Posted on

Weinberg on Writing

Several years ago, I picked up my first Gerald Weinberg book — The Secrets of Consulting.

He is a computer programmer who, in that book, stunned me with the unique insights he had about the consulting profession. It was one of the seminal consulting books I read at the time when I was learning that there was more to the craft than just knowing a bunch of good stuff and being really smart.

When I read that he had a new book called Weinberg on Writing, I jumped at the chance to read the book, thinking that it would once again marry some lines of thinking that normally do not go together.

I was right on this one. His book is like nothing I have ever read, and now that I am thinking of myself as a writer (of more than lots of emails) his advice on how to organize ideas and writing energy explained a lot to me about my own writing behaviour, why I like to blog and how to organize ideas by following ones own level of inner energy.

The Fieldstone Method is one that he has invented and named. It has to do with gathering ideas and points of inspiration for writing, in the same way that someone who builds fences from stones found in a field (i.e. fieldstones) must find just the right stones to build the structures they want. Here in Jamaica, we have them all over the country, and we like to build retaining walls and gully walls from football size limestones (and the aid of a lot of cement.)

The book, which is all about building bits and pieces of ideas into a coherent whole gives me some comfort. Even though I am not using Mrs. Richardson’s format from my days at St. Andrew Prep School, I have still been following a relatively coherent method that I am going to improve and enhance using the ideas from this book.

In short — I recommend it!

Posted on

The Power of Writing

Since I started blogging last year the number of words that I have written for public consumption has gone up dramatically. It has really been an amazing outlet for me, and an avenue for ideas and self-expression that has been fun and mind-opening at the same time.

Only now can I imagine writing a full fledged book — how many blog entries would it take to write a book after all?

However, I have not been as successful in convincing other consultants that they also must write.

I read the following article from Robert Middleton today, sent to my inbox as an ezine. I decided to share a link, but I cannot find a link so here is the email I received in total:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Francis,

As you go through the InfoGuru Manual you might have noticed that I talk about writing quite a bit. In fact almost every chapter has something about writing – writing your marketing materials and web site copy, writing articles and talks, writing eZine copy and writing motivational copy.

In my opinion, writing is THE KEY to marketing professional services. There’s no way to really get around it. Someone once said that writing was simply ‘salesmanship in print.’

Sure, you can network and meet a lot of people, but by committing information about your services to writing you can ‘meet’ hundreds, if not thousands of people and tell them all exactly the same message about your services.

I was once struck by the power of writing when I was leading a business support group many years ago. I was demonstrating the power of ad copy and showed them a little ad in a local directory of services. This ad was about massage therapy. The headline, the copy the appeal were so interesting and attractive that one of the participants wrote down the telephone number to call the advertiser.

The interesting thing is that we had a massage therapist in our group who offered substantially the same services and had been sharing what she did with the group for several weeks. But the power of that little ad had more impact on our participant than meeting and talking with a massage therapist on a regular basis!

The Core of InfoGuru Marketing is sharing what you know and leveraging that knowledge to attract all the clients you can handle. This isn’t just an empty marketing phrase. It really works. And it starts with writing.

If you’ve gotten a few chapters into the manual and you haven’t written anything yet, it’s time to start. It might be your Executive Summary that gives an overview of your services or a short article or an outline for a talk. It doesn’t matter. Start somewhere.

One of my mentors, Alan Weiss, the author of Million Dollar Consulting, writes every morning. I actually suggest you do the same. Take the time to write something that will forward your business. With this writing you’ll have the ammunition to start promoting your business with real impact.

And, of course, there’s a lot of information in the manual itself on how to write more effectively. don’t just skim over these sections. Take the time to do the exercises and build some momentum in communicating the value of what you do.

All the best,

Robert Middleton

Action Plan Marketing
210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006

If you no longer wish to receive communication from us: http://autocontactor.com/app/r.asp?ID=83057713&ARID=4325

To update your contact information: http://autocontactor.com/app/r.asp?c=1&ID=83057713

“By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert’s web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.”

Posted on

Consultant’s Prices part 2

In a prior post, I decided to come up with the “final” answer as to how consulting firms come up with the prices we charge.

I now have an addition to that final answer, which makes it even more “final”.

As a professional, I charge my clients for the results they want produced, rather than the time it takes to produce the result.

Employees, on the other hand, get paid regardless of how long results take to come (for the most part, and up to a limit.)

Executives have the luxury of delaying projects, and altering the timing of activities and deliverables on projects when they are working with consultants, at no additional cost to the bottom line. This works well in uncertain conditions, when the timing of sensitive work is critical. A delay of several months is expected to be absorbed by the consultant as part of the cost of doing business.

