Best Practice lessons from the employment arena
Companies usually put a lot more effort into hiring employees than they do into hiring consultants. Larger companies actually have a standard selection process for hiring employees – this includes gates like:

– a completed application and reference checks,
– 2 levels of management signing off on the new hire,
– the same people interview all candidates for a given position,
– standard interview reviews and feedback

These are all examples of common elements of a standard employment process that actually works.

Some of the often ignored lessons from these selection processes should be addressed in marketing your business as a consultant. Think about the ways companies select employees based on that theoretical “cultural fit”:

• Does the consultant fit the pace of the organization?
• Does their experience mirror the work to be completed in today’s project?
• Is the consultant someone who has shown that they can flex on a dime as changes occur in the business?
• Does the consultant’s communication style fit the organization (or at least the manager in question)? – Think about method, frequency, status updates, etc.

What are the subtle issues that make someone want to work with you? The better handle you have on these perceptual issues, the easier your service is to sell to this client.

We’ll be addressing more on this topic in other blogs.

By: Deb McClanahan

Yes,  I admit it  – I become a rabid sports fan for two weeks of the year,  for March Madness. For those of you who never lived in the Midwest, that is either the Indiana high school championship series or the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championship series.  There are lessons outside of the bracket business that apply to consultants. Here are a few thoughts:

• Stick to your core strength – whether you play zone defense, man to man, or blockout, know what got you to this level and work with that strength. Play your game, not someone else’s.
• Don’t mess with a successful structure or infrastructure – the current 65-team structure for the tournament has an elegance to it. The talk of expanding to 96 teams makes me think about the mess that college football has made of its Bowl Championship Series, where there are too many bowl games that only the advertisers care about. The corollary for consultants is to evaluate your infrastructure regularly but if it’s working for you, don’t mess with it. Work on areas of your business that can use improving.
• Root for the underdog. Yes, Cal didn’t have much of a chance going up against the #1 tournament seed, but Saint Mary’s is the real underdog in the Sweet Sixteen. Many of us work with start-ups who are taking on established companies, and it feels good to root for the underdog here, too.

All of these will lead to more authentic consulting for you and your clients.

By: Deb McClanahan

I was thinking about WIC’s survey results from last week’s meeting when I came across an interesting article by Geoff Colvin in Fortune from March 2, 2009.  In talking about products, he asserts that smart companies can raise prices in the midst of the recession.  Using a classic pricing matrix,  he talks about the long term impact of pricing decisions and how they are made.  None of this is new.  I assert that the same principles apply to us in the professional services marketplace as well. Differentiating your service and selling value to the client is still the name of the game for successful consultants.

So be fearless and understand your value to the client before you begin discussions on the project. The recession will not last forever, and we need to be ready.

By: Deb McClanahan

General Motors eliminated the Pontiac nameplate  this week. This set me to thinking about core versus non-core business. To eliminate an icon is a tough decision for any business at any time – when GM is clearly fighting for its survival in a shrunken U.S. auto industry, it had to be very difficult.  I grew up with a huge Pontiac Bonneville (with fins:^) and an even older Chieftain sedan as the family car in my childhood.

The exercise of pruning non-core business from our consulting practices is something we each need to do regularly. One of the reasons I love having my own business is this opportunity to regularly prune what isn’t working or what is no longer important to me. And to re-invent segments of my business as the market changes or my interests change. To experiment with things I haven’t done before and challenge myself is always a great learning experience and a chance to provide new value to my clients as their business needs change.

If I can help you on this path of pruning and re-invention, post a comment or send me a private email at Deb@BroadBandHR.com

By: Deb McClanahan

Want to get found on LinkedIn – by both potential clients and people who place consultants? To identify good matches for those needs, there are 3 basic paths that are used, depending on the particular needs.

I’ll speak first to the search path itself, and how we as consultants can influence being found. Think of this blog as the beginning of applying some SEO elements to your LinkedIn profile (although LinkedIn’s search functionality is not at the level of Google’s).

The first path is a generalist route, the second completely detailed and specific. The third path is one of referral, and I’ll speak to that last as it is one most of us could construct on our own.

Generalist

In this case they are looking for a general area match. Experience in the same or a similar company, similar job title held in the past, participation in the same trade shows, even graduating from the same MBA program would be examples of using this generalist approach. Typically one of these factors is used – not all.

This search path is often influenced by past experience – such as “I had a good experience in the past with hiring someone from that company” or “I want to find a consultant with an educational background like my own”.

