Hello - welcome to the weekly issue of T.h.i.n.k.ing Thursday to help you grow revenue and profit in your consulting business. My aim is to compel you to think, to entertain and to provide clarity - without the stuffy B.S. that seems to be the norm in Consulting content. Click here to read online
Enjoy!
📽 Watch the newsletter here:
💡 Tip: A thought on belief in your value
Very often I speak with Consultants who, despite illustrious careers at large firms, are intimidated by the success of the people they have to sell consulting projects too when they go out on their own. They seem to put them up on a pedestal as being in someway better than them.
Don't idolise anyone in your business network or believe they are better than you. You have an incredible skill set that may just be different to someone else's.
Bill Gates is absolutely dependent on the pilot of his private yet (and their skills) even though he may be paid 10,000 times more.
Richard Branson is dependant on the teachers at his kids schools (and their skills) even though he may be paid 10,000 times more.
I've spoken to 3 consultants already this month where I was in awe of their accomplishments of working at the largest firms and managing mega projects - most way above what I've been involved with. But...they were on a call with me because I had skills they did not.
Focus on your unique value and never doubt that the market will pay handsomely for that value - even if the people appear to be further along in the area that they excel at.
😂 Humour: A little partner focused joke today:
A partner in a large consulting firm and a more junior colleague decide to go on a weekend trip hunting bears.
They arrive at their small log cabin set in a clearing deep in the forest. The junior consultant prepares a simple meal for them in the kitchen and sets up the range of equipment he has brought along for the bear hunt.
The partner drops his bags and immediately disappears out the front door of the cabin; he is gone for about an hour.
Suddenly, the partner comes running at full speed out of the trees, back across clearing and straight in through the front door of the cabin, with a huge grizzly bear just a few paces behind him.
As he disappears out the back door he yells over his shoulder at the junior: "OK, You skin this beauty, I’ll go get us another!"
🏹 Insight: The Visible Expert Model
One of my thought leader models that I've reworked recently is the Visible Expert Model below.
Consultants can usually be placed in 1 of 4 quadrants:
- Quadrant 1 High on Point Of View and High on Niche Specialisation: The Visible Expert - This is where we all want to be. Consultants in this quadrant have a targeted and tailored value proposition and a well-executed multi-channel marketing and sales strategy. They deeply understand their clients' needs and can communicate their unique value effectively, leading to a thriving consulting business.
- Quadrant 2 High on Point Of View and Low on Niche Specialisation: The Incoherent Communicator In this quadrant, consultants may have a unique Point Of View and may be doing a lot of marketing and communication that yields little to no results. The main reason is they are not focused on a problem centred niche. As a result, they cannot reach their ideal clients or communicate their value effectively, leading to missed opportunities and low-paying clients.
- Quadrant 3 High on Niche Specialisation but low on Point of View: The Invisible Experts - Consultants in this quadrant have a compelling value proposition and Point Of View but lack a multi-channel marketing and sales strategy (very often no strategy at all) to promote their services aligned to a tight niche or market pain. They remain relatively unknown in their industry and struggle to attract high-paying clients, even though they have the skills and expertise to deliver exceptional results.
- Quadrant 4 Low on Point Of View and Low on Niche Specialisation: The Unfocused Generalist In this quadrant consultants lack both a targeted value proposition and an effective niche focused multi-channel marketing and sales strategy. They struggle to differentiate themselves from competitors and fail to communicate their unique value to potential clients. As a result, they often settle for low-paying clients and have difficulty growing their businesses.
Where are you in the quadrant? To read the full breakdown including action steps to move to quadrant 4 read the full article here.
🔥 New: Clay - Software and App
Clay is an AI powered tools for cultivating amazing personal and professional relationships (so they say). Most consultants need to manage their relationships more than their clients. CRM's manage clients and deals well but consultants can generally do a great job of this in simple tools like excel, airtable or even your project management tool. Where you need help and will get massive value is in managing relationships.
Many years ago I listened to an (old) audio from Jim Rhon where he described his system of keeping pages in journals for every contact he had. Think of clay as this on steroids.
- Direct connections to your Linkedin network, email services, facebook and more so no downloading and uploading.
- Create custom buckets of contacts that you want to have standard contact cadences with. This is something i preach in my consulting clients course. The app will then remind you to contact them via the web app or mobile app.
- A.I. capabilities mean you can slice and dice your relationships in any way you like based on location, interests and any other info found in their social profile or posts. Want to find people in your network lives in Gateshead, work in SaaS, likes mountain biking and pottery - run a search.
At the moment the free plan is super powerful. There is a paid plan at $10 a month when paid annually or $20 a month. The only upgrade I can see is that it gives more search functionality and better AI functionality but you'd need to be using it heavily to need it.
Here's the AI functionality when focused on getting to know more about a single contact:
📚 Knowledge: The Category Design Toolkit (Book)
In this book about positioning the authors argue that branding comes second to category design. No meaningful category? No meaningful company. People organise information into "categories" in their minds. Are you a B2B enterprise software company? Do you sell plastic widgets on Amazon? Maybe you're a small business owner, a biotech entrepreneur, or a YouTuber. You either create your own to be placed in or people put you in the box they decide.
In order to have a meaningful impact on the world, in order to become known for a niche you own, and in order to dominate your industry in a way that separates you from any and all competition, you must create your own category.
Read the full book review using the link below:
Peter O'Donoghue
Behind The Scenes: The newsletter officially finished above. This is a sneak peek at things that I'm working on so I'm building in public for your entertainment. The last month I created a hypothesis that people needed 2 new products. 1 X A training course on 'Chat GPT for B2B Consultants. I have been heavily into chatGPT since day 1 for content creation and consulting project delivery by creating A.I. employees. I had positive feedback from my network and will almost certainly build it into the Insider membership level of this community. 1 x Get Consulting Clients Implementation program - I've run this as an online training course a few times previously and wanted to radically update it. I didn't want to build and sell as that doesn't make economic sense. I posted a few times on LinkedIn and have 2 new clients signed up at £1200 on the pilot program where I'm working with them personally. We are on week 2 of the 8 week program and their feedback and results have been superb so far. £2,400 won't make me rich but the aim is to turn the recordings into a £10k a month+ automated revenue stream by December. There may still be time to jump in if you want to be a part of it. Reply to this email or message me on linkedin.
👩💼Enjoyed The Newsletter? I'd be honoured if you shared it
| Share your unique link and earn rewards for every newsletter subscriber | |||
|
10
Referrals
Free Insider Access Valued @£99 |
17
Referrals
Free Insider + Access Valued @£199 |
24
Referrals
Power Hour Consulting Call Valued @ £300 |
3
Referrals
The Network And Opportunity Maximisation Tool |
| Check your referrals | |||
| Share on social | |||
| |||
Want to learn more from me? Here's a few options:
📈 Upgrade to Insider Plus: Get a new implementation course every month + access to a client community group to interact with other entrepreneurial Consultants
🎣 Get Consulting Clients: The Ultimate Course On How To Win Consulting Clients Quickly
🏢 Have a Consulting Business Over £500k - I have a number of consulting programs to audit and grow your offer creation, marketing and sales. If you want to grow revenue and profit quicker than you could on your own, let's talk.