A group of employees, on the other hand, will incur salary and overhead costs whether there is a project delay or not. Executives sometimes feel pressured to get people busy when they know that the clock is ticking, and costs are being incurred on a daily basis.

Consulting costs tend to be significantly higher, therefore, because the consultant or firm is giving the executive more flexibility and choices as to when project activities are executed. This can sometimes make the difference between success and failure, especially when projects are of high-impact.

My experience working in the Caribbean is one of high uncertainty, in the sense that business is frequently disrupted and plans are forced to change. The source could range from a hurricane to a devaluation.

What is helpful for consultants is to remember that they have a business to run, and their pricing must reflect that fact. “Having a business to run” is very different from “getting paid to do some work,” which is a trap that I fell headlong into in the my early days in this business.

Posted on

The Dual Income Profession

In 1991 I was exposed to a fact that I have never forgotten.

In a training course that I have long forgotten, I learned that the profession I was about to enter full-time (I was an AT&T employee back then) had a bi-modal distribution of incomes.

What it simply meant was that consultants fell into two distinct groups — one group that earned a lot (median US$75k at the time) and another that earned much less (median $US45k.) The study went on to describe the difference in marketing techniques between the two groups.

Given that this was a time before the internet truly existed as we know it, the marketing techniques did not include an on-line component. However, the difference basically came down to consultants that used content-based approaches that reached a mass audience, and those that did not.

“Content-based approaches?”

Basically, it was saying that the more successful group relied on speeches, public seminars and other relatively high-risk, high-reward approaches to get the messages in which they believed, into the listening ears of large groups. They also wrote books, articles and other pieces for publication, once again for mass consumption.

The less successful group, from the research, relied on cold calls, free workshops, letters and paid advertisement to try to reach a relatively small number of prospects with little more than a shout of “here I am!” These were all very low risk techniques.

It is not too hard to extrapolate these findings to the world we live in 15 years later. Now, there are just more tools to use, most of them involving new technology.

However, the basics are the same — the market rewards those in the profession who develop a unique point of view, and then are willing to develop the speaking and writing skills to get their point of view in front of audiences in high-risk, high reward ways.

Nowadays, we have more avenues available to us through internet technology.

  • A book can be self-published for US$2000.
  • A website can be launched for free.
  • A blog can be created and updated for free.
  • Digital videography and pictures can be created for US$200 or less.
  • Newsgroups can be created to address any subject matter of interest.
  • Voice recordings can be made available to the world at the flick of a few buttons.

A consultant said to me a few weeks ago that he basically “did not believe in the internet” and thought that clients had no interest in viewing web pages. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I have not had a paper brochure for more than eight years or so, and do not plan to ever have one again, and that no-one had ever had a problem visiting my site to download over 30 articles or 40 blogs with content that spoke to them in ways that a brochure could not.

The truth is, it is not the website that makes the difference, but just as it was in 1991 — what separates the higher earners from the others is courage. In 1991 and also in 2006 it is the high-risk, long-term payoff activities that have the best return. Some examples include:

  • Speaking in front of large groups and risking rejection.
  • Writing and risking never seeing it published.
  • Putting ideas out in public, risking that others will take them and make better use of them.
  • Investing in a website and risking it being ignored.

I have taken the cowardly route in all of these at different times, and have to work hard to keep on taking risks. And then I come back to that old article, and looking at that bimodal distribution gives me faith that it all might work out one day if I continually give up any fear of looking foolish!

P.S. I recommend the book “Creating a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession” by Allan Weiss as the best and only book of its kind that I have ever read, and even though it was written a mere five years ago, it is already stale (no mention of blogging, which was in its infancy).

Posted on

Using Video to See the Man in the Mirror

Recently, I committed to co-writing a chapter for publication on a technique my firm has been using to work with senior managers in one world-wide company, and also a well-known Caribbean conglomerate. The training technique is one that can be high-risk for the person leading the session, as it involves delivering live feedback in a public session and encouraging other participants to do the same. At the same time, participants have reported that they are able to give and receive more real-time feedback than they ever have before, and some actually demonstrate the new skills they have learned during the training.

As a precursor to writing my portion of the final paper, I thought I ‘d express my thoughts in this blog, as a way of saying a few things about how the process works.
——————————————————————————————

One of the principles used in our training is to make training as real as possible for those with whom we are intervening. “Making it real” entails doing as little “theorizing”as possible, and engendering as much truthful confrontation as possible, while directing the confrontation towards action-based commitments. In short, we provoke “Action, Not Ah Bag Ah Mout” in the hope that practice will make perfect, rather than further explanations and rationales.

