Kick instantly became my mentor: he dares, he takes it to the next level, he seeks for solution, he is forward looking, he never settles for other than success. He rocks!

In one episode Kick teaches his friend, Gunther, how to become a daredevil so he could win Wacky Jackie’s heart. It’s about the daredevil attitude.

Here are Kick’s three rules of keeping daredevil attitude: speech – simplify, focus, and never listen to reason.

Dare to see how it would work in consulting?

Rule #1: Speech

In Kick’s words:

Speech: If you need to use five words to convey something, use two instead. Simplify.

This is pure gold. How many times you heard lengthy speeches only to realize at the end you have taken nothing out of it? Consultancy has much to deal with conveying so many messages to so many people. It’s a skill to quickly learn the other party and briefly deliver key message that sinks well. Consider these  situations:

• Consultant is given 10 minutes to convey key message to business stakeholders.
• Consultant is given 15 minutes to convey key message to technical decision makers.
• Consultant is given 30 minutes to convey key technical messages to 30 developers.
• Consultant is given 15 minutes to convey key messages to his manager.

These is broad spectrum of audience consultant works with and needs to deliver very crisp and clear messages to be successful while keep charging premium. This is when “less is more” hits the road, simplify words and pick only those that stick and count with the audience.

Rule #2: Focus

In Kick’s words:

Focus. Follow the stick.

It’s about prioritization and keeping less important things off the hot plate. The other way to think of it is “follow the prize”. Consider these questions:

• Do you follow the prize/stick when getting assigned to a new gig?
• Do you follow the prize/stick when scoping the gig?
• Do you follow the prize/stick when planning the gig?
• Do you follow the prize/stick when delivering the gig?
• Do you follow the prize/stick when marketing your services?

Rule # 3: Reason

In Kick’s words:

Reason. Never, ever, ever listen to reason.

One could interpret it as being mindless or reckless. It’s far from that. Here is a better way to think about it:

• Challenge the status quo.
• Poke experts in their backyard.
• Challenge common sense.
• Would they call a consultant for reasonable things, something they could do on their own?

I love this Kick guy so much I collected all his videos on YouTube here. Have fun and keep up with your daredevil attitude. Let’s Rock!

image by mcmortygreen

I liked the structure of the book and the style it’s written. Let me share players attributes and how it applies to consultants.

1. Players put creativity, fun, and fulfillment first.

Let’s address creativity and fulfillment first. In majority of cases consultants are hired to solve unusual problems, something that requires creativity, a lots of it. When the problem solved that’s hell of fulfillment, one for the customer another for the consultant himself. Regarding fun part… well, in many cases it’s absolutely no fun. It can be a customer that you can’t get along or a stubborn tech problem that’s too hard to solve to name a few. It sometimes frustrates. It’s a skill though to turn all these “bad” non-fun things into fun. The simplest way to do so is calling it a game and playing your part until the gig ends to see who wins. On other hand, when you work with great people, on impactful issues that’s hard just enough to be solved with enough effort, that’s pure fun.

2  Players are multifaceted.

This one is easy. Consider the following breakdown:

• Consultant meets business stakeholders to understand business need.
• Consultant solicits technical aspects of the problem from technical decision makers.
• Consultant narrows down the problem with tech leads.
• Consultant collects details of the problem with technical staff.
• Consultant brainstorms and does a working PoC (proof of concept).
• Consultant writes reports with charts, graphs, code, scripts, slides, and what’s not.
• Consultant solves technical disputes.
• Consultant solves organizational disputes.
• Consultant manages his efforts and time to fit his bandwidth for himself and other clients.
• Consultant articulates success to his own manager.
• Consultant coaches and mentors younger consultants.
• Consultant is self motivated.

… to name a few. Quite a few facets, eh?

3. Players respond to the world around them

Consultants are outsiders when working with customers. Everything is usually harder when you are an outsider. It takes an advanced skill to blend well and quickly with the world around them. Consultant needs to quickly learn the language and the culture, he also needs to quickly learn the technologies and the processes. If consultant can quickly respond and adapt to the world around him at client’s chances he will be successful when delivering the gig.

4. Players respond to their inner world

They say customer is always right. True, but that doesn’t mean consultant needs always to accept it. When everything else fails consultant has a freedom to respond to his inner world call and leave a client for another. That’s one of the reasons I like short term burst gigs vs. long term projects. The sooner I was able to deliver the faster I would get satisfied or dissatisfied – in either cases I would move to the next gig looking for another adventure that fits my spirit.

5. Players are mavericks.

If you ran the question what’s maverick on Google the answer you’ll get is ‘an unorthodox or independent-minded person.” And if you ask Hebrew speaking person what’s Maverick the answer you will get is “brilliant person” or something like that (????? – ‘mavrik’ literally means ‘shiny’, I believe this is where it’s adopted from in first place). Now tell me, would you hire a consultant that’s ‘un-brilliant’ or un-independent-minded to solve your problem you cannot solve on your own? Independent thinking and brilliance in his niche is consultant’s second nature.

6. Players never stop exploring, never stop learning

The game never stops, it gets only more intensive and competition gets only fiercer. The world became flat, the information became cheap and accessible from anywhere. What’s hard to get is creative thinking that turn the data into actionable insights applicable to specific context. That’s a high order skill and that’s learned skill through exploration, trial and errors, hands-on experience – something that top tier consultants know and do.

7. Players are not naive.

It’s not wisdom of obvious. The key here is that consultants are not naïve when it comes to delivering results. They charge premium and do highly visible work, they are not naïve and they don’t hope that in case of failure it will pass unnoticed and un-asserted. They are not naïve at all, that’s why experienced consultants know to under-promise and over-deliver and keep the promised prize in front of their eyes throughout the gig from the start to the end.

8. Players surf the big waves that others are drowned by.

To keep up above the surface or rather to ride the wave experienced consultants invest just enough time (their most expensive currency) into researching and exploring what’s the next hot thing. While investing too much upfront may significantly hurt current earnings, not investing at all in new hot technology is surefire way out of business. Experienced consultants switch to the new wave early enough (but not too early) to keep ahead of the pack vs. being just another one of the mainstream.

