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title: My bi-weekly 'think piece' for consultants
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'The Authority' bi-weekly newsletter shares intriguing educational stories to reflect on what really matters in your consulting work.

| View in browser Luk’s Bi-Weekly 'Think Piece' For Consultants       Edition #23 - April 28, 2021        Dear reader,  Here's the latest Edition of 'The Authority', helping consultants grow their revenue 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. The Big Question Questions I get from consultants. And my answers.   "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?"   I get a variation of this question a lot. It’s one of the most discussed challenges in my conversations with consultants on the subject of revenue growth. That’s why today I’d like to provide you, my readers, with the answer that I provide to all of my clients struggling with this issue.   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, hang out on social media but if we don’t ‘sell’ nobody will come to us. Like it or not.   Sales and marketing in consulting is NOT about sales   Marketing in consulting is NOT about sales. Marketing isn’t about pushing a product or service or making on-and-off efforts that only truly manifest when you are desperate for work.   Instead, it’s all about growing your visibility and building trust in your expertise. You do this by sharing your knowledge in simple, jargon-free language and providing something of authentic value to the (specific) problem situation of your (specific) prospects/clients.   Consulting is a credence business   Your ability as a consultant to sell your services comes down to your ability to build trust in your expertise. This can’t be achieved by sleazy selling methods. Prospects need to find, like, and trust you before they buy.   Your revenue growth should come from the market's awareness and respect for the trust in your expertise, your social proof, and your reputation. It's strategically the only way to go about it in the long run. I've done it. You can do it. But it’s not an overnight job. It takes time.   This is how I see it: sales and marketing in consulting is a SIDE-EFFECT (yes!) of doing these other things extremely well...   ● Sharing your expertise: creating the foundation of narrowly focused expertise, shared in various formats that serve a single goal – building up your visibility as a consultant and a distinct subject matter expert. Openly sharing your expertise sends a message that you are not afraid to reveal your expertise because you are that confident in your own skills and knowledge. It sends a powerful message that you have a lot more to offer because of how freely you share your knowledge. ● Defining your MVA: a laser-sharp identification of your (smallest possible) target audience (your Minimal Viable Audience - MVA) and openly sharing your expertise to your MVA. ● Addressing prototypical pain points: getting traction from your target audience by addressing the heart of their prototypical pain points. You will only stand out as a consultant in a crowded market when you help bring hidden problems and patterns to the surface, inspiring your audience to shift the way they think about their fundamental or underlying challenges. Your audience doesn’t want to hear what they already know about their problems. ● Picturing ‘The Promised Land’: the ability to succinctly explain your transformative offering that will allow your prospects to move from their pain-ridden state to “The Promised Land”. You will need to create a bold vision about the transformational potential of switching to a new, different approach. Your vision should be contagious. You translate your expertise into the confidence that you give your audience about the positive potential of a transformation. What you ‘sell’ is not what it is, but what it does (never forget this sentence!). ● Being consistent: consistency in the sharing-delivery of everything you learn, consistency in measuring the impact of your work and writing about it, consistency in communicating to your target audience, consistency in everything you do. Consistency is an extremely important component of trust-building in your expertise in general.   Consultancy IS marketing, it’s not separate from you as a consultant   As a consultant, you ARE the product. You ARE the marketer and the sales rep of your expertise, your approach, and your unique blend of experience and delivery. But it doesn’t matter how good you are. Nobody will come across your expertise if you can’t organically translate that into: ● Visible reputation: you are known for what you know, for your subject matter expertise in general. ● Subject matter know-how: you have deep vertical expertise, you have discovered all the patterns of the prototypical client problems. You combine this with broad contextual understanding. The T-shaped consultant, remember?   ● Trusted advisor status: you get trusted for solving ‘their problem’, for bringing your clients from point A (problem status) to point B (problem solved status). The ‘Promised Land’ delivery. ● Influencing skills: you shift people’s thinking and ultimately you inspire behavioral changes (to get the problems solved).   Let me conclude with a great quote from Jonathan Stark: “If the people whose condition you can improve don’t know you exist, then you can’t help them.” Recommended reading: Why Marketing In Consulting Is All About Building Visibility And Trust   Next Big Q: I am getting this question all the time: “Luk, do I need to follow up on a proposal if the client turns silent”? I will explain in the next newsletter what I do when prospects don’t react after receiving a proposal. Get ready for some controversial stuff!   Would you like to send a question for one of the following newsletter editions? Please send it to me here.    The Disturbing Truth Unsettling revelations from experts I admire. And from myself.   Every Monday morning, I am sharing a consulting-related advice on Linkedin to start the new week.    These advices reflect years of 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.   Here are the quotes from the past 2 weeks. Let the inspiration be with you (if you let it).    Topic 19-4-2021: Can you give instant advice as a consultant?   As a consultant, you should be able to advise your clients with: "If I were you, dear client, I would do these 3 things differently tomorrow". If you can't give such instant advice, you are not an expert yet. (Luk Smeyers)   Topic 26-4-2021: Have you 'systemized' your network as a consultant?   The most successful authorities in consulting have frantically ‘systemized’ their existing relationships and network. They have created a detailed database of clients, ex-clients, contacts, prospects, alumni and are always able to quickly activate such a network. Moreover, they consistently keep all their contacts in the loop of all the latest trends and their very own new learnings from the project trenches. (Luk Smeyers)     The Irresistible Content I write a lot. Here's the update from the past 2 weeks.   🅾️ Webinars: All past webinars summarized here   In March, I launched my monthly webinar series, covering the most pressing topics and equipping consultants with the tools that will allow them to grow their business. Make sure to check this page regularly as I will always be posting the recording and numerous other resources from every webinar.  🅾️ Other content from the past weeks:   TVA blog: Quotes That Will Reshape The Way You Think About Consulting LinkedIn post: Do you publicly declare your expertise with ‘packaged services’? LinkedIn post: As a consultant, these 2 missions should be critical to you LinkedIn post: Consultancy buyers are impatient and have a short-term focus! The Authority, previous edition: Edition #22    The Inspiring Reading I read a lot. Here's what I am reading right now.   I am reading between 30-50 books per year. Here's my latest recommendation: ‘The Tao of No’ by David C. Baker & Blair Enns \[Podcast\]   In this edition of the newsletter, I’d like to deviate from my regular book recommendation, and, instead, recommend the 2Bobs podcast again. It’s hosted by David C. Baker and Blair Enns – accomplished experts and authors whose books I’ve recommended in the past.   This particular episode of the podcast is on the power of ‘No’ – the word that so many consultants hate to say or hear. This podcast was really an eye-opener for me because of the unique approach of splitting ‘NO’ into 2 categories: 1) RECEIVE a NO 2) SAY NO.   This is such a great 35’ training podcast for every consultant!   When it comes to learning to RECEIVE A NO as an answer from your prospects/clients, Baker and Enns suggest the following:   1. Embrace getting a no! No is the second-best answer you can get (it’s 10x better as getting a ‘we will get back to you’). 2. No is not the end. It's merely the beginning of what happens next, of having a solid discussion. It helps to reflect, review, ask questions about what could have been better. 3. Being desperate is unhealthy. Our willingness to hear no is absolutely tied to how over-invested you are in the proposal. If you desperately want the deal, you will struggle to hear no, even when it’s a bad, non-ideal project/client. 4. An early No is better than a late No. It saves time. 5. Inviting a No invites conversations. If you get stuck in ‘only wanting a yes’, you will become too pushy and not conversational or consultative enough. You will forget to listen. 6. Create conditions for clients to say No so both parties can remain efficient.   