by CarbonNYC

Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants: Breakthrough Tactics for Winning Profitable Clients is a book by Jay Conrad Levinson and Michael W. McLaughlin I’d recommend anyone, not only consultants.

My biggest takeaways from the  book is a marketing mindset I should have as a consultant and also the prescriptive guidance on how to build my marketing strategy.

Here is my distillation. Read on…

Consultant’s Marketing Mindset

The authors of the book provide an attributes of guerilla marketing for consultants. These attributes helped me to get into the mindset of eternal demand creation for my services I offer as a consultant. And that’s the essence of any marketing – creating the demand.

• [Marketing]Is the business. This attribute reminds me that I am in constant contact with a customer which is just perfect situation to market my service, and that’s not by running the halls yelling “me! me!! me!!!”  rather by delivering first class services. Quietly. Results speak louder than blah blah blah.
• Focused message. This attribute reminds me I should be delivering narrow range of services . I deliver performance and security services. I am a SME [subject matter expert], not a generalist.
• Insight-based. This attribute reminds me that I must not keep IP [intellectual property] to myself rather readily share it with a customer [unless there is a violation of some policy or law]. Telling a customer “I will tell you how to do it after you sign a contract” is wrong. Better off to share the overall approach of the solution to customer’s problem generating demand for more detailed engagement.
• Build intellectual assets. This attribute reminds me to keep sharing the knowledge via my professional blog. This is the best investment I have made when it comes to marketing to customers, my managers, and potential employers.
• Build client relationships. This attribute reminds me to not only strive to full engagement with a customers but also to cherish the connections. These connections serve me well when it comes to market research, leads, and referrals.  Or a friendship.
• Enhance profit. This attribute reminds me that marketing is done to enhance my profits, not the philanthropy [at least at this stage of my career]. It helps me targeting my efforts to niches with more pain. The more pain, the more demand for SME’s.
• Reveal reality. This attribute reminds me I should share what I have witnessed – without beautifying or hiding parts of the reality. Clients are smart beasts, they spot fake in no time.
• Listen and serve. This attribute reminds me that marketing does not end by throwing stuff in the air – it reminds me I need to listen to reactions and act when there is a demand, even when no budget is allocated for it.
• One size fits none. This attribute reminds me that marketing, like life, is ongoing experiment – there is no rules. The only rule is “do what works, if it does not work – stop doing it.”
• Create markets. This attribute reminds me to be an entrepreneur, or inntrapreneur, or event soloreneur. It reminds me I cannot totally depend on someone else to create a market for my services.

Consultant Marketing Vision

The authors of the book offer extremely dense and prescriptive guidance on how to build a marketing strategy. I used it with my managers to get my message across. I think it clicked. Here is the guidance:

1. Sentence one explains the purpose of your marketing.
2. Sentence two explains how you achieve that purpose by describing the substantive benefits you provide to clients.
3. Sentence three describes your target markets(s).
4. Sentence four describes your niche.
5. Sentence five outlines the marketing weapons you will use.
6. Sentence six reveals the identity of your business.
7. Sentence seven provides your marketing budgets

Write your answers and see if your strategy sticks.

Practice This – Get Results

• Get Consultant’s Marketing mindset – focus your marketing efforts on high impact stuff.
• Follow 7 steps to build your marketing vision – if it sticks you’ll be just fine. If not, refine until it does.
• Read Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants: Breakthrough Tactics for Winning Profitable Clients – it’s loaded with insights from the guys who got results, not fluff.

My Related Posts

• Remarkable Marketing By Seth Godin
• From Part Time Aspiring Blogger To Marketing Top Gun
• Basic Instincts And Marketing

In her Four Ways to Improve Your Team’s Performance Daisy Wademan Dowling digests New York Times article about Tom Donnelly’s strategy of building a winning team:

Spend as much time with the slowest runner as with the fastest.

Take away performance pressure by adding perspective — and fun.

Accept inevitable setbacks — and move past them quickly.

Let the team’s performance be its own reward.

It resonated with me so much I decided to share my stories too:

Cherish The Top Performer, Mentor The Rest

I have witnessed two common practices during my career. (I have 14 years and 12 managers under my belt, does it count?)