The area that we focus on in this training is that of Critical Confrontations, and the specific training we have the most experience with is in training managers to engage in effective feedback conversations with their employees.

Most training in feedback involves at the least some mention of the principles on how to best frame the right words. These principles are reasonably well known, and there are several excellent texts that describe the “right” approach to use. In most of our training sessions with executives, the majority have been exposed to these ideas prior to the sessions themselves. Furthermore, most training has evolved to the point where each participant is given an opportunity to practice these principles, usually using generic examples.

In our work with Caribbean executives, we have adapted an approach that was first pioneered by a colleague of mine, Grady McGonagill, and perfected at several international companies. In this approach, the following process is followed.

The Training Process

Before the training starts, up to 10 customized cases are developed based on the client’s culture, needs and kind of business. Many are based on actual events, or issues that involve some emotional content.

  1. Participants are divided into groups of 4-6 for training periods of 5-7 hours each
  2. Cases are selected depending on the group being trained
  3. A curriculum is developed to address the training needs, focusing on demonstrable behaviours rather than vague nostrums (such as “be positive”)
  4. At the start of the training itself, the theoretical principles of good feedback are shared
  5. Dyads are formed to give each participant an opportunity to play the role of Manager and Subordinate, and the Manager is given the choice of cases to work on
  6. Managers and Subordinates are given written one-page scenarios that describe the case and their role in the situation
  7. A 5-10 minute interaction between the Manager and Subordinate is video-taped without interruption
  8. The tape is reviewed by the group, and stopped frequently to give the group an opportunity to coach the Manager on his/her “performance”
  9. The Subordinate provides direct evidence of the experience
  10. The group looks for opportunities to deepen the theoretical principles of good feedback
  11. The group continues until every member has had an opportunity to play the role of Manager and Subordinate

New Elements

The following training elements are included in this training that are normally not included in this kind of training:

  • cases built on real-life issues
  • giving public feedback in real-time from the participants and the facilitator, using the principles bring learned
  • using a recorded video-tape as an impartial and factual basis for feedback (rather than memory)
  • asking the Subordinate to share their emotional state at different points
  • using recorded behaviour to “prove” that the principles work, demonstrate how difficult they are to use effectively, and to refine the group’s understanding
  • offering multiple opportunities for trainees to use the coaching being given on the spot in a repeat “performance”

These elements are quite difficult to incorporate effectively and precisely, as the facilitator must be seamlessly competent in a variety of disciplines, not the least of which is the ability to operate and trouble-shoot video-recording equipment.

Results
The public goals of the workshop are quite modest, yet it regularly accomplishes much more than advertised. Trainees are often able to demonstrate a solid progression of increasingly skilled behaviours during the few hours of the training, and are able to receive and use the coaching given from the group to make immediate changes. The knowledge that they increase their effectiveness that quickly in a difficult area some focused practice and coaching is one of the tremendous benefits, even for observers of the process. Anyone can improve, given the right conditions in which to do so.

Posted on

How Do You Consultants Come Up With Those Prices?

While there are some clients that ask this question out loud, it’s my sense that every client asks it even quietly when they get to the part of the proposal titled “Professional Fees.” Often, this section is approached with a sense of dread, as up until this point the prospective client has a feeling that I have something they are interested in buying, if only it fits the budget they have in mind. They have mentally mapped my proposed solution to the problem at hand and are hoping that they will not have to turn their company upside down to find a solution.

Therefore, from time to time in my career as a consultant, I am asked by a prospective or current client to engage in the awkward business of justifying my fees.

“Why is it so much? How did you come up with that figure? Why is it different/more than I thought it would be? Are you guys all a bunch a tief’?”

At first blush, my response is to give an off the cuff smart-aleck answer, like “it pays the rent” or “because that’s what it IS” – with a slight tone of contempt that is related to some vague feeling that they are questioning the value of my existence, and whether or not I deserve to be drawing breath upon this earth.

After I resolved the more basic question of my value to our race, I began to realize that they might be asking because…. they just don’t know, and they think that the knowledge might be useful to them. The truth is, that the setting of consulting fees is a mysterious business, even to the practitioners of the art. Obviously, we’re not selling something that is tangible or can even be compared to what any other person on the planet can provide. For example, part of what makes my work distinct is that I bring first world standards of thinking and tools gained from my years living in the U.S. to the Caribbean, and apply it with an understanding of our people in the region. (Whew) No-one else can do that in the same way, and I cannot do what they do in quite the same way.