9. Players understand that play is not effortless.

Consultancy can be compared to full contact game. Gloves off. Expect no mercy. Experienced consultants know it best. The preparation requires deliberate practice and delivery requires flawless execution. It’s sport for pros – both effort and rewards wise.

Related

• Billing Models In Consulting
• Consulting: Achieving Outstanding Results
• Consulting: Perceive More To Become Top Performer

image by {Ellie}

Colvin calls out significance of indicators, looking ahead, knowing more from seeing less, and finer discriminations as key differentiators of top performers.

Perceiving more leads to top performance in consulting too.

Significance of indicators

Colvin writes:

“They understand the significance of indicators that average performers don’t even notice”

One thing is understanding the significance of indicators that could tell a consulting gig is off track, but my favorite is understanding indicators that set up the gig for success upfront from the start.

One of my favorite techniques were to ask the customer to tell their story. As simple as that. Breaking the ice is always tough and the easiest would be asking “so what’s the story?” It’s like putting the customer in his comfort zone, letting him to tell the story in his own words.

I would help the customer asking clarifying questions but also I would usually learnt eh folksonomy and understand what the real problem is and who the real customer is and how much pain there is. At the end of the conversation I would echo back what I heard to test my understanding. There were times I would tell the customer the problem is actually different than the one stated in the beginning, or even telling him I am just the wrong guy for the job. That way I could reveal latent requirements or pains or desires and make sure that gig is set to fix the right problems and achieve more impactful results. And that’s based on latent significant indicators revealed by simply asking to tell the customer’s story.

Looking further ahead

Colvin writes:

“They look further ahead”

The analogy I like the most here is constantly testing consultants execution against his own goals and the customer’s. As for consultant’s goals being booked solid is one of the keys. To make sure he is, he needs to constantly gauge how much billable hours are left to bill and if there is not enough then he needs to shift into his “marketing/selling” mode either on his own or through his sales force colleagues. If consultants to fail do that he is bound to sit on the bench, and that is precisely the opposite to being top performer. From customer’s perspective, consultant constantly tests his execution against the customer goals – those that originally stated and those that are emerging. Some things are static during the gig and some not, looking further ahead helps nail both or at least the key ones, drop the less impactful ones and drive the gig to success.

Seeing less, knowing more

Colvin writes:

“They know more from seeing less”

To be successful with customers you do not have to solve all of their problems, but only the key ones. That takes skill to identify them. One of the less effective techniques to identify key issues I witnessed is studying more materials for customer’s situation. What helped me to avoid this trap is what I just outlined in Significance of Indicators section above. This is where I would learn about customer’s key themes – it could be issues or it could be desires. But in most cases it would reveal what the customer cares the most. Often times the customer provides lots of less significant materials but then gets back to core – on his own or with help of clarifying questions. Funneling the customer back to key issues helps knowing more about it and thus driving to successful gig. Here is the recap of the recipe – see the vital few issues, know more about just those and drive to success based on that.

Finer discriminations

Colvin writes:

“They make finer discriminations than average performers”

This comes with experience. The more consultant practice or more precisely, the more consultant deliberately practice his expertise the finer discriminations he would notice. Some would call it intuition, and some call it gut feeling. It comes with the practice. What worked best for me is focusing on specific niches, like security and performance in my case, and practicing it during the gigs and on my own. Sometimes during the initial interview with the customer I could tell what the problem is and how to approach to solve it. Practice it deliberately and the finer discriminations will show.

Related

• Consulting: Achieving Outstanding Results
• Article: High Impact Results Guidelines For Consultants
• Billing Models In Consulting

Image by Mijonju

“…

• It’s designed specifically to improve performance
• It can be repeated a lot
• Feedback on results is continuously available
• It’s highly demanding mentally
• It isn’t much fun

…”

This simple yet demanding pattern can be successfully applied to consulting. Here is how.

Improve performance

As a consultant you are constantly measured for performance, mainly for two key metrics: customer satisfaction and revenue. To achieve outstanding results you should focus improving performance for these two metrics. Consider the following.

To improve customer satisfaction:

• Figure out who the key stakeholders are. You are evaluated for satisfaction directly by those folks. Understand what they value the most and design your execution around their values.
• Figure out who the real customer is. Your service end result is probably not targeted to key stakeholders but to end users. Understand what they value, although they won’t directly evaluate you on satisfaction but they have a voice with the key stakeholders and they may have significantly influence.
• Nail key scenarios for these two audiences and give it the highest priorities.

To improve revenue:

• Reduce you bench time. Manage your backlog and the pipeline – make sure you always have something in the pipe, otherwise work with your sales and marketing to make sure you have gigs lined up for you. This especially helpful if you are in hourly rate gigs.
• Move to fixed fee. Fixed fee gigs are the riskiest but most rewarding. Focus on specific niches and become an expert, or better off create your own niche and be the first one in it. Make sure the niche is about customer’s pains/pleasures otherwise no one would buy your services.

Repeatability and feedback loop

Here is the summary of the recommendations from the previous paragraph:

• Figure out who the key stakeholders are.
• Figure out who’s the real customer.
• Reduce you bench time.
• Move to fixed fee.

The first two should be repeated in the beginning of each gig. Use it as a checkpoint. If you have not identified key folks in the beginning then you won’t know how to achieve results, let alone outstanding results. The other two are great during execution and between the gigs. Test yourself repeatedly for shortening your bench time and how many fixed fee gigs your delivered vs. hourly rate ones. It’s easy to repeat and measure. It’s way harder to implement though. That’s why it’s mentally demanding.

Demanding mentally, no fun

So you are consultant and you are called onsite to solve customer’s problem – make something broken work or make it work better. Effectively you are in charge of improving customer’s performance. But to make it so you must repeatedly gauge your own performance. So you need to have controls to monitor and measure both. The question is How? How to do it the way so it’s simple, less time consuming, effective, and not mentally demanding? There is no simple straightforward answer which only proves this whole thing is mentally demanding, but here are few resources that can help. And if you deliberately practice improving each and everyone of them, or at least those that hurt your performance the most, chances you will get results that will turn your customers into raving fans. It’s no fun but it’s rewarding and it works.