• Spotlight top performers. In this case top performers get all the attention, all the time. No time is invested in developing the juniors. The result usually was burnout for top performers and fixing problems caused by untrained juniors. The bottom line: you lose both.
• Train, coach, mentor the junior. The other extreme is investing all the energy into the juniors without making time for top performers. The most vague response I personally heard was “I know you can handle it, so why would I bother making myself available for you?”. Dude, you have just lost your top performer’s trust in you. You have just lost your top performer. How long would it take you to raise another one?

Spend as much time with the slowest runner as with the fastest.

Results, Results, Results

End results are all that matters. Almost. How the team gets the results is the secret ingredient. One way to get results is squeeze it, the other tease it.

Two short stories.

Once I was told “We will decide and you will just do it”. By the way, “we” did not include me. I could disagree and start arguing which would be a pure career limiting move. So I agreed but did it my way – which was completely different from what “They” decided. Yet in the end, I produced the results “They” wanted….

The other day a perspective was shared with me, not a very shiny perspective for the whole team. It moved me and I decided to go beyond what I am usually supposed. The move I have made helped a member of the team improving the overall team’s performance.

Sharing perspective worked better than just pressing me to work harder.

Take away performance pressure by adding perspective — and fun.

Motivated By Failure

What motivates me a lot when I face with a challenge, let alone failure, is a quote I found in Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich :

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake – FRANK WILCZEK, 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics.

Mistakes and failures are part of my life, the trick is how I treat them. I can go around and blame the world for the failure. Or I can change what’s under my control – ME.

Change the way you think, change the way you act. BOOM! Success.

Accept inevitable setbacks — and move past them quickly.

Top Performance Is The Reward

What would you prefer? The trophy that collects dust on the shelf or a great change you are responsible for? I’d feel very eroded having a trophy without making a serious impact. The other question is – would you be able to make a serious impact alone, without relying on your peers? – NO!

My biggest strength is my network I have cherished for so long. My wins are due to the support of the network – it goes beyond the team of colleagues. My family, my friends, my mentors, my dog . When I perform at my best here is what happens:

• Family gets happy high energy son, daddy, and hubby
• Colleagues get a peer who’s willing to share the knowledge and success recipes
• Managers get motivated and focused employee ready for the next fight
• Friends get a crazy guy telling funny stories that never says NO to the invitation to go drink a few beers.

Let the team’s performance be its own reward.

Practice This – Get Results

• Invest time in both winner and rookie  – keep the former and grow the latter.
• Share vision for the result vs. press for result – Get that result.

My Related Posts

• Creatures Of Logic And Creatures Of Emotion
• Become The Next Great Mind – Now
• Mark Twain Quotes – Motivation Super Power (WARNING – Addicting)

Editor in chief – Jimmy May

Managers, Consultants, Parents! Consider adopting it. I tried it and it perfectly works. Here is the recipe:

• Don’t dictate — inspire
• Don’t direct — win people to your way of thinking
• Begin with praise and honest appreciation
• Build morale and earn loyalty
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to

For Managers

Dear Manager! Care to make your reports to do their best work? Hell, of course you do. If so, read this carefully and practice this: 

• Don’t dictate — inspire. If you dictate you kill the spirit of innovation.
• Don’t direct — win people to your way of thinking. If you direct you will never get folks to buy in, and that means you will have to direct more. If you make others buy in, your team would operate independently and you could go home much earlier… 
• Begin with praise and honest appreciation. The only reason you still have your position is because of your reports. Respect!
• Build morale and earn loyalty. I know you go through tough times these days. You need loyal reports more than ever. 
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Are you a military man? No? Then stop giving orders. There are reasons why your orders might be disconnected from the “reality”. Ask questions.
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Is there a reason why you are not running the halls bragging what a great workers you have? Your reports are the best people you can get, brag about them. What stops you to do so? Try it, and you’ll get loyal and inspired reports doing their best work in return.

For Consultants

I hear here and there that consultants come into the customers’ and start shooting off the heap advices without understanding the customer’s pain. I am a big fan of best practices that are common and almost universally applicable. But. To win customers’ hearts consultant must show he understands the uniqueness of the customer, once there only then offer advices.

