9 Good Reasons To Reject Requests For Free Consulting

In the fourth episode of the Star Wars movies, New Hope, Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker walk into a bar in search of a ship.

They find Han Solo at one of the tables and sit down with him to negotiate the details of the journey.

Han presents his conditions and his fee of 10,000 of some fiendish galactic money units. Luke jumps up and loudly voices his disgust about Han’s exorbitant fee, obviously driven by greed. Finally Ben Kenobi calms him down.

What is the difference?

The wise, old Ben Kenobi understands the value of getting to their destination quickly and reliably. The young, know-it-all, galactic greenhorn Luke knows only the price of a ride on a ship.

The same situation can happen when consultants present their fees. Most real buyers understand the value of consultants’ solutions. But when you talk to low-level flunkies, a.k.a. fake buyers with acute self-importance seizures, overprotective gatekeepers or price-obsessed purchasing agents, they jump up and protest against your outrageous fees.

And very often consultants’ next reaction to this fee protest is to offer free consulting to demonstrate to buyers that they know what they’re talking about and clients can evaluate consultants at work. Many consultants feel guilty to price their services based on buyers’ perceived value because they believe that value-creation is manual labour.

For instance, if an advertising expert takes two minutes to explain to her client how to change a Google AdWords ad’s headline from a dud to a stud, and that ad can now generate 2, 3 or even 5-times more sales leads than before, knowing that the lifetime value of an average client is over $250,000, what is the value of those two minutes?

What is the value of generating 2-300 high-quality sales leads (with a potential $50 million in new sales) week in week out. Even at 1% conversion rate, we’re talking about $500,000 in new business every week going on well, forever. It certainly must be worth more than the pro-rated amount of a competitive hourly rate.

Many consultants don’t put much value on the knowledge that can give their clients this kind of performance capability. And it’s not consultants’ fault that clients can’t turn one single lead into a paying client.

And this is what we discuss in this month's brain-fryingly exciting episode of Commando Consulting, entitled, 9 Good Reasons To Reject Requests For Free Consulting.

Enjoy!