Related

• Consultant Solves Problems Fast
• Making Money As Consultant

image by SaudaminiN

Customers want results fast on one hand, on another hand in most cases consultants charge per hour so the faster the problem solved less money paid. It may look counter-productive for the consultant. But it is not counter-productive at all. Consultant who solves problems fast gets ahead of the pack and that becomes his competitive advantage. It means that the consultants gets booked solid. What’s better? To deliver 100 billable hours and sit on the bench for another 30 hours or deliver constantly 40 hours then another 40 hours then another 40 without bench time at all?

Flawless execution and delivery are the key to fast delivery. There is more to it though .Marketing, sales, planning, influence without authority, time management, information management, networking, conflict resolution, public speaking, trust, writing, making raving fans, failing fast, risk management, interviewing, saying No, emotional intelligence, recreation, skills building, partnering, competing and some more.

Each of the above aspects of consulting can be viewed as problems that consultant needs to solve first as a prerequisite for solving a larger problem, his customer problem. The good news is the longer you stay with these problems the faster problem solver you become. But there are shortcuts that allow you to become a fast problem solver faster. I studied the shortcuts and I applied them as I learned them. Some worked for me and some not. I collected those shortcuts that boosted my performance as a consultant and shared on this blog so you can stay with problems less and start deliver results faster while booked solid.

Related

• Making Money As Consultant
• Consultant’s Skills

image by Grace Fell

Let me briefly outline these three models and ups and downs of each one.

Hourly Rate

Hourly billing model suggests billing the customer for all hours the consultant invested for the gig. It is low risk model for consultants since payment is secured by hours investments versus actual results. From the customer’s perspective it is low risk on financial side but very high risk from overall outcome. Use this simple hourly rate calculator to get an idea how much you would need to charge per hour to maintain your dream lifestyle.

Fixed Fee

Fixed fee billing model suggest that the customer is paying for actual results agreed in the contract and in the SOW (Statement of Work). It is the riskiest model for the consultant since improperly scoped work and too ambitious commitment may lead to time investments beyond that was originally planned and in the end of the day low profitability and damaged reputation. That’s why fixed fee gigs seem to be overpriced at first look since the consultants include this risk in the pricing. From customer perspective it is low risk since he is paying for actual results.

Retainer

Retainer billing model suggests that “the employer pays in advance for work to be specified later.” (source – Wikipedia). Effectively you are being paid for sitting and waiting for something to happen and that’s when you will be utilized but mostly you are waiting. If nothing happened you are still paid while investing nothing in actual work. Moreover, most of the time you do not have to sit and wait at customer premises.

Related

• 3 Easy Steps For Personal Spending Planning
• How To: Create Personal Finances Spreadsheet Using Microsoft Excel
• Money Management Practices That Keep You Out Of Debt

image by stephenvance

Possess a relentless focus on growth.

Growth is a goal for consultant. If a consultant does not treat it as a goal he is running the risk of falling behind the pace of his niche. He is also running the risk of failing to grow financially and reaching to more appealing and more strategic customers.

Continually transition their revenue source

Some consultants have very few customers and hope this will continue for good. It’s like putting all the eggs in one basket. If the basket drops they all break. A consulate should reduce this risk by exploring and reaching out to new markets or better yet create his own.

Solve customers problems – before the customer knows it’s a problem

It is a high end skill – discovering latent needs and future requirements. Consultant who master such skill will have him booked solid while charging premium.

Source innovation ideas through their customers

This is Steve Jobs style and this is how a good consultant would approach the customers issues to be solved. My favorite approach was asking many questions and create plenty of data points then letting the customer connect the dots himself. That way he feels he solves the problems on his own, which is true. But the key here is it’s much easier to persuade with the solution since it was offered by the customer himself.

Focus on ingesting fast ideas

This one resonates with the previous one, but it is larger than it. The ideas come not only from the customers. Ideas are everywhere: movies, other disciplines, kids, schools, playground, games, books, online. It’s a high end skill to quickly distill what’s useful and apply it in other areas. High performance consultants know it well.

Check their speed and focus on corporate agility

There was a project plan and now it’s obsolete. But who has the guts to say so? The consultant must do it. He needs to constantly keep his hand on the business pulse to see what’s hot and what’s not. If the original plan states one thing and the reality is the other – consultants raise the flag and ring the bell.

Focus on long term wins through constant incremental improvements

These are the basics of project management and consulting is no different here. The bad news is that often times this simple rule – have the price in front of you and break the work into smaller pieces – is neglected resulting in project failures or low performance.

Focus on skills partnerships as a key success factor

Consultant is a lone field warrior but he is viewed as a super hero by customers who needs to solve their most challenging problems. It’s impossible to meet such expectation without having solid network of world class experts that can compensate. That’s why successful consultants develop strong networks of expertise as their safety net.

Focus on pervasive connectivity for next generation product

“What’s my next gig?” – this is one of the key questions I ask myself daily. I pay specific attention to this question when being assigned to a new gig. This is to make sure the gig will help me prepare better for the next one, if not – why bother? Bottom line consultant invests his time, his key currency, in something that can grow him and make him more competitive tomorrow.

Aren’t afraid to back away from big ideas

Big ideas aside, what works is what’s important – what’s not, even if it is a big idea, will wait it’s turn, until it works and shows actual results.

Related

• Ten Lessons Steve Jobs Can Teach Consultants
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution
• Consulting Skills

image by tychay

1. The most enduring innovations marry art and science

Consultant is innovator by design. Why calling consultants in first place? They are called to lead the change, to introduce something new or make things work differently. One thing is possessing the skills to make things work differently, the other is to picture the better state and sell key stakeholders on the vision. This is where the art kicks in. Consultants who could create appealing mental images and shape the vision in people minds are rare artists. Marry this skill with technical expertise and you get a consultant who could lead an enduring innovation.

