A Summary Of My Content - April-June 2021
Luk Smeyers
Consulting Firm Performance Advisor ?? Advisor to Consulting Firm Buyers/Investors ?? Author of 'The Authority' newsletter
Can you believe we are already halfway into the year? The last three months have been very productive on my end. I've been growing my monthly webinars, had a chance to speak to a few dozen consultants to see how their business models have changed as a result of the pandemic, and signed up new clients.
As always, if you haven't had a chance to read all the content I've posted in the last quarter, here's a chance to catch up on all of it.
1. 'The Authority', my bi-weekly newsletter
Check out the past editions of my?bi-weekly 'Think Piece' newsletter for consultants. 'The Authority' helps consultants grow their pipeline by sharing intriguing educational stories. It’s my ultimate aspiration to create a bubble of calmness with this bi-weekly ‘think piece’, a place of stillness in the face of everyday stress. A chance to reflect on what really matters in your consulting work.
In each newsletter I address the following:
The big question I address is: A Salesforce consultancy team contacted me for a high-level review of their market positioning. I provide a summary of my review. Lots of learnings!
The big question I address is: Luk, I am struggling with combining my consulting work with doing the necessary sales and marketing activities to grow my consulting business. How should I go about such a combination?
The big question I address is: Luk, do I need to follow up on a proposal I’ve sent if the client turns silent?
The big question I address is: Luk, how could we develop our USP as consultants? How to go about that? Do you consider a USP an essential component of our profile as a consultant?
The big question I address is: Luk, what do you think of doing free tryout consulting work to get access to a prospect or new client with the objective to demonstrate my expertise and to hopefully get more work from this client?
The big question I address is: Luk, what would be an ideal win rate when pitching as a consultancy?
2. The Visible Authority Blog
My regular readers know that I diligently write down my learnings every single day. Sometimes, it's in the form of an email from a client, other times, it's a quote from a book. It can be a thought I had when auditing a client's positioning, it can be a statement from a podcast.
I gather quotes that reflect my passionate thinking about the consulting profession and span one year of writing. I've mixed my own quotes with carefully selected quotes from experts I admire and you may never have heard of.
I have hosted several virtual workshops for consultants in 2021 already. Each time we got into a lively discussion about - what I call - the toxic ‘Default Consultancy Model’: working crazy hours, responding to a hundred emails from your client’s team every day, (trying to) manage scope creep, chasing payments, spending hours and days preparing proposals, and so on.
In this article, I explain the two categories in which most consulting work falls into: (1) the low-altitude downstream day-to-day execution/implementation work with relatively low impact – the toxic category; (2) the high-altitude upstream high-level strategic/diagnostic advisory with relatively big impact – the target category.
The marketers are telling us, consultants, we need a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition. I get that. With a distinctive positioning as consultants, we can stand out in our crowded markets. Unfortunately, I deeply struggle with the way 95% of all consultants develop such a USP.
In this post, I reflect on some of the biggest mistakes I witness consultants make when drafting their USPs. I also offer an alternative - a Unique Value Proposition. I then explain what makes for a killer UVP and how consultants can go about designing their own.
I always urge consultants to re-evaluate the way they think about marketing. It’s not something that you get to eventually, once you have the time. Because let’s be honest, that day rarely comes. Yet, when it comes to growing your consulting business, marketing has to be added to your priority list. You have to allocate a sufficient amount of time to it on a consistent basis. Sporadic marketing will fail to yield the types of results that would fuel your business growth in a real, meaningful way.
In this article, I provide a step-by-step guide to freeing up 30% of your time and dedicating it to marketing. I emphasize the importance of starting the time management process by addressing the root causes of the problem. No time management system is sustainable in the long run if it fails to do that.
3. My Webinar Summaries
领英推荐
The goal of this free webinar was to provide consultants with a step-by-step guide to growing their consulting business by narrowing down the scope of their work.
Generalists do not have a promising future. It's a race to the bottom. Specialists will be the ones in demand, charging premium fees, and growing their consulting business organically.
The goal of this free webinar was to help consultants re-define what it means to sell as a consultant and provide a step-by-step guide to organically growing their business through a smart, consistent approach to sales and marketing.
Selling in consulting is not about picking up the phone and cold-calling potential clients. Growing your consulting is about consistently improving your visibility as a subject matter expert and build the trust in your expertise.
My goal was to share the knowledge I've acquired over a couple of decades - much of it through trial-and-error - and help consultants be better equipped to compete in the market. Consulting is a credence business. Prospects need to trust us before they buy. In this webinar, I introduce the success pillars in consulting and the three skills needed to build the foundation.
4. My LinkedIn Posts
5. My Guest Posts
Most consultants struggle to combine their consulting work with the necessary sales and marketing activities required to grow their consulting business. It’s one of the most discussed challenges in my conversations with consultants on the subject of their revenue growth.?
I've learned that it comes down to changing your state of mind and re-framing your approach to growing your consulting business. After all, we can sit there, build a beautiful website or profile, hang out on social media but if we don’t sell, like it or not, nobody will buy.
In this guest post, I explain why consultants shouldn't think they are somehow separate from marketing and the importance of internalizing the fact that consulting is a credence business.
6. Previous Content Summaries
If you'd like to catch up on my content from the beginning of the year:
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