mind–talk about immediate gratification!).  Check out www.marketresearch.com for inexpensive research reports or www.findarticles.com to find current news items for an industry, your client’s competitors, etc.

- Do some prospecting–I have been reliant upon the steady stream of referrals that I’ve gotten over the past 10 years to feed my business, but in times like these, doing some intentional, deliberate prospecting makes a lot of sense–it will expand my pool of prospects beyond my personal network which increases the odds of finding someone who needs my services incrementally.

- Partner up with others–I’m a broken record on this one (see my first blog entry!), but working closely with some of my trusted colleagues to brainstorm, share successes, keep one another focused on what we all need to be doing, looking for opportunities to refer one another, and looking for ways to help one another overcome barriers are all the benefits of partnering with other consultants.  There is never a BAD time for collaboration, but a tough economy is a GREAT time for collaboration.

Let’s hear from you about what you are planning to do differently this year–either to overcome the impact of the shaky economy or to get you to your next goals for your business…we have so much to learn from one another!

Jen

“If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.” I can’t locate the originator of that quote; it’s been attributed to a few people. Nonetheless, consider this for a moment. There are new start-ups every day—businesses that are bringing new, different and improved services and products to the market. Have you checked on your competition lately, or asked your clients how they feel about your offerings? If you don’t want to lose your clients to the competition, you need to routinely evaluate your offerings. There is much continuous change in this world that provides opportunities for improvements and if you’re not making improvements and working to grow, your business is probably shrinking.

All businesses, regardless of size, length of existence and industry, need to continue their growth efforts—continuously. Constant change is too tumultuous and confusing, but do keep abreast of your clients’ needs and the competition’s activities and make changes over time, as it’s appropriate. Stay the same, and you’re stagnating. You’ll lose business.

Change and Growth:

A large part of growing your consulting business relies on staying in touch with your clients and reaching prospective clients within your target market. There are many methods and many reasons to communicate with your market. Growth and change provide excellent opportunities for just that.

Freshen up

Growing your consulting business doesn’t mean that you need to hire employees or add more square feet. However, it’s advisable to freshen up your business. Add new services and products and incorporate new ideas and technologies into your mix to intrigue return clients and new clients. You may modify or ‘package’ some of your current services based on client feedback or just plain common sense. You might become more efficient with new processes. You might also drop a few of those services or products that are outdated or rarely sell.

Put the Old Stuff on Sale

This is a good reason to keep in touch and drive some business. Put your “older” offerings at a deep discount sale price-for the LAST TIME. Create a clearance sale, a last chance to buy ebooks or ‘How-to’ CDs or DVDs, or last chance to experience one of your seminars before you end that offering.

Think of the retail clothing industry where there are at least four turns per year, aligning roughly with each of the four seasons. Their end of season sales provide opportunity to promote their store and the sale. They draw new and returning clients. Some of those customers who go to the store will buy the sale items, some also buy new items or maybe nothing. But they saw the notice, visited the store, saw what was available and took note. The chances of them returning are greater than if they hadn’t gotten the sale notice.

An aside here is that a key to this contact is the customers’ experience. Is it pleasant and enjoyable? Does the contact offer assistance and leave a warm friendly feeling? We don’t want pressure, only an offer–an “I’m here if you need me.” We want them to remember that connection in an emotionally positive way so they will return.

Promote the New Stuff

The second part of freshening up is adding something new or improved—thus another opportunity to connect and drive business. Give your clients a reason to notice you again.

Have you added a new service? Is there a new technology available that you now include in your repertoire, such as creating or writing blogs? Do you now offer information about or provide the process for marketing on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter?

What have you added to one of your seminars, workshops or webinars? Is there a new section regarding the latest technology or new business opportunities? Do you provide some or more practical aspects about your topic? Are there new chapters in your ebook?

Maybe you have new credentials. You have completed your coaching course and now coach clients through certain niche aspects of a business. Have you added a partner so that you’ve doubled your capabilities or offerings?

Do Something Good

Another “change and grow” opportunity is to have or sponsor an annual charity event. We all know how busy the holidays are, so aim for a different time of year if possible. A slower time in your related industry would be a great time to incorporate something new. To increase your visibility and success, you can partner with other, similarly focused businesses.

The opportunities for this are pretty much endless. Businesses and charity organizations collect shoes, sneakers, coats, old cell phones, books, school supplies, foods, blankets, hats, gloves, or scarves, for example. The collections can be scheduled over a month, week, week-end, or whatever is appropriate. You could also include in the mix a business that provides an activity during a live event or offers some type of gift or return to people who show up such as a discount coupon for a future purchase or a promotional item that reminds them of the charity event or businesses.