But, how does one impute different dollar amounts to the different value? How about the local consultant who is known internationally? How about the foreign consultant who is married to a Caribbean person, but lives in Latin America? Aren’t they also valuable in their own way, and should be charging more, less or the same as I do?

These questions don’t have definitive answers, but as I played around with them, I thought that I should at least be honest about what drives my own pricing, so that I at least have something to say to myself other than “that’s my gut feeling,” when this awkward matter comes up.


So, to lift the fog on my own criteria, here are the rules of thumb I use when coming up with the cost of a project, and the price I charge clients.

1. The Value to the Client

Framework specializes in High-Stake Interventions, and not everything that a client needs or does is high-stakes enough to warrant my interest or attention. There are many more low-stakes opportunities for things like skills training, coaching, facilitation, job analyses, etc. than there are high-stakes opportunities, but we’ve made a conscious decision to stay away from them. In other words, we only get involved when there is a great deal of risk and/or reward involved, and we like both big problems and big bets. This commitment of ours keeps life interesting, which is the way we happen to like it.

The upside of this approach is that the projects we work on are of tremendous importance and therefore value to our clients.

As one might expect, the more critical the project, the higher the price we propose. Typically, on critical projects the costs of failure are prohibitive; people’s careers and futures in the company are dependent on successful outcomes. The same activity (e.g. coaching a CEO) that I will do for free for a friend starting his own business, will not be free to the CEO of the US$500m company, and will cost less than the coaching given to the US$5b company.

Why the difference? Doesn’t a CD player sold to each of these CEO’s cost the same to each one regardless of who is doing the purchasing?

Consulting services are very different, however. Experience tells me that high-stake projects are those that generate the most stress, require the most pre-planning, cause me to lose the most sleep, and are the ones I care about the most because they are so engaging. Also, coaching my friend has little or no downside to my reputation, but there is a greater risk in coaching the big company CEO because, presumably, his or her time is extremely valuable in economic terms, and the decisions and actions to be taken have far-reaching effects.

In other words, the same advice given to CEO’s in different companies has different ramifications and effects, and the price of that advice varies accordingly.

For projects that are not important, routine or are too easy, our preference in Framework is to others, or turn them down flat.

The paradox is that I am in essence saying that I should be paid more to take on greater challenges… now that’s a win-win if I ever heard one, as I there’s nothing I love more than an engaging and exciting challenge!

  1. Delivery, Face and Contact Time

A modifier on the price of every project is the amount of time we need to spend face to face with the client, either in coaching conversations, planning or delivering a course. While there isn’t a tight correlation, it does play a part in our calculations.

For example, delivering a course in front of 50 people for two days is very different than sitting down to have one-on-one interviews, or observing an activity, or strategizing over Red Stripes while sitting at a bar in Ocho Rios. They are all valuable activities, but by far the most difficult activity to undertake, and the one that takes the most preparation and concentration is the 50-person course. That also is the one that is the most tiring, and must be done to the exclusion of any other activity.

Also, there are fewer consultants who can lead a 50-person course effectively, and any number who can (claim to) strategize over drinks. In other words, a consultant is more valuable to the client when they are undertaking unique and specialized activities that few others could do well.

  1. Travel Time

Sometimes we include the time it takes to travel to and from the client, if that is a factor. I turned down a project in Europe recently because the one day that the project required was not worth the 2+ days of travel plus jet lag it would take to get to the site in Germany and then back home to Florida. I’ve never had a client that was willing to be charged for my travel time, unless I was travelling over 12 hours in one rare case.

  1. Phone Coaching Time

If there is significant meeting time on the telephone, then that is factored in also.

  1. Custom Preparation Time and Expertise

If there is something that we have developed that will fit the need exactly, then that is used to modify the price we propose. This is rarely the case, however, as the kind of interventions we do, don’t lend themselves to cookie-cutter solutions (but perhaps one day we’ll figure out how to do that!)

  1. Client “Friction”

One of my prior clients was so difficult to work with, and so chaotic to do business with, that we’ve put a premium on doing work with them. This “tax” is to compensate for the missed meetings, long negotiations, last-minute cancellations, unreturned phone calls, unpaid invoices, etc. that continues to be part and parcel of working with them. By now, you might be wondering why I even worked with such a client – well, to date, they have refused to pay the increased fees caused by the “tax” so they are no longer a client.

  1. Staffing and Training Costs

At times, projects require extra hands, which require additional management. At other times, I must bear the brunt of training someone to work on the project. In both cases, this impacts the cost of the project due to the extra head-ache of carrying another person on my payroll. The extra administrative time required to hire a single other person is just horrendous.