2. To create the future, you can’t do it through focus groups

You cannot scope the problem without having bunch of relevant people in a room. Call it focus group. The trick is what to ask them and how to solicit information that can help shaping the future. One way, the traditional one, is to ask what they want as a solution. In most cases they don’t know it. The other way, the Jobs way, is to observe them at work and collect their stories, then brain storm and model how to improve their experience. Then nail vital few and deliver it. Same with consulting. Don’t ask the customer what he would want as a solution rather ask to tell his story and solicit enough information to make a decision what the vital 3 stories to nail, then brainstorm and model the solution that improves the experience.

3. Never fear failure

If you do fear failure you better stay out of consulting.

4. You can’t connect the dots forward – only backward

In consulting you should posses just enough skills to figure the solution in any given situation. The more skills you posses chances you will be successful in broader spectrum of situations. The downside is that you cannot predict what skills will be more valuable in the future. Here is an advise for you, invest in skills that you are passionate the most – let your passion drive. When you put heart in customers’ solutions the outcome would be most impactful. It will be fastest too, customers love fast solutions.

5. Listen to that voice in the back of your head that tells you if you’re on the right track or not

Intuition is consultant’s best friend. Solid skills are the foundation and handy, but intuition that’s getting improved over time after few failures is invaluable. If you are offered an attractive gig that your inner you tells you not to take – don’t. If you see a customer insists on a solution that your inner you tells you will make more harm than good tell him so. If your inner you tells you time to revitalize your technical skills – do so. If your inner you tells you to not to listen to it, you know what to do, eh?

6. Expect a lot from yourself and others

Consultant’s paid premium. No surprise here. Why? I bet you guessed, because he delivers to high expectations and beyond. To keep up with the pace consultant needs to be aware that all others do not stand on the same place. The competition is fierce and fittest survives. Consultant should expect others to get improved quickly and so does he to keep beating the competition and win customers’ hearts and minds.

7. Don’t care about being right.  Care about succeeding

Defend your reputation, not your ego. When delivering a gig proactively set check points to test you are on path to success. Fail fast during those check points, offer options to the customer and let him choose from the list – offer tools for making decisions. Success of your customer is your success. Being right does not always achieves success. “I told you so” won’t get you more gigs. If you are not right – admit it and learn from the mistakes.

8. Find the most talented people to surround yourself with

Building the network is essential for consultant. This is how consultant scales and provides faster and better solutions – he relies on the network of smart people he has built over long period of time. If you don’t have a network the time is now – it takes time to build a solid network of smart people, waste no time. Engage with smart people in-person when delivering your gig, or during professional convention. Engage with smart people online – on forums, blogs, and social networks.

9. Stay hungry, stay foolish

“They keep moving the cheese.” If you have not read the book Who Moved My Cheese? you should. It will explain it all to you, and it is only 95 pages. If you think you could sit and eat your cheese endlessly you are wrong. Don’t wait for being out of cheese. Pretend it’s gone already and no one needs your current expertise, what do you do? What needs to be done now to make sure you are not hungry when cheese is gone? Test it, experiment, fail fast, and improve. Make your routine and you will never be hungry again.

10. Anything is possible through hard work, determination, and a sense of vision

You do not need Steve Jobs to learn that, eh?

Related

• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution
• Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007
• Consulting Skills

image by secretagent007

Consulting Guidelines For High Energy and Burnout Prevention article is out. The article’s objectives:

• State the risk of the burnout
• Rationalize the need for high energy
• List guidelines for maintaining high energy

Here is the abstract:

As a consultant you constantly run a high risk of burnout. Regardless of the billing model – hourly rate, fixed fee, or retainer – the time is your core currency and  it runs against you. Collecting requirements, researching on available technologies, developing proof of concept, fixing technical problems, implementing – that’s technical  part that takes lots of energy. Influencing without authority, resolving conflicts, learning to understand folksonomy for each new gig, performing required mundane work, defending your approach and adapting to others’, reporting to high ranks folks is another soft skills aspect of work that requires even more energy. Spending so much energy is a surefire path for energy drainage and as a result – the burnout. When you hit this point of burnout your results won’t be as impactful at best. In the end the burnout would lead to disengagement from your gigs and contract termination. You need a plan for how to preserve your energy resources and how to avoid burnout so you could deliver high impact results in sustainable manner. Here is the plan – let your passion drive, reuse at scale, prioritize catalyst work over drainage work, manage time.

What’s your practices to preserve your energy while keeping up with the high pace?

image by Adriano Arruguetti

I have distilled key aspects of high impact results when delivering consulting service. It boils down to relevancy, winning Strategy, precise Execution, and relying on your Network.

Relevancy is key, defining relevant results upfront is half path to success. Strategy is about charting your path to the results and making it your brand. Execution is actually delivering on what you have promised. And Network is about having the safety net when in trouble which happens quite often.

Applying these guidelines in my practice I was able to establish myself as a brand for security and performance consulting gigs – my strategy was delivering results fast relying on my knowledge and my network. It paid off – here a glimpse of what my customers and colleagues say about me on my LinkedIn profile (recommendations section).

Besides  my personal experience I have tested insights from the following books:

• Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
• First Things First
• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life
• Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success
• The Consultant’s Calling: Bringing Who You Are to What You Do, New and Revised
• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
• More books I recommend…

image by ahtak

The practices I have covered are Planning, Execution, Tracking, and Prioritization. I read quite a few books trying to distill the wisdom from those in the know and make some shortcuts to success. The books I mainly relied on are:

• First Things First
• Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life
• Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success
• Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints
• Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
• The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best
• The Consultant’s Calling: Bringing Who You Are to What You Do, New and Revised
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
• More books I recommend…

Enjoy reading Core Practices Any Consultant Should Master.

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“Language underlies all other components of customer satisfaction” – Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon, Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

They say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. For service delivery the first impression is made based on the language used when delivering the service. No matter what medium is used – in-person, email, or over the phone. It’s about the language. Inghilleri and Solomon suggest practical guidelines how to make sure the language contributes to successful, and profitable, service delivery.