• Don’t dictate — inspire. Share with the customers your previous successful practices, inspire to adopt your way.
• Don’t direct — win people to your way of thinking. Offer the customer the choices and let him pick from the collection.  
• Begin with praise and honest appreciation. All business are the same, but your customers’ is unique. Tat is why they still win the competition.  
• Build morale and earn loyalty. Trust is the only single thing that will help you to grow. Never compromise it. 
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Usually it reveals the problem and the solution. In 99% of my gigs asking the right questions showed the customer can handle the situation himself. It was the matter of asking the right focused questions.
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Consultant, when the problem solved show it’s done by the customer, not by you (see the previous bullet).

For Parents

It’s all about leadership. Managers lead their reports (I know there is a dispute about what’s the difference between Managers and Leaders though), Consultants lead their customers. It’s no different with Parenting – Parents lead their kids.

• Don’t dictate — inspire.  Raise free will open minded kid. 
• Don’t direct — win people to your way of thinking. Make your kid adopt you as a role model. 
• Begin with praise and honest appreciation. This is what your kid will do to the others.
• Build morale and earn loyalty. When your kids will get into the troubles you will know it first hand. One of my friends died just because of being afraid to tell the truth to parents.
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. You can actually learn it from your kids. 
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Raise high self esteem kids.

From the newsletter:

“When we are dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”- Dale Carnegie

Practice This – Get Results

• Read the post from the beginning.

My Related Posts

• John Wooden’s 12 Lessons In Leadership [For Kids]
• The Best Advice For Any Manager
• Consulting – What’s The Deal?
• 3 Things Customers Really Want

My take is this – you teach and lead your kids by example.

I was reading Compromise Can Be an Act of Leadership article by John Baldoni at HarvardBusiness.org. Baldoni is a leadership consultant and a coach. He offers simple recipe for Compromise as an act of leadership:

• Think outcome.
• Find common ground.
• Celebrate the union.

I used it in practice with extreme success when I let my 9 years old daughter down.

Daddy Is Late

My kid was going to perform during her school’s annual festival. We set the time when I should arrive to witness her talent and success. I arrived exactly on time. But…when I came the show was over. She was standing on the stage together with her friends looking at me with eyes full of tears. She felt let down. I felt even worse. I let down my own kid. What a daddy…

Think Outcome

I could excuse myself that I came exactly at the time we set. Who cares? I was not there when she needed me, no matter who’s fault it is.

Then it struck me! Use situational leadership. Use the situation to teach her values. Teach her to think outcome. Teach here to think improvement.

Find Common Ground

She approached me and the avalanches of blame were thrown at me endlessly. I looked at her embarrassed showing I am wrong and she is right. When she choked with her own tears I had a chance to speak: “Darling, I made a mistake. I let you down, and I am deeply sorry for that.” She was disarmed.

First common ground was found – that was easy. We both knew I am wrong and she is right.

I gave her a hug and asked: “Darling, what should your daddy do to make sure it never happens again?”

Celebrate The Union

We spoke and agreed on set of techniques to help me so that I won’t let her down again. The conversation was developing and then we became friends again.

At that point I took step back. I felt it was good time to summarize the lesson we have just learned. I told her that it’s always better to focus on future improvements rather ruminate about the past. Mistakes are part of life, the question is what we spend our energy on – is it accusing each other or do we spend our energy on learning and improvement?

What do you think was her answer?

That evening she had another fight with her 4 year old little sister over a broken toy. She started to loudly accuse her at first but then she stopped abruptly and started to explain how to treat her toys without breaking it.

The lesson was taught and applied in practice. She became a leader. I am curious what have the youngster learned from this?

“There is luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.” – Oscar Wilde

Practice This – Get Results

• Think outcome, do not be right, be smart – growth is all about outcomes.
• Practice Wooden’s 12 leadership lessons – they are universal. Sports, business, parenting – you name it. 
• EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is your friend. Practice and master the “Park” technique – influence without authority starts here. 

My Related Posts

• John Wooden’s 12 Lessons In Leadership [For Kids]
• Emotional Intelligence – Core Skills
• Become The Next Great Mind – Now
• Is Becoming A Leader Actionable And Attainable For All?

Editor in chief – Jimmy May

“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Discuss People

I say, discuss people but do not dwell on it. Find the role models, learn what they have done to achieve their results.

