The Irresistible Consultant's Guide to Winning Clients: 6 Steps to Unlimited Clients & Financial Freedom

by David A. Fields

Step 1: Think “Right-Side Up”

Step 2: Maximize Impact

Step 3: Build Visibility

Step 4: Connect, Connect, Connect

Step 5: Become the Obvious Choice

Step 6: Propose, Negotiate & Close

Consulting isn’t about YOU. It’s about THEM.

To reiterate: self-confidence is not only important, it’s critical. And virtually all independent consultants struggle with their confidence now and again. When you hit one of those rough patches, can you just ignore the problem or wish it away? Of course not. But the solution isn’t introspection or bluster. You boost your self-confidence by reflecting less on yourself and more on your targets’ problems and aspirations. You’ll find your confidence soars when you’re on the exact same wavelength as your prospects.

Successful consulting is not about whether you are superior to someone else; it’s about whether you can help deliver the results your clients want.

Your goal is not to help everyone in every way every time. It’s to help some people some of the time. If you’ve ever had an appreciative client, then you can rest assured you do add value.

Fish Where the Fish Are

When consulting firms work with me to rapidly grow their client base, I always ask them two questions: 1. Are your prospects aware they have the problem you solve? As often as not, their answer is something along these lines: “Some do, but a lot of companies that have the problem don’t even realize it. It’s actually pretty frustrating.” 2. Do your prospects have an urgent desire to solve the problem now? Two very common answers are: “No. This is seen as discretionary.” and: “They would if they truly understood the consequences. But, no, most of them don’t feel they have to solve the problem now.”

You want the bulk of your energy directed toward fishing where the fish are. It’s a far easier place to win consulting business. Most consultants are working way too hard because they’re not fishing where the fish are, and that means one of two things is happening: 1. They’re working on problems that their prospects aren’t aware of, and the consultant has to expose the need. That is what is politely known in our business as a hard sell. 2. They’re sticking to a pond where prospects don’t have high urgency. As a result, the consultant has to somehow create that urgency. That’s often an even harder sell! While it’s true that both of those hard sell approaches will yield some business, it is so much easier to win business from prospects who are already aware of their problem and urgently want that problem to go away.

What did all these clients have in common? They were aware of an urgent need.

My consulting firm’s success isn’t about me or what I want. It’s about what clients want. And they were telling me they wanted help getting into new markets. So rather than fish for business in ponds that I knew, I decided to take a more logical and far more successful approach: fish where the fish are. That has made all the difference. There’s a crazy amount of consulting business available. Every year, clients pay advisors over a trillion dollars (according to the U.S. Economic Census.) That’s a lot of tuna. But most consultants keep working the same pond they’ve always visited, somehow believing that if they just use a better rod, or practice a better casting technique, or work harder at it, they’ll land a better catch.

You can coax prospects into the upper-right box of the sexdrant chart, where you’ll reel them in as clients. It’s harder work than fishing where the fish are, which is why I always recommend focusing on prospects who are aware of an urgent need.

Your three strategies to create urgency are: 1. Highlight the consequences of inaction. You could point out that low throughput is robbing Sereus Dough of $1 million in profits every year, and possibly hurting Yusimi’s career aspirations. 2. Compare to benchmarks. For instance, show a graphic indicating Yusimi’s flagging throughput performance compared to Sereus Dough’s goals. Comparing Yusimi’s performance to other plants might also tap into his competitive spirit and spark action. 3. Remove roadblocks. If Yusimi’s desire to improve throughput is dampened by his concerns over offending his engineers, you could talk to the engineers and bring Yuri evidence that they’re in favor of a project.

Your single, highly-effective strategy for exposing need is using a diagnostic. Well-constructed diagnostics come in a variety of forms, but they share two attributes: 1. Low cost, low risk for the prospect. A simple quiz, survey, graphic or even a few hours of analysis could be free—a complimentary service you provide to Yusimi. Alternatively, you could offer Yusimi a low-cost assessment of his plant. 2. The prospect’s own evidence convinces him. Your hypothesis and speculations about throughput are unlikely to move Yusimi. On the other hand, when his plant’s data reveal an indisputable, glaring problem, Yusimi will suddenly become a hungry fish.

What if it’s Crowded Where the Fish Are? A lot of consultants are concerned about competition. What if there are already well-established firms addressing the burning need you’d like to target? That fear may feel even more intense if you’re considering a problem that you don’t have decades of experience solving, as was the case when I moved from trade marketing to new markets. My answer is pretty simple: Competition is your friend.

It’s not enough to simply decide that you’ll offer what people need. You have to know specifics. In fact, if you want to open the floodgates and turn a revenue trickle into a stream or even a raging torrent, you need to identify “The Four Rights.” The Four Rights are: 1. The Right People 2. The Right Problem 3. The Right Solution 4. The Right Time

The first attribute of the Right People is insanely practical: You can reach them.

In the practical world, the Right People are the folks you can engage in conversation quickly. The quicker you can engage an executive in conversation, the “righter” they are. The time it takes to connect is going to depend on your reputation, how tightly you define the problem you solve (the Right Problem), and how powerful your offering is (the Right Solution). More than anything, though, your ability to reach people depends on how strong your relationship is with them. That’s why the starting point for finding the Right People is looking at your current contact list. These are people you already know. They’re prospects who will definitely respond to your phone call or email, not people you hope or think you can somehow engage in conversation.

It’s easier to sell services desired by the people you can reach than it is to find people who desire the services you want to sell.

That’s why the Right People have three other prerequisites in addition to being reachable. 1. Their problem (that you can solve) must be BIG enough; 2. Their desire to solve the problem must be URGENT enough; 3. Their signing authority must be HIGH enough.

Ask yourself: “What should I talk about with the buyers I can already reach?”