Consistent Style

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“No brand is complete until a brand-appropriate style of speaking with customers is in place at all levels of the enterprise.”

From my experience:

Consistency is in fact integrity, especially when it comes to delivering on something that was promised… or not. A typical situation would be when a sales rep promises something, whatever just to hit his sales numbers. Then consultant comes in and realizes he needs to deliver something he had never heard before. To avoid such situations I used to hand out my own marketing materials and even SOW’s to sales folks to make sure they sell something I am capable to deliver. In other cases first question I usually asked a customer was “tell me what have you been sold?” Then listen, and if it distantly resonates with what I can do I used to suggest related scope so the customer could reject it on the spot or agree with it. This is how I achieved consistency.

Preferred Lexicon and Phrasing

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“Study the language that works best with your own customers, and identify harmful phrases that should be avoided.”

From my experience:

I used to keep two simple principles to make sure the delivery moves forward: positive talk, future tense. “Challenges” vs. “Problems”, “Imagine tomorrow…” vs. “It failed yesterday.” I tried to always shift focus toward tomorrows solutions from yesterdays problems.

Key Customer Moments

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“…focus your language efforts on moments that are known to remain vivid in memory: hellos (make yours usually warm and personal), good-byes (make them wonderful), and recoveries after service failures (yours should be more graceful than anybody else’s)”

From my experience:

Strong kick start and crisp wrap up of a gig were keys to my successes and failures. If at kick start I am unable to identify key players and key outcomes of the gig I am destined to failure. If I delivered great service and unable to articulate it – it’s failure again.

Shut Up

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“Align your organization to the value of listening.”

From my experience:

Anything I’d say here would degrade the message. Shut up and listen. Just shut up. Start with simple “What’s the story?” and then take a deep breath, shut up, and listen. And take notes of the data points the customer spits out. Listen and take notes. That’s it.

Show, Don’t Tell

“When a customer asks how to get somewhere, physically lead him there.”

That was my favorite! Instead of barking “Go there” “Do this” at customers I’d usually open my laptop in front of him and walk step by step through the whole process. And if I wouldn’t have a working demo I’d mock up a fake one, calling it prototype. And if I could not mock up one then whiteboard would be my best friend. That would create an experience of leading a horse to the water.

Include visualization techniques into your language and make it part of your daily vocabulary – customers will thank you ton.

The secret ingredients for the success are perfect product, caring delivery, timeliness, and en effective problem resolution.

Design Defects In

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“You need to design your product or service so that it can be expected to function perfectly within foreseeable boundaries…Your products, and people, will sometimes fail due to unpredictable circumstances.”

From my experience:

• It’s all about setting expectations. To make sure the expectations are set properly I used to deliver pre-packaged service offerings. Instead of hiring me for hours  the customers were buying something they could estimate the outcome pretty easily. That way potential service delivery defects, that are usually rooted in wrongly set expectations, were brought to minimum.

Caring Delivery

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“Your perfect product now requires caring, friendly people to deliver it.”

From my experience:

• I have seen consultants who are capable of solving any problem no matter what but they were not able to interact with customers in “caring” manner. The only times they were called onsite again is when there was no other option, but that’s not how usually things work in the wild – there is always another option, competition is fierce.

The Time Is Now

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“What your customer today thinks of as on-time delivery is not only stricter than what her parents would have tolerated, it’s stricter than what even her older sister would have tolerated.”

From my experience:

• I was very successful consultant. How do I know? My customers told me that. I used to receive mainly two types of feedback: “Timely response and delivery” and … does not matter. It was not by chance – I designed my consulting practice the way I would be able to respond to request in no time and if hired to deliver the desired service as quick as possible. There were quite a few who could compete with me on professional level, but no one could beat my timeliness.

Solve Problem Effectively

Inghilleri and Solomon write:

“Service breakdowns and other problems experienced by customers are crucial emotional moments in a business relationship”

From my experience:

• Though I always hoped for flawless execution, I thought about breakdowns as of the opportunities to shine. No, I was not happy when something was broken – nevertheless I firmly knew that if I fix it then it will be best marketing I could ever get. I was booked solid since I have built a personal brand with a tag line on it “solves problems.”

Image by elward-photography

If the First Law Of Usability – Don’t Make Me Think, as outlined in the book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug, so how do I design my pages for thoughtless (and streamlined) consumption? Krug advocates for visual hierarchy, conventions, breaking pages into areas, making clickables obvious, and minimizing noise.

Create Clear Visual Hierarchy

Krug writes:

Pages with a clear visual hierarchy have three traits:

1. The more important something is, the more prominent it is.
2. Things that are related logically are also related visually.
3. Things are “nested” to show what’s part of what

From my experience:

• Back in consulting practice I admired web pages that had clear hierarchy – it helped me to find priceless answers fast and solve customers problems in no time.

Take Advantages Of Conventions

Krug writes:

There are two important things to know about Web conventions":

1. They’re useful.
2. Designers are often reluctant to take advantage of them.

Innovate when you know you have a better idea (and everybody you show it says “Wow!”), but take advantage of you don’t.

From my experience:

• Back in consulting conventions on pages and common terms helped me quickly get onboard people and create common language in the group of people working together. When you have common language it is so much easier to carry out the messages and get folks onboard.

Break Pages Into Clearly Defined Areas

Krug writes:

Dividing the page into clearly defined areas is important because it allows users to decide quickly which areas of the page to focus an on which areas they can safely ignore.

From my experience:

• Put it simple, if I land on a page that has text only – no areas, no bullets, not subtitles, no nothing but text – I leave it the next second.

Make It Obvious What’s Clickable

Krug writes:

Since a large part of what people are doing on the Web is looking for the next thing to click, it’s important to make it obvious what’s clickable and what’s not.

From my experience:

• It is not uncommon I land on a page brought by a search engine but I cannot find what I need on it. Only spending couple of seconds by hovering over the object on the page I start to realize there are dynamic links that show and hide. Leaves bad taste in the mouth. I cannot care less about these visual effects – just give me the right link!