For example, if you’re in the pet sitting business, you might partner with a groomer, a veterinarian, a pet store and a pet shelter or adoption agency. For that shelter, you can collect items that they need such as used blankets, towels and sheets or used kennels, dishes, leashes and collars for when the pets go to their new home. Post notices at each of those businesses and any other location where your target market visits—online and offline. When it’s over, you have the success story to submit to assorted medias. Voila!

Your visibility comes from your opportunity to promote the event (using each of the participating business’ names) through various medias and methods and then to report the great results to your clients and the media.

Bottom Line:

A service business like consulting needs to create its own news and make sure that the news reaches the right people. Grow, change, announce your changes and events to your target market, and ask them to spread the word. Ask clients how you’re doing and make changes based on their feedback. Clean house now and then and make that another reason to contact your client base and prospects. Create new reasons for promotional communications. Let them know you’re still there—for them!

Tags: consultant, consulting business, consulting career, consulting work, growing a consulting business, running a consulting business

I just finished reading an article on Raintoday.com (yes, their weekly newsletter just came out, featuring five of the year’s best articles on better serving your clients) that focused on “the power of taking your clients interests to heart.”

I found this article interesting on a number of levels, but I’ll limit my discussion to two:

Motives Matter a.k.a. Doing What’s Right

First, the whole concept is a no-brainer to me. It’s how I operate. When I was employee, I made decisions based on what was best for the company, not necessarily what was best for me. Sometimes this didn’t result in the best situations for me, but in hindsight I’d make the same decision again — because it was the right thing to do. It’s what I owed my employers, and it’s what I owe my clients.

The author (Charles Green) of the article wrote that this isn’t a matter of ethics, but rather a simple fact of trust. However, I’d argue it is a matter of ethics, or at least a matter of doing what’s right. This is so hardwired into my system that I get very annoyed when people don’t do what’s “right.” And isn’t doing what’s right a matter of ethics? For me, it goes back to the golden rule, “Do unto others….” I simply treat my clients the way I would like to be treated. I treat their business as if it were my own. It’s what’s right.

Now that said, does that mean I never make mistakes? That I never get irritated? Heck no. Anyone who knows me would tell you that. But my governing principal is doing what’s right by my clients — and that includes telling them when it doesn’t make sense to have me do something for them. And since 99 percent of my business is word of mouth, it also is a good business practice — I’d argue the best best practice you can follow. This echoes Charles Green statement that “being trusted is a very low-risk, high-return strategy.” But doing it just to boost your profits is false.

Relationships and Fake Trust a.k.a We Cannot NOT Communicate

In Charles Green’s article, he writes that “When client focus becomes a tool for seller profit improvement, clients notice and become cynical. Lately, the language of client focus is adopting the language of relationships, fostering yet another layer of cynicism…. If we can’t trust the meaning of the words a company says, then we can’t trust the company saying them.”

I don’t disagree. To me, this is a no brainer. But obviously it isn’t so simple, because many companies do seem to take a seller-profit-improvement approach to client focus. The reason I found this component interesting is probably due to my communication background, studying how humans communicate and why some rhetoric works and some doesn’t.

We cannot NOT communicate is why fake trust or seller-profit-improvement approaches don’t work. It’s a phrase I fell in love with in my first interpersonal communication class; it’s also my company tagline. It says a lot, really. We’re always communicating, even when we’re not saying anything. What we don’t say can often be more telling then what we do say — that’s why fake trust doesn’t work.

Words alone definitely don’t carry the message. All the nonverbal “stuff” says a lot more. There are a lot of studies (sorry, none quoted here, all my books are packed away) that show that if words say one thing and tone or body language say another, the audience will believe the latter over what’s said. So it stands to say that just speaking client-focused language isn’t enough. Most people are astute enough to see past what you’re saying to how you’re acting. If they don’t match, they don’t trust you. And if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy what you’re selling.

Anyway, it’s a good article to read, great food for thought. I’d love to hear what all of you think.

Read, “Motives Matter: The Power of Taking Your Client’s Interests to Heart“

Tags: client value, client-focused business approach, growing a consulting business, running a consulting business, starting a consulting business

Andrew Sobel has a great article on Raintoday.com that discusses four ways to deliver value to your clients: core value, surprise value, personal value, and perception of value. For many, it may be no more than a refresher, but it never hurts to keep reminding ourselves of how we can improve customer satisfaction. It’s a simple way to support continued success in running our consulting businesses.

Read “Four Ways to Deliver Value to your Clients”

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Tags: client value, growing a consulting business, running a consulting business, starting a consulting business

As you can tell from the series of posts that I’m making today, I was a bit behind on my reading. But many of these articles were definitely worth my time, like this one on the Silicon Valley WebGuild that shows a survey from the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2008 annual “Masters of Marketing” conference (October 2008).