• Find the role model.
• Research on the guy using online search and social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
• Research the guy’s blog.
• Share your observations with your friends.
• Get connected, build your network.

Discuss Events

I say,  discuss events. Our world’s pace is getting faster and faster. There is no sign it’ll change. But how do you follow after what’s going on? How do you focus on what matters and how do you weed out the rest?

• Listen to what your role models have to say.
• Set up alerts for keywords on search engines.
• Reverse engineer the event – find what was the root cause.
• Grab the inspirational idea behind the event.
• Model the pattern.

Discuss Ideas

Got an idea? Share it! Discuss it, create the buzz, ask for feedback like crazy. Make it sticky!

• Find the audience for the idea.
• Find the return on investment for your idea.
• Model the success (always as a win win).
• Get listeners to buy in.

But is it enough to just discuss the ideas to become the next great mind? No!

“The value of an idea lies in the using of it. “ – Thomas A. Edison

Practice This – Get Results

• Start the conversation – with your friends, with your colleagues, with your boss, with your family, with me. Build and strengthen your network.
• Discuss ideas – put your craziest ideas on the table. Draw the attention. People will relate to you as an innovator. It is a valuable brand these days.
• Do not just throw ideas to the wind. Use it, show results, show it actually works.

My Related Posts

• Basic Instincts And Marketing
• Ask Your Customers’ Friends – Your Growth Hides There
• How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information

by kalandrakas

Improving Process – Kaizen Way

In order to improve your results Masaaki Imai, the author of Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success, recommends improving your process. To improve your process you focus on the following:

• Discipline.
• Time Management.
• Skill Development.
• Participation and Involvement.
• Morale.
• Communication.

Taking The Kaizen Way Of Process Improvement

This is my take on personal improvement mapped to the above focus areas:

• Discipline.
• The Power Of Saying “No”
• Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules
• Emotional Intelligence – Core Skills
• Time Management.
• Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.
• Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]
• Effective Time Management With Vista Sidebar
• Skill Development.
• Grow Quality – Not Quantity
• Microsoft vs. Google – Competing For GTD
• Learning Capability Is Your Core Competitive Advantage
• Participation and Involvement.
• TechEd 2007 Barcelona – Web Application Security Session Sum Up
• Do Not Kiss Corporate Life Goodbye
• Morale.
• Meet My Mentors – Bruce Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison
• Practical Advice By Lt. Col. Frank Slade For Tango And Life
• My Values And Their Salary
• Communication.
• Basic Skills For Effective Public Speaking
• Dale Carnegie’s Recipe For Effective Public Speaking
• Manage Your Manager For Fun And For Profit

Am I on track? Are you?

I particularly loved the following lesson:

Lesson Number Ten: If you are a leader, the people are your work. There is no other work worth doing.

Leader, Practice This

If you are a leader these can help you do your work:

• Ask your people "do you have a dream?".
• The Carrot Is Mightier Than A Stick.
• Let your team play, make it a game.
• Build vulnerability based trust.
• Emotional intelligence is your friend. Park your emotions.
• Partner with your people. Do not just direct.
• Affirm accomplishments of your people – personally and publicly. Brag about your team!

Here is great simple checklist of failed projects that can be  easily applied to your project too. Taken from 12 characteristics of doomed projects:

• 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.

Start asking these questions and make your project successful.

Kaizen is what Japanese apply when they want to improve and become more productive.

by lenaibojcdruz

Kaizen (??, Japanese for "improvement") is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life.

5 strategies

There are only few simple principles for Kaizen implementation. They are referred as 5S’s. This is how Masaaki Imai outlines it in his book Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management:

1. Sort – Separate everything unnecessary and get rid of it. Put a red tag on unnecessary items (for example, unused machines), then remove them.
2. Straighten – Put key items in order so they can be found readily. Straighten logically, so items can be located with a minimum of wasted effort.
3. Scrub – Tools and workplaces should be clean. Dirt and foreign particles can cause machinery to malfunction.
4. Systematize – Make a schedule for cleaning and for checking that all is in order. This ensures that housekeeping is maintained constantly.
5. Standardize – Make the preceding steps part of a regular process.

Does it work?

Yeah! Does it really work? Let’s see.

• Toyota. This company is kind of success, right? Here is what they do:

The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in case of any abnormality and, along with their supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality which may initiate a kaizen.