Minimize Noise

Krug writes:

One of teh great enemies of easy-to-grasp pages is visual noise. There are really two kind of noise:

1. Busy-ness.

Background noise.

From my experience:

• I like Google home page for its un-noise’ness. I like WIkipedia for the same reason. My eyes hurt when I land on the pages where I need to make them work hard to find meaningful information. Noise hurts.

image by laffy4k

The chapter maps key 9 building blocks of business model to a Long Tail pattern. As I was walking through the pattern and the mapping it looked natural for me to think about both blogging and consulting.

“Niche content providers (professional and /or user generated) are the KEY PARTNERS.“

Successful bloggers and consultants usually choose a narrow niche and they usually partner with like minded sharing their trade secrets at their level of partnership.

“The KEY RESOURCES is the platform; KEY ACTIVITIES include platform development and maintenance and niche content acquisition and production.”

Successful bloggers and consultants usually invest in enriching their foundation, the content they offer to their customers – either for premium or freemium.

“The main COSTS incurred cover platform development and maintenance.”

Successful bloggers and consultants are usually light on costy assets.

“The VALUE PROPOSITION of a Long Tail business model is characterized by offering a wide scope of “non-hit” items that may co exist with “hit” products. Long Tail business models may also facilitate and build on user-generated content.”

Successful bloggers and consultants are usually very niche’ish. They also get a lot of help from crowdsourced materials. This is how they scale. Network of in-depth niche offering usually creates most powerful and unmatched offerings.

“Long Tail business models focus on niche CUSTOMERS.“

…I’d rephrase it as “…focus on very specific needs.” Many regular customers would have such needs and they would gladly pay for content/service that provides priceless solution for their specific needs.

“Long Tail business model is based on aggregating small revenues from large number of items. REVENUE STREAMS vary; they may come from advertising, product sales, or subscriptions.”

Successful bloggers have usually multiple streams. Bloggers streams include multiple affiliation programs and many consultants have multiple clients. This helps making sure the revenue is balanced. If one program/customer stops being profitable it can be easily dropped and the efforts can be repurposed in finding the substitute while keeping healthy income.

Long Tail business models usually rely on the Internet as a CUSTOMER RELASHIONSHIP and/or  TRANSACTION CHANNEL.

Well… who doesn’t, eh?

image by krystian_o

  “I should be able to ‘get it’ – what it is and how to use it – without expending any effort thinking about it.”

If you are building products, offering services, or building web sites you better read a book  Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Indeed the more we make people think the more hurdles we set for them on their way to buying and using what we have to offer. I strongly believe that usability is a key competitive advantage especially in the era when the information and advice for a better product just click away. I like how Krug sets the stage by “demystifying” few facts of life – we do not read pages, we do not make optimal choices, and we don’t figure out how things work. I call it usage scenarios or patterns. Once you know the scenarios you can design your product or service that can be used frictionlessly.

We Scan Web Pages

Krug writes:

“One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.”

I can safely confirm that that’s the way I use the web. Back in consulting I used to work in under-the-fire mode, I needed priceless answers to customers’ tough questions fast. The cases I was successful is when I knew the answer (very rare cases) or I knew how to quickly find one that is hidden somewhere on the Web. Google rarely helped, it usually brought a lot of noise and I needed to work hard to find the needle in the haystack. The solution for me was to collect those gold info nuggets found on the Web into personal scannable knowledgebase.

We Search For The First Reasonable Option

Krug writes:

“… we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as stisficing. As soon as we find a link that seems like it might lead to what we are looking for, there’s a very good chance that we’ll click it.”

I think there are two key messages here:

• Provide list of options.
• Organize the options by relevancy to the task.

From my experience, most successful resources I used effectively and efficiently were those that organized content in simple lists categorized by tasks. I could easily jump to specific and relevant category and pick from a reasonable amount of options the one that seemed most optimal for the case at hand.

Muddling Through

Krug writes:

“Faced with any sort of technology, very few people take the time to read instructions. Instead, we forge ahead and muddle through, making up our own vaguely plausible stories about what we are doing and why it works.”

…and another one

"For most of us, it does not matter to us whether we understand how things work, as long as we can use them. It’s not for lack of intelligence, but lack of caring. In the great scheme of thing, it’s just not important to us."

Reflecting back on my consulting experiences I can perfectly remember times when I was brutally stopped when trying to explain how things work. I was directly demanded to show how to make it work! No one could care less about under-the-hood stuff. But everyone cared to get things done and go home early.

image by Evil Erin

• Tip #18: Keep Client Management in the Loop
• Tip #32: Under-Promise, Over-Deliver
• Tip #36: Know Project Purpose and Scope
• Tip #39: Don’t Use “Consultant-Speak” To Impress
• Tip #52: Have an Agenda
• Tip #59: Sharpen Your Presentation Skills
• Tip #67: Always Be in Sales Mode
• Tip #72: Develop a Network of Business Associates
• Tip #85: Provide Options When Presenting an Issue
• Tip #93: Optimize Your Bench Time

Tip #18: Keep Client Management in the Loop

Sauder writes:

Every manager has their own style and expectation for involvement

This tip helps keeping the project on track. I found it useful during the kick off meting for a gig to ask stakeholders how to communicate the progress. Some asked to CC them for every email communications some asked just for timely update. That way I was able to adjust to management styles at customer’s while keeping the management in the loop.

Tip #32: Under-Promise, Over-Deliver

Sauder writes:

One of the key aspects of setting client expectations is delivering to the client when you say you will.

This tip helps exceeding expectations. The flip side of the story is that the competition is tight and you need to know the lower boundary of the “under-promise” – if you go below it, you will be out of business.

Tip #36: Know Project Purpose and Scope

Sauder writes:

When a consultant is assigned to a project the project manager should clearly define the scope of the project and the consultant’s specific assignments that they will be responsible for.

