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Copyright © 2019 by Alan Weiss, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Weiss, Alan, 1946- author.
Title: Getting started in consulting / Alan Weiss.
Description: Fourth edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2019] | Includes
index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018051259 (print) | LCCN 2018053848 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119542131 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119542148 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119542155
(hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Business consultants—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |
Consultants—Marketing—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: LCC HD69.C6 (ebook) | LCC HD69.C6 W459 2019 (print) | DDC
001—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051259
Our 50th wedding anniversary occurred during the writing of this book. This book, all my others, my career, my family, and my happiness would not be remotely possible without Maria. Merely thanking her here for my wondrous life is woefully insufficient, but I am informing all of you that it is almost impossible to get started in any pursuit without unwavering support.
And so: To Maria, with all my love.
I wrote the original version of this book in 2000; the prior edition (the third) was written almost 10 years ago. In these ensuing years we’ve seen 3-D printing, the retirement of the 747 jumbo jet, Donald Trump elected president against all predictions, Global Entry speeding the immigration process, strategies formerly taking six months to formulate and covering five years obsolete, the iPhone X, Tesla, kale as a routine food offering, the admonition that health-care workers must wash their hands to prevent the spread of illness, a huge recession and an unprecedented economic recovery, and the New England Patriots playing in three more Super Bowls and winning two of them.
Consulting remains a very hot profession because huge organizations continue to reduce residual talent in favor of mission-critical specialists and automation, and small businesses are seeking more help than ever (and they are the largest producers of net new jobs in most of the world, since large companies tend only to reduce or replace the workforce). There is little barrier to entry in solo consulting,1 which is both a blessing and a curse.
The intent herein is to enable you to hit the ground running under contemporary conditions. I’ll assume you’re either brand new to the profession or in the early stages of your launch, though the lessons included constitute a strong review for even veteran consultants. You can look up certain aspects of the business (for example, office logistics or finding buyers), or you can read it sequentially. See Appendix F for free resources located on my site and my blog.
I’ve found the consulting profession to be exciting, challenging, highly rewarding, and amenable to all types of people, passions, and predispositions. I’ve been able to form a huge global community of such entrepreneurial people over the years. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to it here.
Full speed ahead. It’s become that kind of world, and it’s no place for the tentative. We’re not here to stick our toes in the water, we’re here to make waves.
Alan Weiss
East Greenwich, RI
November 2018
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, the Times Mirror Company, the Federal Reserve, the New York Times Company, and over 200 other leading organizations.
He has served on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony Award–winning New England regional theater, the Newport International Film Festival (where he was chairman), Festival Ballet Providence, and the Harvard Center for Mental Health and the Media.
His speaking typically includes 20 keynotes a year at major conferences, and he has been a visiting faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, Boston College, Tufts, St. John’s University, the University of Illinois, the Institute of Management Studies, and the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He has held an appointment as adjunct professor in the College of Business at the University of Rhode Island, where he taught courses on advanced management and consulting skills. He holds the record for selling out the highest-priced workshop at the time (on entrepreneurialism) in the (then) 21-year history of New York City’s Learning Annex. His PhD is in psychology.
He is a 2006 inductee into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top one percent of professional speakers in the world. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, one of only two people in the world as of this writing holding both honors.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 45 original books, (and another 10 editions translated into 15 languages), including his best seller, Million Dollar Consulting (McGraw-Hill; now in its fifth edition). His newest prior to this one is Threescore and More (Taylor and Francis). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, UC Berkeley, and the Wharton School of Business. The Wharton School used his first book, The Innovation Formula, in its graduate programs.
He is interviewed and quoted frequently in the media, and his career has taken him to 60 countries and 49 states. (He is afraid to go to North Dakota.) Success magazine has cited him in an editorial devoted to his work as “a worldwide expert in executive education.” The New York Post called him “one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America.” He is the winner of the prestigious Axiem Award for Excellence in Audio Presentation.
In 2006 he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Press Institute, the first ever for a nonjournalist, and one of only seven awarded in the 60-year history of the institute.