• Myself. I think I am success. I am no millionaire. I am regular corporate worker. Then why I count myself for successful one? I like John Wooden’s definition for success and that is why I feel I am successful:

"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable"  – John Wooden.

What Kaizen does have to do with me and my success? Let’s see:

1. Sort – Separate everything unnecessary and get rid of it. I practice Covey’s Important/Urgent quadrant to get rid of noise.
2. Straighten – Put key items in order so they can be found readily. I am a big fan of pipeline processing.
3. Scrub – Tools and workplaces should be clean. I am on tools diet. I just love utilizing familiar tools for different tasks, here are few examples:
   1. Effective Time Management With Vista Sidebar
   2. On Writing – John Lennon, Gerald M. Weinberg, Me, You, And Outlook 2007
   3. Security .Net Code Inspection Using Outlook 2007
4. Systematize – Make a schedule for cleaning and for checking that all is in order. I am a big fan of checklists. Here is the whole blueprint.
5. Standardize – Make the preceding steps part of a regular process. How about the whole lifecycle?

It seems I’ve been doing Kaizen all that time unconsciously. That is fine. I am only happy it worked great for me, only now I am even more confident in continuing doing it – continuous improvement, Kaizen.

Self Test

1. Do you separate important from noise? What’s your technique?
2. Are you processing your work in ordered manner? How do you order your work items?
3. Are you over-tooled, over-engineered? Do you have the tools to make your job done? Do you have more tools? Do you really need them?
4. Do you check yourself periodically? Daily, weekly, monthly, annually?
5. Do you have lifecycle plan of your work? Do you have lifecycle plan of your life? No? Then how do you know you are on track?

Wrong.

It is completely wrong, unless you are joining them to beat them. Beat them either harder or smarter. Better both.

by TOMOYOSHI

You are not a quitter. But sometimes you get to the point where you want to give up on your dream. You feed yourself with ton of excuses why you can’t do it. You want to quit and move on.

Do not quit, you can beat them. You can beat them all.

Struggle is the meaning

When I was reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich I stumbled on a very motivational quote:

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake. – Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics.

It really made an impact on me and every time I feel down, this one helps me to get up and move forward toward what I believe, The Dream.

It takes time to win

I am a big fan of “Fail Fast” approach. In a nutshell it means that investing in something must gain fast results. If the investment does not gain any results, if it fails – stop doing it, change the approach. It helps avoiding Pyrrhic Victory. However, never give up on the bigger goal, The Dream.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. -Albert Einstein

Struggle is your source of energy

In the The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal the authors identify 4 Dimensions Of Personal Power: Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual. Their approach is based on tens of years of research and applied practice – they actually Practice This . Their take is that our Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual muscles must be periodically stretched in order to refill our personal power reservoirs. Keep fighting to be stronger.

What’s not killing me only makes me stronger – Friedrich Nietzsche

Beating smarter

How do I become a smarter fighter?

Try applying ancient proven patterns & practices of martial arts – take, for example, Judo – my favorite sport :

The word "judo" …  may mean "gentleness", "softness", "suppleness", and even "easy", depending on its context

The soft method is characterized by the indirect application of force to defeat an opponent. More specifically, it is the principle of using one’s opponent’s strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances

Here is another great source of techniques to beating them smarter – The Thirty Six Strategies:

Whereas other Chinese military texts such as Sun Tzu The Art of War focus on military organization, leadership, and battlefield tactics, the Thirty Six Strategies are more suitably applied in the fields of politics, diplomacy, and espionage.

Take, fore example, this one:

19. Remove the firewood under the cooking pot.
When faced with an enemy too powerful to engage directly you must first weaken him by undermining his foundation and attacking his source of power.

The foundation

My take is that the foundation to becoming a smarter fighter is Emotional Intelligence.

Emotion Is Your Enemy – coach John Wooden.

Fight your enemy, become Emotionally Intelligent:

• Emotional Intelligence – Core Skills
• Emotional Intelligence – Higher Order Skills

Self test

• Do you have a Dream?
• Have you ever gave up on your Dream? How did you feel? Drained?
• Have you ever fulfilled your dream? How did you feel? Empowered, ready for another fight?
• Do you want to become a smarter fighter?
• Do you want to win you Dream?