This tip helps keep the project on track. Unclear purpose and scope or lack of it will lead to scope running out and as a result… no meaningful result will be delivered. In short, failure. I found it useful to scope my gigs using scenarios. I would suggest to nail three to five key scenarios and deliver the project to it. Solving minor problems/scenarios would be considered of low impact which would lead to customer’s dissatisfaction. Fine key three scenarios and nail it as a scope.

Tip #39: Don’t Use “Consultant-Speak” To Impress

Sauder writes:

Speak to clients in clear, straight to the point statements to inform them rather than to impress them.

This tip helps saving on time and also it helps building trust. Customer are no fools – if you try to impress them speaking “foreign” to them language they will dump you. Speaking clear simple language builds trust.

Tip #52: Have an Agenda

Sauder writes:

Meetings should be held only when necessary and should be run efficiently to avoid wasting valuable time and money. One way to ensure an efficiently run meeting is to have an agenda.

This tip helps saving time. Meeting without action items, owners, and due dates is a waste of time. You can improve it by just setting clear agenda and opening the meeting by the following – “By the end of this meeting I’d like to have clear understanding of … who… when… what…”

Tip #59: Sharpen Your Presentation Skills

Sauder writes:

Regardless of whether you are an entry level consultant or have several years of experience, you will be expected to speak in front of a group of people.

This tip helps getting your bright ideas being used. If you cannot clearly carry out your message to executives – you won’t get support from superiors. If you cannot clearly carry out your message to your colleagues – you won’t get high performance execution.

Tip #67: Always Be in Sales Mode

Sauder writes:

Sales should be in the back of a consultant’s mind at all times. There are many opportunities for additional work at a project if one keeps their eyes and ears open:

This tip helps you keep off the bench. Your next gig begins during your running gig. You just do not bill time for it… yet.

Tip #72: Develop a Network of Business Associates

Sauder writes:

To some degree this is a numbers game and quantity is important. It is more important, however to develop quality contacts that will remember you if you need to reach out to them.

This tip helps you to scale. You scale much better with your network – your network helps you scale better with sales and it helps you scale better when you deliver.

Tip #85: Provide Options When Presenting an Issue

Sauder writes:

…identify as many possible resolutions as you can. List the pros and cons to each resolution.

This tip helps your customer get more confidence when making decisions. If presented with single option for solution the customer feels trapped or spent money for nothing. When presented with list of options – the customer can make informed data driven decision that fits him best.

Tip #93: Optimize Your Bench Time

Sauder writes:

Consulting firms measure their employees’ performance in many aspects, but the two most important measurement metrics for a consultant are their utilization (hours billed to clients) and their sales numbers.

This tip helps you stay in the business. Time is the currency in consulting business. The thing is that if you loose time you can never get it back.  Treat your time with care and educate others to do the same.

Goals

Consultant’s goals:

• Utilization
• Customer Satisfaction
• Growth

Read more about consultant’s goals and how to set them in Consultant’s Goals, Risks, and Constraints – Part I.

Constraints

Consultant’s constraints:

• Manager
• Time
• Pipeline/Backlog
• Influence
• Knowledge

Read more about consultant’s constraints and how to maximize them in Consultant’s Goals, Risks, and Constraints – Part II.

Risks

• Knowledge lag
• Burn out
• Failure to grow network
• Sitting on the bench
• Missing utilization goal
• Loss of trust
• Project failure
• Unsatisfying job

Read more about consultant’s risks and how to mitigate them in Consultant’s Goals, Risks, and Constraints – Part III.

Resources

• Consulting Skills
• Books by category

image by Xurble

Think of risks or threats as of negative event that might happen.

In Part I I discussed consultant’s goals and how different risks or threats can prevent the consultant from reaching the goals. In Part II I outlined the constraints that limit the consultant in reaching his goals. Here I list risks and mitigation approaches.

Knowledge lag

Technology innovation has fast pace. If you cannot keep up with the pace, your technical skills become obsolete. If your skills obsolete, no one will hire you. The key question here is how to keep up with pace? How to invest just enough time to keep up with the pace without hurting billable time and work life balance? Here are few approaches that worked for me:

• Pick a niche. This was critical for me. I intentionally picked very few niches and focused only on them. The niches I picked we critical to every customers – it was by design to avoid pigeon hole trap. I picked data security and system performance and invested in it relentlessly.
• Learn timeless principles. How to invest? How to build strong foundation and then just add small deltas on top of it? The secret sauce for me was first learning the principles of each discipline. Principles are timeless regardless of technology. For each discipline you must first figure out key things for the discipline. Consider adopting Marie Forleo’s life lesson #1 – Everything is figure-outable.
• Learn on the go. Learn on the go means – bill the customer for your learning. Say what? Yes, exactly that. There will be plenty gigs that you will be asked to assist but you will know for sure it is the first time you hit such situation so you will need to figure it out on the go. Be transparent with the customer to mitigate another risk of losing trust in case of less than satisfactory outcomes. In such situations my message always was “I have never hit that issue before, but I trust that applying proven principles that served me well so far we can figure it out together. I will be totally fine if you turn me down and seek another professional. I can even recommend you a few.”
• Interoperate. What the hell are you talking about? I could not find a better title to it but here is the deal. Reach out to other disciplines and see how yours positioned there. The more you learn others view on your stuff the more you become customer sensitive and that counts a lot. Suddenly you can speak your stuff in their language – that counts ton. You become relevant not only for your niche but also a go-to guy for other niches you are reaching out.

Burn out

Your product is time (this is most common product for consultants – billable time). Running after time is never ending story. Consider a successful salesman who may slack for the whole month and then hit his numbers by selling a huge gig in one day. This won’t fly for consultant. If you wasted your time for something you cannot bill a customer, it will never come back. It forces consultant to constantly chase utilization. The approaches that worked for me to stay away from burning out and hitting my numbers while maintaining 40 hour workweek:

• Plan. By planning I mean figuring out the annual hours to be delivered to hit the target utilization and breaking it down to the daily quotas.
• Execute. Once the plan is in place – execute against it, just stick to it – drop everything what’s not in, but prioritize wisely. Review the plan periodically to make sure the plan is not too aggressive or too lazy. Adjust as appropriate.
• Prioritize. Prioritization is the secret sauce behind getting results and keeping up with 40 hour workweek. The rules are simple – what’s in the plan gets priority, what’s not – doesn’t. The only exception from the rule is urgent events and that’s the tricky part – you define what’s urgent for you – but remember, if you do more urgent work vs. planned work then the system is broken and you are destined for burn out.