The survey polled attendees via handheld devices about their marketing mix, budgets, plans, and tactics.

One of the questions asked attendees how much they plan to spend on marketing in 2009 vs. 2008: 20 percent expect to increase spending, 28% expect to hold stable, and 20% to decrease spending. I thought this bright news for marketing consultants given all the fear surrounding the current economy.

Read Full Article on Silicon Valley WebGuild

How will you adjust your current marketing and media plans to account for the recent downturn in the financial markets?
- Spending will be reduced (33%)
- Spending will be constant / marketing mix will be reallocated (33%)
- Surprisingly, we will spend more (27%)
- No changes, we will keep everything status quo (8%)

How does your CEO view your marketing efforts with respect to growth?
- As a brand-building investment (56%)
- As an unaccountable but necessary expense (21%)
- Not sure (15%)
- As an unnecessary expense (8%)

What is your preferred social media site for driving brand growth?
- None (32%)
- YouTube (20%)
- Facebook (18%)
- All (12%)
- LinkedIn (10%)
- MySpace (6%)
- Twitter (3%)

As you look toward 2009, how much do you plan to spend on marketing vs. 2008?
- Increase spending more than 10% (26%)
- Increase spending less than 10% (13%)
- Hold stable (28%)
- Decrease spending less than 10% (14%)
- Decrease spending more than 10% (19%)

Which discipline will offer your brand the largest opportunity for growth?
- Traditional 30-second spots (17%)
- One page advertisements in a newspaper/magazine (7%)
- Web advertising (16%)
- Social media integration (28%)
- Direct Marketing (7%)
- Grassroots, viral public relations (19%)
- Radio (5%)

How does your company currently measure brand growth?
- Sales and net income (70%)
- Third party brand equity valuations (15%)
- Shareholder value (9%)
- Household penetration (4%)
- Company culture (3%

Tags: brand strategy, marketing spending, marketing strategy, running a consulting business, social media, web 2.0

I’ve just returned from an 8 day vacation (I say that, because something about being gone even one day over 1 week makes things more ’serious’!) and am reflecting on how much of a vacation I really got…

It’s always been very difficult for me to 1) prepare for being away from my business and 2) really BE away from my business when I’m gone!  And my vacation-mates get annoyed at my need to keep connected via email and the ‘quick little thing’ I have to do to respond to a client’s urgent plea, etc. etc.  All of this creates a lot of stress…and that is the exact opposite of why I GO on vacations!

Even though I tie up all of my projects with tidy bows, delegate meeting facilitation while I’m gone (if I can’t manage to get the meetings rescheduled), deliver on all client commitments before I go, and schedule ‘catch up’ meetings the minute I’m back, @*!% inevitably happens and there are things to attend to/respond to while I’m gone.

And realistically, I can’t IMAGINE totally checking out from email because it would take me 2 full days to sift through it all once I return since I get over 100 emails/day (that’s not including the junk that gets filtered out automatically).

So am I the only one with this problem?  Is it even POSSIBLE to entirely check out in the line of work we are in?  Has anyone created the perfect support system/process to allow you to really check out?  Is there a ’safe zone’ (like 3 days away) that makes it easier?

Even though the process is difficult (the preparation, the juggling and the catching up), I am FIRMLY committed to vacations…the BEST type of vacation is the one that I book a year out and can dream about all year long during tough workdays…it’s so nice to have something to look forward to!  And I really do enjoy travelling and exploring new places…so I will continue to be faced with this dilemma.

I’d love to hear from those of you who have mastered the process of getting away–and of course would love to hear from kindred spirits who find themselves in the same push me/pull you situation I am in each time I get away.

Tags: balancing work and life, travel, worklife balance

The Wall Street Journal published their list of 50 women executives to watch in 2008, along with some stats on women in corporate-officer jobs.

“In her concession speech in June, Hillary Clinton lamented that she wasn’t able to “shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling,” but she said it now has “about 18 million cracks in it.”

Indeed, women played a defining role in this year’s historic election, whether as candidates, spouses or comedians.

But in the corporate world, the notion of “18 million cracks” remains something of a pipe dream. While women have made great strides professionally in the past two decades, their numbers in the upper echelons of corporate America have stagnated in the past few years.

On Wall Street — possibly the toughest ceiling to crack — two of the most high-profile women made an exit in the past year: Citigroup’s Sallie Krawcheck and Morgan Stanley’s Zoe Cruz.

