Notes from speaking to experienced consultants

I was speaking to a far more successful consultant than myself a few weeks ago.

By successful I mean:

• charges more
• more shorter term gigs
• higher paid, higher profile gigs
• higher profile in the industry
• contacted by ‘budget holders’ and ‘management’ as well as ‘practitioners’

Now, he has worked for this and deserves the success.

• put himself ‘out there’ far more and far longer than myself
• built his brand
• experimented more

And there is a lot that I can reverse engineer from looking at his public profile but I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask for tips:

On pricing

• negotiate principle of least regret - price so that:
  • If they accept, I would regret taking at that price for it is too low
  • If they walk away, would I regret because I priced too high
• never drop your price after a quote
• discuss money early in the ‘can you work for us’ ‘can you come speak to us’

I think I do points one and two, so I’ve added point three into my repertoire.

I also asked about how he manages to make his travel schedule so profitable:

• put schedule online

I have now put my schedule online, and I’ve also put my current availability online on my website and on linkedin, in the hope that this leads to a sense of scarcity and as a prospecting filter to stop enquiries for “can you come work with us full time for 6 months on this low level role”.

I had thought about doing this before, but after speaking to him and seeing how much he credited gaining work from it, I added this a few days after our talk.

One thing that became clear when speaking though was that he has a much clearer idea of the benefit and value that he brings to the role. And that allows him to communicate it in a clearer and more succinct way than I do.

So I need to work on that.

Also he provided tips on creating talks and content that can attract more sales:

• talk titles based on ‘what do I think would be a good benefit’
• what 3 things would I want to talk about - simplify ‘what’ not the how - models are the how

I still have work to do on my personal marketing and branding. Hopefully this helps.

I previously asked other consultants and the advice was generally “charge more”. I think the advice above, when followed will help develop the positioning to allow charging more.