Consider the following resources that outline how to plan, execute, and prioritize:

• How To: Manage Your Time Budget
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution
• How To: Prioritize

Failure to grow your network

Building and growing your network is vital for consultant. This is how the consultant scales when solving customers problems. Networks are everywhere – build yours. Here is a quick example how building your network can help you with your customer – Case Study: Fast Mobilization and Experts Network. Network is community of like-minded, either focused on the discipline or just network of trusted people you can rely on. Your network helps not only to scale when solving customers problems but it also helps to scale marketing and selling your services. To build my network I used two simple practices – make the move and reach out proactively to people. Once the connection established maintain the connection, keep it warm so when you in real need you can naturally reach out and ask for help. It also invites the other side to ask for help more comfortably which only strengthens the connection.

Sitting on the bench

It is the worst case for the consultant from business perspective. If nothing worked and the backlog is empty or the next gig starts in few days – use the time to mitigate the knowledge lag risk, learn and practice new skills. But that’s the worst case. The better case would be proactively managing your pipeline [forecast for possible gigs] and the backlog of current gigs that you need to chip away. These are two main constraints that can easily become a threat and keep you on the bench. To mitigate this risk you proactively maximize those constraints, the pipeline and the backlog, as outlined in Part II.

Missing utilization goal

The reason for missing utilization could be many things. The key here is having simple daily, weekly, and monthly checks for staying on track. This risk is closely related to burn out risk. If you are unable to control your daily execution and test against success daily you will either miss the utilization goal or will try to catch up later resulting in burn out and fatigue. Same practices apply here:

• How To: Manage Your Time Budget
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution
• How To: Prioritize

Loss of trust

That’s the biggest risk as far as I can imagine. All others are temporary and easily recoverable if materialized. This one is devastating that potentially can demolish everything you have built so far. Consider the following reasons that can risk the trust you have established with your customers. It is a good checklist for reducing the risk:

• The contracting is unclear.
• You work your own agenda.
• The fit is poor.
• The client has too much work and too little money.
• The project becomes less important to the client.
• You accept the work you would  not ordinarily do.
• You after the money.
• You catch the client’s “disease”.
• You hold naïve positive assumptions.
• You pretend.

Read more on how to prevent loss of trust here – This Is How Consultant Loses Trust.

Project failure

Here is another checklist you want to have handy. This one might resonate with the previous one. The difference that in this case you have less control. It does not mean you should not be aware of the early symptoms for illness outbreak. This is the checklist:

• Doesn’t meet expectations.
• Lacks change management processes.
• Lacks project sponsorship.
• Insufficient resources or budget are available.
• Team doesn’t report or escalate critical problems quickly.
• No risk planning.
• Schedule delays and missed commitments are rampant.
• Project is over-budget with no end in sight.
• Low morale is a problem.
• Uncontrolled scope creep abounds.
• Project direction and end-game aren’t clear.
• Showstoppers haven’t been identified.

Read more about how to mitigate project failure here – Is Your Project Going To Fail?

Unsatisfying job

So you are kicking ass and booked solid, delivering on customers and your manager expectations. You hit your numbers, no sweat, and you work 40 hours a week. But something is off. Something is bothering you. You feel you are not having fun anymore and the job is just not satisfying anymore. What is it? What’s wrong? Here are few quick frames that helped me to assess my situation in downtimes and take quick corrective actions:

• Physically energized.
• Emotionally connected.
• Mentally focused.
• Spiritually aligned.

To learn more read 4 Dimensions Of Personal Power.

Another one is specific to a job. Here are several frames I have successfully used for several years:

Job frame #1:

• What problems are you working on?
• Who are you working with?
• What impact are you making?

Job frame #2:

• Title
• Learn from
• Daily to-do
• Next gig
• Deliverables
• Lifestyle

Job frame #3:

• What do I get?
• What do I give?
• Do I belong here?
• How can we all grow?

To learn more:

• Job Frame – Decision Tool For Aspiring Candidate.
• Fear No Recession – Surpass Your Career Potential
• Do You Have The Dream Job?

Image by borderlys

I was contacted by a customer, returning customer, who complained about his problem not being solved although it has been escalated to high priority. After few quick questions I realized the criticality of the problem for a customer and the reason it is not solved yet. The customer needed to go live next day. The reason it was not solved was the communication disconnect, the case was handled remotely. I took the case and went onsite.

Course of action

I was not familiar in depth with the technology issues the customer was facing – I told the customer so before taking the case. I suggested to serve as a broker and use my network of experts collecting their insights and then interpreting and applying it onsite. The customer said this is what he exactly needed, someone with a broader network but in proximity to his premises. Remote assistance failed and time was running against us.

After quickly collecting relevant information I was able to transfer it to remote specialist so he could guide me exactly what to do next. After several rounds of information exchange we nailed the root cause and fixed the problem. It’s was past midnight.

Result

The customer went live as planned and he could serve his customers without interruption. I strengthened my relationship with the customer and learned new technology. After the case was closed the customer filled service satisfaction survey. Key questions and answers for me were these:

• Please rate the performance of the consultant using a scale of 1-9 where 9 is “excellent” and 1 is “very poor.” – 9.
• What influenced your rating the most? – Fast mobilization and expertise.

Conclusion

There are several lessons I learned handling this case:

• Time sensitive and mission critical cases must be handled onsite, high cost usually is not an issue, time is.
• Immediate response earns trust and builds relationship.
• Transparency is critical.
• Listing options for immediate action is a great way to getting unstuck.
• You do not have to be expert, but you must be a pro and have to maintain well oiled network of experts.