He once appeared on the popular American TV game show Jeopardy!, where he lost badly in the first round to a dancing waiter from Iowa.
Alan resides in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, with his wife of 50 years, Maria. They have two children, two grandchildren, and two dogs: Bentley, the white German shepherd, and Coco.
To Buck, Trotsky, Phoebe, Koufax, Buddy Beagle, Bentley, and Coco.
If anyone requires evidence of God, one need only consider the company of dogs.
You might be thinking that you’re entering a sales job in going out on your own. Or you may believe that the nature of this profession is all about methodology and technology.
Let me disabuse you of such notions right out of the gate.
This is the marketing business and you’re offering value to prospective buyers.
Please assimilate that before you read on. Your mindset is going to determine your success, and I don’t mean that in the guise of some bizarre motivational speaker. I mean it as a businessperson who constantly seeks the highest profit with the least labor.
This is the marketing business. We may be consultants (or coaches, experts, facilitators, trainers, writers, speakers, and so forth) but nevertheless we’re in the marketing business. Get used to it.
Marketing is the creation of need. Most people know what they want, but few realize what they need until we propose it to them. If it’s strictly what people want that’s in question, then the lowest price will often prevail in a commodity competition (lawn mower, computer, consultant). But if you’re presenting a unique need they hadn’t considered (remote learning, Wi-Fi available in the car, a strategy in six hours), then you are creating something that isn’t subject to fee sensitivity.
This is why your mindset must be about the value you bring to the economic buyer (the person who can actually approve the check) and not about making a sale. The former is about being willing and eager to approach people because you can help them with your value; the latter is about fear of intruding or being rejected because you are trying to sell—take their money.
It’s the difference between giving and taking. I constantly have to reinforce this with even veteran consultants.
When you arise in the morning, you attitude must be, “Another great day to offer people my value,” and not, “Another long, slow crawl through enemy territory.”
AlanismBeing an expert in the consulting field means focusing on marketing your value to true buyers.
Another benefit of identifying your value is that you won’t be intimidated by those who have been around longer, or work for large firms, or who have complex methodologies. I call this pursuit and creation of your personal value the value proposition. It can be broad or narrow.
For example, when my clients were primarily Fortune 500 organizations, my value proposition was “I dramatically improve individual and organizational performance.” Now that I work with other consultants (actually, the “retail” business), my value proposition is, “I dramatically improve the businesses and lives of entrepreneurs around the world.” The value proposition doesn’t have to be unique—a lot of people might claim what I’ve said—but it must represent the initial explanation of the value you convey, the tip of the arrow, so to speak.
So here’s your first exercise: Write a one-sentence value proposition below. Try not to use “by,” “through,” “with,” or other prepositions, because they tend to define methodology, not value. Think in terms of results, or: “After I walk away, how is the buyer better off?”
My value proposition:
Note that my value propositions are very broad. Yours can be quite narrow, such as, “I reduce sales closing time and costs of acquisition.” But don’t believe the weak advice that you “specialize or die.” My 30 years in this business has amply demonstrated that you can “generalize the thrive.”
Your value statement needn’t be etched in stone, and you may well change it as you proceed through the book. But you have a start, and that’s the main thing.
The chart in Figure 1.1 indicates the true power of value as a mindset. The difference between what a buyer believes is wanted and what you determine is actually needed is what I call the value distance. The greater the distance, the higher your fee. The smaller the distance, the less your fee, because you’re in the commodity sea.
Figure 1.1 Value distance.
The final aspect of mindset (for now) is that of your ideal buyer. There are still people who contend that everyone is a potential buyer, but that might only occur if your product were oxygen and sunlight, which you’ll note are both free. Since you (and I) are lone wolves, we need to focus our precious time and energy on those buyers most likely to say “yes” because they appreciate our value. While others may come our way at times, they are not the ones to whom we should aggressively market.