Furthermore, getting comfortable with hearing a no and seeing it as the second-best answer also conditions you to be more comfortable with SAYING no to your prospects/clients. Here is Baker’s and Enns’ wisdom on the power of SAYING NO.   1. We’re repulsed by neediness. “When you are considering buying something from somebody and they come across as needy, you really do not want to do business with that person, so we need to be careful”, says Blair Enns. 2. If you don't say no, your yes is meaningless. If all you're doing is saying yes all the time, then what's the value of your yes? 3. There’s maturity in delayed gratification, we need to be willing to delay pleasing prospects/clients immediately. Blair Enns: “It's hard to delay gratification because we get excited about opportunities, but we do have to ask ourselves, "Well, what does that say about our maturity if we're constantly compromising our principles or our strategy, our positioning because we can't say no or delay our immediate yes?" 4. When your objective is to avoid No, you lose credibility. If you are focused on a specific audience with a specific pain (rightly so), you will need to learn to say no to opportunities outside this specific lane. If not, you won’t be credible. 5. If you can’t say no, nothing else matters. If you can’t say no to non-ideal opportunities, all the visible authority principles don’t matter anymore. 6. The sooner you stop lots of things that aren't meant to go forever, the better. There's just no room for growth unless you stop doing things unless you start saying no to distraction.   "The difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful people say no to almost everything." Warren Buffet   Watch this awesome sketch from Emily Mills!   The Inconvenient Number Evidence-based learning for consultants.   Decision makers are spending big in the new hyper-digital mode of B2B sales One of the consulting trends I listed in my trends article at the beginning of the year is that digital marketing will run the show. The numbers are now in and this trend is simply undeniable. That’s the new reality. It’s already here.   32% of decision makers are willing to spend $50K-$500K on a new product/service category through end-to-end digital self-service and remote human interactions.   If you check out the report, you will see lots of other relevant stats. Internalize this data. As you will see, this is just the beginning of the new market reality that will continue to evolve in the digital direction. If you are not a part of the digital mode of selling and marketing, you may as well cash out and call it a day.   Source: McKinsey   The Secret Backstage A sneak peek behind the curtains of my business. Luk's lab.   Get comfortable using easy but effective marketing tools   This year, I started a new initiative to reach and engage with my target audience – free monthly webinars. Each month I host a webinar on a topic that addresses the pain points consultants experience as they try to grow their business.   Now, I’m not a developer. And even though my technical skills have improved drastically over the years, I still can’t code even the simplest of landing pages. Luckily, I don’t need to.   Here’s my vision: for consultants, small or big, it’s important to have a...   1. fast call to arms at any time in your business... 2. ...that is frictionless (easy to do and not depending on a web developer) and can be done... 3. ...at low cost.   I create my landing pages using Unbounce – a simple, intuitive, user-friendly drag-and-drop builder that connects to my domain and allows me to create pages that look good on both desktop and mobile devices. It’s fully integrated with my Hubspot business platform, meaning: if you subscribe to a webinar, you immediately get into my mailing list, my CRM, my sales funnel, etc.   Once you master it, you can build a stunning page in an hour. Here’s a screenshot of my landing pages overview in Unbounce. Recommended reading:My 1-Day-Per-Week Content Machine That Consultants Can Replicate   The Inevitable Learning The programs I am teaching. To become a better consultant.     🅾️ My next free webinar: The most important, life-changing skills you need to master as a consultant. What you will learn in the webinar on May 12 at 2 pm CET:  ● Understanding what's going on in the consulting landscape right now ● The top 3, life-changing skills you need to master as a consultant ● The biggest blunder you can make: believing prospects will come across your profile ● Growing or scaling your consulting business needs authority Claim your seat here!    🅾️ My private training program, limited slots for 2021 I have A LIMITED NUMBER OF SLOTS in 2021 for senior consultants eager to attract their ideal customers and grow their consulting business consistently. This individual training program starts with a full audit of your market positioning and covers the necessary advice for long-term improvements and quick wins. The number of participants for this 1-2-1 virtual training is limited. Access on a first-come-first-served basis. Here's the link to the info page with the program content. You can book a call on this info page to discuss your participation.        Not yet subscribed to 'The Authority'? Subscribe here. Previous 'The Authority' edition: Edition #22 Wanna send The Authority to friends or colleagues? It lives here TheVisibleAuthority.com, Bondgenotenlaan 169, 3000, Leuven, Belgium Unsubscribe Manage preferences |
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