Comparing Consulting To A Military Mission

Imagine an army that, as a result of being led by an idiot, has been wiped out except one man. At that moment the general at headquarters calls in a "military consultant" to save the day.

The consultant accepts the "consulting gig" based on what the general told him.

Then he discovers some disturbing facts. From his fact-finding, he discovers that there is only one single soldier left of the whole army. He is pretty beaten, thirsty, hungry, dead exhausted, disheartened with headquarters' blazing incompetence, barefoot, butt-naked and has an empty rifle in desperate need for a major overhaul. So, basically there is no hope in hell to win the battle.

"Well, general, based on what you have, you have no chance to win." – says the consultant.

"We don't care" - Yells the general. "You’re the expert. You either win the battle for us or we'll sue you for breach of contract, and do everything in our power to ruin your reputation."

"But you misrepresented the situation in the first place" – says the consultant.

"Never mind. You're the expert. Figure something out, or we'll take you to court for incompetence, negligence, misrepresentation and breach of contract" – says the general from headquarters.

So, there is one more reason you have to create an Ideal Client Profile.

New Complimentary e-Book From Patrick McKenna

David Maister's co-author in First Among Equals, Patrick McKenna has just released his new e-book, entitled The First 100 Days: Transitioning a New Managing Partner.

The book uses examples mainly from law firms, but pay attention to the business structure not to the content. A professional service firm is a professional service firm.

So follow this link and download your complimentary copy.

Website Reality for Professional Service Firms

Now here is a bit of reality check for professional service firms.

The July issue of Consulting Magazine has just published a study on the websites of professional service firms, and how well or poorly they live up to their objectives of helping the firm to acquire and retain clients.

The survey was compiled by Edwin Hastings and Bob Buday of the The Bloom Group. They pay particular attention to the lead generation aspect of websites.

Follow the link to download the report and compare the findings with your own firm’s website. You may just get surprised or even shocked.

Also read the complementary article in Consulting Magazine

And here read the study itself.

Pricing for Perceived Value Is Not Pricing for Achieved Results

This interesting difference has come up just recently with a potential client. When I explained value pricing the prospect asked me, “So you get paid a slice of the profit you create.” Since this question comes up every now and then I’m prepared for it, so I could explain a touch better.

I use the university analogy to distinguish between value and results.

Value is what the university offers in its courses. The courses give students an opportunity to take their lives to a higher level and be successful. The value the university delivers is the ammunition to success. And each student gets the same value. That is, the university delivers the same value for every student.

But some students don’t do their assignments, that is, they are not ready and willing to receive the value the university delivers. But that’s not the university’s problem. Some students freely choose to forego the delivered value and go partying or do other things.

Both president Bush and Rintin Eaglebottom got their MBAs from Harvard. Harvard delivered the same value to both of them, and they both paid for that delivered value. But they received and applied value differently. Hence the difference in results. Bush has become US president. Where is the other guy? Hell knows.

They both got the same opportunity (value), and they used that opportunity differently to crate different results.

Providing a professional service is the same. You offer the value and only clients, the real decision-makers, can turn that value into results. So, you get paid for the value you offer, not for the results clients choose to derive or not to derive from your value, because you can’t control what clients make of the value you deliver.

It was not Harvard that put Bush into the white House. Harvard gave him an opportunity to achieve great things in life. He applied his education and talents to get there.

But the university can’t create results. Similarly, professional service firms cannot create results for their clients. They have to do their own push-ups to get stronger and fitter. Collaborating with clients is like lovemaking. You do it with your partner, not for-, at- or to your partner. And you are accountable to each other to give your best, so it becomes a memorable magical event.

Entitled Rethinking Pricing: Merits of Value Based Pricing, Mike McLaughlin of Deloitte Consulting and author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants has just done a great podcasts.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Free Report from RainToday

Rainoday, a brilliant online portal for professional servicefirms, has published a new report entitled, "The One Piece of Advice You Can't Sell Without?"

This is a compilation of pieces of advice from a small group of highly successful professional service practitioners who reveal bits and pieces of their own sales methodologies.

The contributors are...

• Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting
• Keith Ferrazi, author of Never Eat Alone
• Mike McLaughlin, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants
• Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com
• Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO of Mavens & Mogels, columnist for Entrepreneur
• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing, BearingPoint
• Sam Reese, CEO of Miller Hieman sales training company
• Seth Godin, author of Small is the New Big & Purple Cow
• and some others

You can download the report here. Enjoy.

The Craft and the Business of Your Firm

I've heard it from so many professionals that they love what they do but hate the business aspects of their practices. The doctor loves doctoring but hates marketing. The lawyer loves lawyering but hates dealing with hiring issues. The IT consultant loves IT consulting but hates fiddling with the money and taxes.

One of the reasons that the Rolling Stones is a successful band is that, besides playing good stuff, the y are also shrewd businesspeople and manage their money really well.

Hopefully this article will give you some inspiration why it's a good idea to pay attention, above and beyond the craft of your business, to those "business things" as well.

One More Nail in the Coffin of Time-Based Billing... Hooray

I've recently come across a brilliant article about value pricing. This article was written for accountants but I think every professional service firm and solo practitioner can benefit from it. One aspect of getting away from time-based billing is to abolish the use of time-sheets inside the firm.

In my opinion time sheets are not to be used to measure people's performance and paying them for the amount of time, but they are to be used to track how many hours the firm invest in a project, so after completion, the project team can debrief and assess how profitable the project was. You can correlate your total fees against the number of project hours, and see how profitable the gig was. So, if necessary, next time you can adjust your approach.

In the meantime, enjoy the article.