Thus, the ideal buyer saves us time and energy and maximizes our profits. The ideal buyer is that organizational executive who is most likely to need and appreciate our value. I know it’s early, but try to identify that person below (for example, the owner in a small business, the executive director in a nonprofit, the sales vice president or the chief operating officer in a large enterprise):
My ideal buyer:
You can see from Figure 1.2 that the ideal buyer is a slim slice of everyone out there. That’s because you’re not selling oxygen or sunlight, but rather value not generally available. I call these people “hang tens” in reference to the most aggressive surfers who hang off the front of the board.
Figure 1.2 Ideal buyers (hang tens).
Let’s move now past your mindset to the mindset of those whom you want around you.
In addition to your own, proper mindset, you’ll need the mindsets of others. I’m discussing this prior to office space, bank accounts, insurance, or websites because all of that is relatively easy, no more than purchase decisions, which can be changed at any time.
However, there are two issues that will probably spell doom for any solo consultant: one is poor personal relationships, and the other is insufficient funds, and they are obviously inextricably connected. We’ll get to the easier of the two—how to make and keep money—a bit later. But let’s tackle the critical one first: relationships.
If you have a partner or spouse supportive of your venture you will have a far better chance of success. If you do not have a spouse or partner, then you face some potential obstacles, which we’ll deal with below. But if you have a nonsupportive or even indifferent spouse or partner, you need to attempt to change that now.
Why would life partners be unsupportive? Here are the reasons:
Actually, those are pretty good reasons, right?!
My wife told me early on, “Forget about the mortgage, we’ll sell the house if we have to, but you’re not going to make any money sitting in your den looking at the phone. Get out of the house!”
Here are my suggestions for enlisting your life partner in the support of your new career:
All of these steps should dramatically improve the relationship aspects of your new career. But if you are experiencing relationship problems for other reasons, going out on your own will almost always exacerbate them. Reconcile them first, one way or another, before embarking on a path that requires loving support.
AlanismIn this business you need someone to commiserate with the lows and celebrate the highs, but most of all, to keep you honest with yourself.
What if you don’t have a partner? Well, then you need to create a support system. These are not business or professional advisors per se. In other words, not necessarily your attorney or accountant (although they might fit the bill if they’re also personal friends).
Here are typical people to recruit into your support system:1
How big should your support system be? Who knows? Just remember that the purpose is to enable you to have a sounding board for your ideas and to interpret your successes and failures, and to keep you centered. In other words, one rejection from a prospect doesn’t make you a lousy marketer, and one signed contract doesn’t make you a superstar.
The support team needn’t be gathered, or meet, or even know each other. This isn’t a group to which you report. It is a group composed of individuals who can listen well and provide you with objective feedback. Otherwise, you’ll spend immense amounts of time worrying about insignificant matters, trying to interpret the vague utterances of prospects, and generally indulging in too much introspection!
What we do isn’t rocket science. But what we do is extremely personal and can too often be perceived as commentary on our self-worth. In Figure 1.3 you can see the importance of perspective.
Figure 1.3 Self-esteem and efficacy.
When we’re good at what we do (efficacious) and also feel good about ourselves, we are emotionally healthy. But when we don’t feel worthy, even though we’re successful by other metrics, we believe that we’re imposters and about to be found out.2
Many people who are good at what they do don’t believe they deserve it, creating the “imposter” syndrome in the upper right of the chart. This has been found among business executives, performers, athletes, and politicians. When you feel like an imposter (“Why would they believe what I’m telling them?”), you’re subject to rapid decompression when someone does challenge you (“I’ve been found out!”). In this context, you may be effective, but you feel unworthy, so a critique quickly reinforces those inferiority feelings.
The converse is the “empty suit,” who has feelings of great self-worth but not much talent. This is the person who can talk a good game (in Texas: “Big hat, no cattle”) yet doesn’t deliver on the talk.
And if you’re weak in both self-worth and effectiveness, you are alienated and disaffected, odd person out. There’s a type of suicide called “anomic suicide,” which is caused when someone feels completely alienated from those around him or her, is unable to perform well, and feels worthless.
Your support systems are intended to keep you focused with honest, tough-love feedback and support, so that the lows are never catastrophic, and the highs are never too euphoric.
When you’re getting started in consulting, this is especially critical.