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title: My bi-weekly 'think piece' for consultants
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reader, here's part 2 of my consulting learnings from 2021. A lot of stuff to learn from. Wish you good reading.

| View in browser Luk’s Bi-Weekly 'Think Piece' For Consultants       Edition #43 - February 9, 2022        Dear reader,    Here's the new 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.   Did you already download my newest ebook with the best social media posts from 2021? If not, here's the download link again. Enjoy the reading!  The Big Question Questions I get from consultants. And my answers. In my last webinar on January 12, I presented my top 10 learnings from 2021. I got several emails from fellow followers/subscribers, so I decided to summarize them. In edition #42 of the newsletter, I presented my learnings 1 to 5.   Here’s part 2, learnings 6 to 10.    Learning #6: Sharing expertise: trust!   Business development in consulting has changed forever. I’ve been talking a lot about it in the past year. Consulting is a 100% trust-based business. Buyers of consulting services have access to an abundance of information that empowers them to navigate (confirmed by research) 70-80% of the decision-making process before they contact a consultancy. So, you’d better get included in ‘the buyers’ homework’. There’s still tremendous opportunity in consulting, but you will need a robust reputation footprint to win in a crowded, highly competitive consulting market with risk-avoiding, impatient buyers who can find anything in seconds. So, you’d better have a bold point of view and a fundamentally new way to solve the problem(s) of your target audience. Your main goal is to inspire them with the transformational potential of your expertise, picture them ‘The Promised Land’, and educate them to move away from their status quo. Business development in consulting is all about building and growing trust at scale.   In the new world, you no longer have a choice: you will need to develop and share the best possible educational content consistently. If you don’t, you’ll belong to the loser's camp sooner or later. Seriously. Solo consultant, a boutique consultancy, or big firm? There’s no difference! It’s the buyer, stupid. Experts write and share.   Learning #7: The evil RFP? Maybe! It has been another year of discussions about the evil RFP. I get that. But, believe it or not, I know a whole range of consultancies and consultants who get invited without any RFP process. I even know a few who refuse to play the RFP game, and in 70-80% of the cases, they successfully push back. Why is that? These consultancies are known for their unparalleled expertise and reputation. They get invited because the prospect wants them. I enjoyed most of the RFP’s I was involved in because it was effortless to demonstrate expertise if the client had done the homework (in 95% of the cases). Evil procurement people? I don’t know. I’m seeing that experts who get invited seem to get ‘air cover’ from the client. And yes, there are nasty gatekeepers. They exist. But ask yourself: is it about your (still missing) expertise and reputation level or is it about ‘the ugly others’? Take a deep breath.   Learning #8: Help, we have bad clients! Another returning discussion in my working with consultants/consultancies: the so-called difficult clients. Suppose you are a thru follower of my writings. In that case, you probably already know my pushback: all those bad clients just don’t exist, you have made them bad by selling your unlimited availability, by allowing bad behaviors and processes, by accepting the gatekeepers, by authorizing big discounts, and many more reasons (I wrote a LinkedIn post). And the reason why you are doing this is that you are afraid of losing the client. Fearful of losing income, of losing revenue, of losing your incentive. So, even unconsciously, you quickly slide into one of the most toxic consulting illnesses: overservicing and undercharging. And it all starts with ‘being like all other consultancies’: not having the power in the collaboration because you lack authority, visibility, and reputation. The client is buying your availability and is not (yet) inviting you for your robust transformational expertise and impact. Suppose you don’t fanatically tackle your very own underlying fear of losing the client. In that case, you will unfortunately never achieve an unambiguous authority positioning to stand out in a competitive consulting market, and your mental health will be at stake in the long run.   