But out of the ashes of the economic meltdown, some new stars have emerged — most notably Sheila Bair, No. 1 on this year’s Women to Watch list, who has been thrust into the spotlight in her bank-rescue role as a hard-charging regulator at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Barbara Desoer, No. 3 on this year’s list, has risen to a pivotal role at Bank of America as president of mortgage, home equity and insurance services.

Beyond the financial world, faces new to the corner office include Ellen Kullman, who is taking the CEO reins of DuPont after spending two decades climbing the ranks of the chemicals maker. Oil-industry veteran Lynn Laverty Elsenhans has been plucked to lead Philadelphia refiner Sunoco. Padmasree Warrior, meanwhile, jumped from Motorola to take a key executive post at Cisco Systems.

According to a survey by Catalyst, a New York research group, women hold 15.4% of Fortune 500 corporate-officer jobs — positions of vice president or higher that require board approval. That number has inched down from 16.4% in 2005. Women running Fortune 500 companies amount to just 2.4%, the survey showed, and 74 of those companies have no female corporate officers at all.

One bright spot: More women are in charge of powerful board committees, such as nominating and governance committee chairs. That in turn could mean more women being appointed to key positions down the road.”

Tags: top women executives, wall street journal

On smallbusinessnewz, Lisa Braziel posted an article back in February on social media campaign budgets. She concluded with a nice set of questions to ask when determining your budget.

“1) What are your overall objectives and campaign timeframe? If the whole objective is to achieve a drastic spike in sales or promote a limited time offer, we believe more of your budget should be allocated to advertising. Social media is a slower burn, and you will just be disappointed.

2) How much is your overall marketing budget? To put things into perspective. the average cost of TV production for a 30-second spot is around $303,000 just to make it: not to mention media costs to run it. With this in mind, you may want to produce one less spot for a campaign, and re-allocate these funds towards a very decent social media campaign with a longer life-span.

3) What tactics are you using already and how are they working? How your current efforts are working should determine how much you can reallocate to social media. Is your direct mail initiative working? What is your ROI on your current advertising model? What is the result of your interactive budget? Take a hard look at what results you are getting with traditional methods.

4) What are your internal resources? To put it simply, your internal resources will determine your social media budget amount. If you have appropriate staff that can devote time to social media, you may find that you only need the set-up and development of a social media strategy or tools to get the campaign going. If you don’t, a social media budget will likely be higher to include the actual execution.

Again, as we say over and over: a social media budget is developed on a per company basis. Beware of any agency that has set-pricing, as it likely indicates that they will also have canned social media efforts that don’t take into account objectives and target audience.”

Read the full article

Tags: running a consulting business, social media lessons, web 2.0

This post on WebProNews by Chris Crum covers the pros and cons of businesses allowing employees to use social media in the workplace. There’s some good information to share with clients looking into social media. Make sure to skim through the comments as well for a few good content nuggets.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/27/is-social-media-good-or-bad-for-business

Tags: running a consulting business, social media

There was an interesting little article on Webguild that looked at the role of social media in an economic downturn.

Social Media in the Economic Downturn

By Reshma Kumar, November 2, 2008

“Social Media, in light if our current depressed economic climate was a topic of discussion and on the minds of many in attendance at the Social Media Strategies Conference last week. Paraphrasing roughly Keynote, David Carter of Awareness’ take on this, he noted that with the current economic situation, there are more eyes on where the money goes. Therefore, social media strategies have to be spot on the first time around. So, how can we execute better? Identify and leverage on points of enthusiasm (e.g. press releases, conferences, events, etc.) and make them a part of your community. Identify watering holes for customers and pick the project that has the most obvious ROI. It doesn’t have to be about money, it can be about trust scores, community stocks, and to gather the required information needed to measure and analyze this event.

“Shel Israel, Social Media Strategist of Global Neighbourhoods, had this to say: What can we scale back and cut back on in the downturn? We really need to talk to our customers. Traditional advertising and PR have remained expensive in the last decade or so. Social Media is an answer to the problem of lean marketing and addressing the problem of how to stay close to the customers. Mark Yolton, SVP, Community Network of SAP said social media is being used at SAP for about 5 years now. It’s core to what SAP does today. Given today’s economy, there is a need to focus on cost efficiency. Reducing cost, agility, and reaching out to customers are the focus points of community network at SAP.

“What do you have to cut that you now can’t live without? According to Mark, as budgets get cut, be it training budget, marketing budget, traveling budget, etc., social media is the thing to turn to — the same way PR is being done by providing daily news summaries which includes blogger comments. There are serious discussions going on on blogs and inviting bloggers to product launches, company events, etc. is the thing to do — giving them the privilege because they’re the ones who are asking the best questions.

http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/social-media-in-the-economic-downturn.php

Tags: blogging, marketing strategy, social media lessons, web 2.0