  1. Opportunity Costs

Bluntly put, if I am busy I tend to charge more than when I’m looking for the next project to pay the bills!

Last Few Thoughts

What my more unreasonable prospective clients often don’t understand about business of consulting is that, unlike an employee, they are only paying me to work, and ONLY to work at my absolute best. They are not paying me to take vacation, get sick, get tired, pick up the kids / dogs / groceries / mother-in-law, take off early on Fridays or the days before holidays, do paperwork or anything administrative, pay my taxes, vote, do jury duty, travel to and from their locations…. or even take lunch, in the extreme cases.

They also don’t take kindly to my resisting doing weekend work, holiday work, late-night work or hurricane work.

They also don’t realize that while I’m negotiating with them and waiting for them to make up their minds, I am not getting paid. This gets expensive for me when I encounter prospects that have long decision-making processes, or just like to wait to see if the price that I quoted will come down.

None of these are a problem by themselves, as they are part of the service I’m offering as a consultant in the business of High-Stakes Interventions. The problem comes when a client does not see (or worse, cares not to see) the entire equation.

All in all, one thing I’ve learned over time is that the way a client negotiates says everything about what they will be like on the project once things get going, and that it’s important to define my firm’s boundaries early on in the process. I recall being on a closing call with another consultant and a client, who he later described as a “Taker.” In other words, the client was only interested in how much they could get for themselves and their company, with no regard for my firm’s welfare. “Takers” are trouble, and while I’m not good enough to spot them before every project starts, I am learning to know when to stop doing business with them.

“Takers” are the worst – most are much more sensitive – but I think the average client does want to know where the amount in the proposal is coming from, and do like to know that they are not just being fleeced by whimsical dreams of consumer goods bought with hefty consulting contracts. I think that the better clients would like to know that there is a hard business rational behind every dollar that gets quoted in a proposal, and that when I’m quoting a number for their consideration, I’m responding to the facts of my business, rather than just a need to buy a new car or take a fancy vacation.

As a new consultant, I did not appreciate this fact, and I committed what must be the mistake of every new consultant – that of charging too little.

A relevant analogy and story that illustrate the general point:

  1. High-stakes professionals like surgeons and airline pilots tend to be paid more than others who are sitting right beside them, spending even more time than they are, and possibly working even harder than they are (in physical terms.)

    As a frequent flyer, and someone who had surgery once for adenoid removal, I have no problem paying my surgeon more than the orderlies who pushed me into the waiting room, or my pilot more than the cleaners who remove trash the from inside the aircraft.

  2. I recall the story of the plumber who came in once to fix a complex system of pipes in a major factory. The problem had remained for months, and was starting to create severe problems with the company’s throughput of its main money earner. The plumber came in and after careful thought he reached down into the bowels of the plumbing and tightened a screw. The management was incredulous, but sure enough, that was the correct solution.

    A week later the plumber submitted his invoice for $5000. The plant manager went ballistic and refused to pay. The plumber quietly said he would resubmit the invoice, and he did so one day later with the following breakdown of charges:

Time used to tighten screw: $10

Knowing Which Screw to Tighten: $4990

Total $5000

P.S.

(Of course, I have absolutely no self-interest WHATSOEVER in bringing to mind either of these cases. ;0)

Posted on

Musings from the movie “Hitch”

I recently saw the movie “Hitch” starring Will Smith, in which he played the role of a “dating consultant” who discreetly taught hapless men the finer points of dating women … but strictly for the purpose of having a long-term relationship (not just to get them into bed).

And I was inspired!

During the first part of the movie he worked with several clients, sharing with them insights and distinctions that, I found, both real and quite innovative. They were very insightful, and put into words some distinctions that I myself learned while dating, and looking for a long-term relationship.

While I won’t give away the ones that I myself have also used, I will mention one that brought a laugh: following the 90-10 rule when kissing a woman. You (the man) go 90% of the way towards her lips, and then allow her to go the last 10% to close out the kiss. Brilliant.

But it wasn’t the skills around kissing that I found inspiring. Instead, it was skills as a consultant. His command of the distinctions that he had developed. His discrete manner and practices. His focus on empowering the client, and teaching the client. His willingness to be straight, and bold. And, at one critical point in the movie, his unwillingness to take on a client who was willing to pay him anything he wanted, for strictly ethical reasons.

I also loved his confidence, and intelligence, and sharp command of his particular area of expertise. Clearly, he had done a lot of thinking about this part of his life, and he was loving what he was doing.

Up until the point where it was clear that he was not taking his own advice, he was operating as a real trusted advisor and uber-consultant!