Learning #9: OMG, we don’t have time! Another stubborn discussion: not having time to build the necessary reputation footprint (visibility x expertise x trust). Suppose you don’t build a solid reputational footprint. In that case, you will have to sell your availability at a low hourly rate, you will have to work and sell like crazy to protect income/revenue, and you won’t have the critical time to grow the business. It’s what I call the vicious loop to hell (and burnout). Your consulting business will never grow if you don’t dedicate 20-30% of your time to deepening your expertise, boosting your reputation, and getting invited at premium rates to compensate for the 20-30% business development. However, finding the time to build your reputation as a consultant is NOT BY THE CLOCK! It’s by reverse-engineering the fundamentals of your consulting business: focus/expertise, reputation, pipeline by invitation, premium pricing, 20-30% biz-dev. The glorious loop to heaven (and quality of life).   Learning #10: Outbound in consulting doesn’t work I am still getting confronted with consultancies trying to make stupid outbound sales. I even crossed paths with two mid-sized consultancy firms, both using a call center making cold calling sales.   I was flabbergasted. Cold calling in consulting? Wow, that doesn’t work. Why not? In 99% of the cases, prospects - if the call agent can reach the right decision-makers at all (likely NEVER) - are not in need to buy consulting services. And potential buyers cannot be inspired by a call agent who has no clue (with all due respect).   Cold calling? Cold outbound? Forget it. Such a waste of time and money. What should you be doing instead as a consultancy? If you know me: it’s easy to understand. The consultants will need to become a magnet of their expertise. How? Here’s the thing: effective selling in consulting requires YOU to build TRUST in YOUR expertise. Share, teach, share, teach. Build and grow your reputation as a consultancy with your consultants. Inspire your prospects with an abundance of ‘trust stuff’. Nurture them with the latest insights, trends, research, lessons learned, use cases. Consistently.   Once you get in the trust-building flow, your ‘sales life’ will radically change. You won’t need call centers again. Unfortunately, there are no trust-building hacks. It takes time. A year, two years, maybe even more. It’s a long-haul play. Ooh, I almost forgot to say: and it never stops! But I am damn sure you’ll start getting a flood of prospects coming through. It happened to me twice. Starting from scratch. Stop your stupid consulting call center practice! You can’t delegate trust-building to a call center.   Sleazy sales hacks in consulting don’t work! You are fooling yourself. And you will be destroying your reputation. 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 share consulting-related advice on Linkedin to start the new week. Here are the quotes from the past two weeks. Let the inspiration be with you (if you let it).    Topic 31-1-2022: How to be successful in consulting?   Success in consulting comes from building and growing a robust reputational footprint, at scale. Without such a reputational footprint, you will always have to compete on price. And that's the wrong game to play in consulting.   Topic 7-2-2022: Authorities in consulting love their advisory craft.   Authorities in consulting thrive by focus, repetition, and pattern recognition out of love for their amazing craft and expertise. They never talk about the lack of variety because they get immense variety in the depth of working with their clients on prototypical problems. Every day again.     The Irresistible Content I write a lot. Here's the update from the past 2 weeks.   🅾️ Webinar resources: All resources for the free webinars I hosted in 2021/2022 🅾️ TVA blog: If you could only read a few books in 2022, read these As you know, I am in constant pursuit of expanding my knowledge. I read books and articles, watch educational videos, and listen to insightful podcasts. My goal is to discover new perspectives and gain a better understanding of what I already know. As such, I don't limit myself to strictly business books. Many of my recommendations are of books that cover psychological aspects of how we think and operate as human beings.   All of these books have one thing in common – they will help you become a better consultant. 🅾️ Guest podcast: unbillable hours - the podcast I was interviewed by the awesome consultancy marketers Florian M. Heinrichs and Ash M. on the impressive podcast, called 'Unbillable hours'.   I am explaining how building and growing a reputational footprint in a consultancy is critical to business development success. 