In order to pinpoint your Right Problem, you’re going to have to give up the belief that your message should encompass everything—or even a broad range of problems. It’s okay to have broad capabilities, but if you want to be truly successful, the core offering you market needs to be narrow, narrow, narrow. Why? Because research shows, unequivocally, that clients look first for experience with their specific problem and situation. To make it into their consideration set, you need to be a specialist, not a generalist.

To jump into Fishing for Problems, you’ll need to make a few phone calls—which, by the way, you could start today! First, you call prospects you have any sort of decent relationship with and ask the following question: “What problems have you found so pressing and important that you’ve actually spent money bringing in outside help to solve them over the past few years?”

Learn what clients have actually spent money on in the past, not what they say they’ll do in the future.

Exercise #2. The Problemeter

Step 1: List the Problems

Step 2: Rate the Pervasiveness

Step 3: Rate the Urgency

Step 4: Rate the Expensiveness

Step 5: Sort and Filter

Step 6: Connect to Your Skills

Step 7: Choose Your Right Problem

Laser focus your core offering on one problem that is pervasive, urgent, expensive to leave unresolved, and connects to your skill set.

The fact is, you can always build your skill set, but you can’t build client problems. (At least, you shouldn’t build client problems!)

What could be better than an offering that is so compelling, so enticing, and so obviously valuable that clients instantly open their wallets the moment they catch wind of it? Nothing. That solution, if you have it, rocks. The cool thing about consulting, though, is you don’t have to have a “killer” solution to be successful. You just have to have the Right Solution.

Consultants should never focus on differentiation. Differentiation is not what sells consulting business. In fact, I’ve seen consultants consistently lose business—good business they could have won—by striving to differentiate their firms.

When a decision maker on a project approaches a consulting firm, however, she does not believe most firms will fulfill on their basic promise. Why? Because every executive has seen consulting projects fail or has been severely disappointed with a consultant. The archives of tens of thousands of companies are bursting with thick, expensive consulting reports that looked and sounded good when they were delivered, but didn’t pan out, or were never implemented. They’re expensive mistakes that make buyers more than a little gunshy when it comes to hiring another consultant, which is why buyers of consulting services aren’t looking for different; they’re looking for a solution they can rely on. So, the next time an executive asks you why he should hire you rather than the competition, your conversation should sound like this: YURI YUSIMI: “Why should I hire you rather than Cheapo Consulting, or Big Name Associates?’ YOU: “Because working with us will give you the highest likelihood of achieving your goal, and the least chance of something going wrong that could hurt you or the business.”

The Right Solution—the core offering your prospects will quickly sign on the dotted line to acquire—is one that meets the following four criteria: • Simple • Easily communicated • Highly relevant • Efficient

Hand in hand with simplicity is making sure your solution is easy to communicate. You don’t want to get all tongue tied and flustered when you explain your approach. Beyond that, your prospect is more likely to stick with a solution that he can quickly and reliably explain to his peers than one that positions him to make vague, trust-me statements like, “Well, I don’t totally understand what they do, but they seem to have a good track record.” You don’t have to reveal every detail about how you do your work, though, honestly, it’s okay if you do. The best solutions are totally understood by your clients. If you can use a graphic or mnemonic or two-line case study to make your offering more memorable, so much the better.

The Right Solution is also highly relevant; i.e., it’s focused squarely on delivering results for the prospect’s specific problem or aspiration.

Finally, the Right Solution is efficient, meaning you can deliver it reliably and with high margins as more and more clients request your prowess.

Your Fishing Line is a ten-to-fifteen word statement that succinctly, precisely describes your target and the issue you address (a problem or aspiration). Your Fishing Line does not include your solution. Hold that in reserve—sort of like the net that allows you to scoop the fish up once you’ve reeled it in.

A powerful Fishing Line works for you in multiple ways: • It’s easy for you to remember. It rolls off your tongue, even when you’re flustered, and believe me, every consultant gets flustered or tongue-tied occasionally when face to face with a potential client. • It’s easy for your prospects to remember. That means even if Yuri Yusimi at Sereus Dough, Inc. doesn’t need you right now, when the right time comes along, you’ll be the person he calls. Brrrng, brrrng, your phone starts ringing when your Fishing Line sticks in people’s minds. • It very quickly allows prospects to self-select. Imagine if every person you could see had a blazing LED sign on his forehead that signaled a red “No!” if he wasn’t a potential client, or a green “Yes!” if he was a high-potential prospect. Holy cow, wouldn’t that save you a lot of time and effort? You’d avoid all the redheads and spend your time talking to greenies. Your Fishing Line is the next best thing. People who fit your target and have the issue you mention will say, “That’s me!” and those who don’t fit your target/issue combination will either say, “That’s not me!” or their eyes will glaze over. Either way, you’ve saved a lot of time and effort.

• It’s easy for your prospects to repeat to others correctly. Most consultants dream of other people doing their selling for them. Well, that dream can only come true for you if other people can quickly and easily say what you do. From what I’ve seen, if it takes you five minutes (or even 30 seconds) to describe your place in the world, no one else will be passing along your name.

Warning: A Fishing Line is NOT an Elevator Pitch

I don’t believe in elevator pitches for two reasons: 1. Consultants don’t pitch. Pitching is talking at someone with the message, “Please give me what I want. Along the way, you’ll benefit.” That’s not what we do. In fact, as consultants we do the exact opposite. We inquire and listen and our message is, “I’d like to help you achieve what you want. Along the way, I’ll benefit.” 2. Consulting business isn’t won in thirty seconds. That’s a hunting mentality and I don’t care how good your commercial is, that’s not how consulting is sold. By and large, this is a trust and relationship business. We’re solving complex, expensive problems linked to an emotional impact. That makes for a longer sale.