🅾️ Other content from the past weeks:   TVA blog: “Why Should We Hire You as a Consultant?” Here Is How to Answer LinkedIn post: Losing a pitch: a true story from the consultancy trenches. LinkedIn post: What is ‘The Promised Land’ in consulting? LinkedIn post: Too many consultants share stuff on LinkedIn like a desperate. LinkedIn post: The biggest blunder that consultants can make in 2022? LinkedIn post: Do you really understand your consulting clients? The Authority, previous edition: Edition #42    The Inspiring ‘Others’ I read/listen a lot. Here's what I am reading right now. ‘The MAGIC Ingredient’ by Costas Papaikonomou The MAGIC Ingredient: business development for professional Creatives is written by a highly creative type and, based on the description, many would assume it’s only for the creative types. Costas Papaikonomou is a co-founder of global creative agency Happen®, which he and his co-founders sold in 2019 to Accenture. In this book, he describes how he and his co-founders built and grew the agency in the span of 12 years.   Costas: “I’ve sold a lot of creative work in my career so far. Be it fees in return for a good idea, financial rewards for such an idea making it to market, or invoices sent for cracking a creative problem. I’ve sold proposals promising my own time and skills, someone else’s skills, a methodology we’d created, innovation projects on topics a had no clue of how they worked. If it’s about being creative, i.e. creating something from nothing, I’ve probably sold it at some point.” Despite many doubting their business model, despite economic turmoils around them, despite temporary challenges, Happen® invoiced over $100 million in client work, ending every year in profit and happy team members. While Costas talks about his business, a creative agency, the lessons you will learn are 100% applicable to the consultancy world. It’s about a business development approach that delivers results. It’s about how to recruit and retain clients. It’s about how to compete against larger businesses and position your offering as unique and authentic.   Credits to Florian & Ash from the podcast 'Unbillable Hours' for the book reference.    The Inconvenient Number Evidence-based learning for consultants.   Prospects evaluate your expertise through your thought leadership   Sharing your content and growing your visibility as a thought leader is a proven way of growing your consulting business. I discuss this in detail in my article: Why You Should Share Your Expertise To Grow Your Consulting Business. Here is another piece of research that backs up my argument:   60% of decision-makers use thought leadership content to evaluate the expertise/insight of potential advisors.   You no longer need to rely on the outdated business strategy of schmoozing your prospects over expensive dinners. We live in the digital age. That means you and your consultancy will be googled. It’s the most natural thing we do as consumers when evaluating a product, and it’s, by now, the first thing your prospects do when evaluating a service. The question then is: Will prospects be impressed by your level of expertise when they browse through your thought leadership library or will they move on in a matter of minutes?   Source: Grist   The Secret Backstage A sneak peek behind the curtains of my business. Luk's lab.   Cross-pollination becoming a new consulting skill?   I get that question all the time: Luk, how the heck can you produce so much content in a week? (And most of them also know I only invest 4 to 6 hours per week, and most of my followers also know I am only working 4 days/week).   Let me help you, from my backstage. Ever heard of content cross-pollination? Probably not. Let me explain because cross-pollination is my backstage thing.   Here’s what I did this morning, 10’ of work but as a result quite a bit of new content output.   1. I presented a slide deck to a new prospect this morning 2. In the PPT, there were a few updated slides with updated ideas 3. I did copy/paste the text of these updated slides into my content google doc 4. From there, I did copy/paste those texts into my social media scheduling tool (in Hubspot) 5. Next week, 3 short posts with these new ideas will appear in social media, automated   10’ of work, that’s all. That’s cross-pollination: work becomes content. No extra work. No writer's block, never! Infinite idea generation. ‘My Backstage Content Machine’.   Remember: expert consultants write. And they can gather content without extra work. Why? Content IS your work. Work IS your content.   What are you waiting for?   The Inevitable Learning The programs I am teaching. To become a better consultant.   🅾️ My private training program, a few slots for 2022 I have opened new slots for 2022 for senior consultants eager to attract ideal customers and grow a 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. If you are interested, hurry up because access is on a first-come-first-served basis and my pricing will increase in 2022. 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 #42 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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