In the generalist case, the potential client is not looking at 3 to 7 key performance factors that are most often used to identify what it takes to be successful in a role as you would in hiring an employee.

So how can you make your profile more appealing for this generalist search? Use phrases that show broad skills, ROI and programmatic results and overviews. While you want to demonstrate the size and scope of your work, you’re not going for the details. In marketing for instance, rather than listing all of the roles you’ve had, you might want to list a generalist title, note that it was in a consumer or enterprise product space, and note major results. You will also want to include the buzzwords used in the space (three letter acronyms are often effective here as well – I search for TLA’s a lot in my business).

Specialist

In this case one is looking for a detailed and specific match for a consultant. Experience in specific prior projects with the same kind of time constraints, working with specific channels and partners to accomplish a similar task at the same stage of business or launching a new product are examples of the specific matches someone might look for. Typically, the specialist search includes multiple specifics such as three specific companies one might want experience from (all three) as well as details about the product or service.

This search path often includes multiple iterations – take a large pool, narrow it with one set of spec’s, and then narrow it further with a second set of spec’s. Here the person is looking to exclude people, not to include them – they want to look at one or two people who meet all of the criteria. I’m not able to provide the level of detail on this path because it is so specific to the particular assignment. It is clear however that the potential client has an extended list of “must haves” – up to 10-15 specifics they are looking for. The other factor to bear in mind here is that the lack of one of those 10-15 elements will disqualify you. They are looking for exact matches, sometimes to bring in a skillset or experience they don’t have. Your profile to meet these criteria is going to look more like a detailed resume. The challenge here is to include relevant detail that people will actually read.

Referral

This path is the one that LinkedIn is built on – the principle that a large number of weak ties will get you in front of the right people through the network you build. To ensure this happens, you want to include people in your network that :

• Know you well
• Can speak/vouch effectively for your skills
• Are connected to potential clients for you
• Have similar standards in hiring consultants
• Do spot-on recommendations for you

Recommendations are often a way that people locate you on LinkedIn. Ensure that you are recommended for the right skills and accomplishments by people you have worked closely with. Generic recommendations are fine for other purposes, but don’t work in the referral search path.

LinkedIn does not yet have postings for consulting opportunities – I expect this is in their roadmap for future development. They started posting employment opportunities in 2008 and many recruiters now look to this site as an exclusive source  for narrowcasting opportunities to a pool of well-qualified candidates.

So, let’s all get busy and revisit our LinkedIn profiles with these factors in mind. Try these ideas out on your own profile , and let me know what the results are. Feel free to comment with your own tips. Let’s keep the conversation going – if you don’t want to do it on the blog, send private comments to Deb@BroadBandHR.com

By: Deb McClanahan

I know I’m a little late for the first day of the Chinese New Year, but the big parade here in the Bay Area is the real kickoff for me.

The Year of the Ox is a time for strength, power, hard work, duty, and discipline. These sound like attributes we’d want to have in any time. The Chinese horoscope also subscribes people born in Ox years as having high ethics and patience. They also don’t take action until all details of a project are planned and the issues thought through.

Both the time and the people sound like just what we need right now. So let’s apply the discipline of the Ox to making our own businesses all they can be in this time of turmoil. And let’s apply these principles to our larger community as well.

By: Deb McClanahan

Don’t let the headlines and news stories paralyze you. While there’s abundant fear about the economic uncertainty, it’s important that we not let anxiety freeze us into inaction. This is especially true if year-end is historically a slower time for some of us.

Yes, there are layoff announcements and some companies are putting new hiring on hold. However, a recent survey by consulting firm Towers Perrin found that most companies aren’t looking at mass layoffs as a solution in this recession — a departure from past downturns. Most companies that are cutting jobs are doing so in a very targeted fashion, and fully two-thirds of companies surveyed don’t foresee employee layoffs on the horizon.

The good news: many of the companies that have laid off employees will need consulting talent to fill some of the gaps. Often, this work may not be the larger strategic consulting projects we have as our goal, but the client still needs the results. And they need them now — in this quarter, in this fiscal year.

Tips from Successful Consultants

• Be proactive in searching for and developing new clients and projects. You may need to adjust your pitch or focus on a new set of challenges for the client; and you may need to explore new resources. Don’t be afraid to try new things just because the economy bad.
• Be mindful of the audience to whom you’re pitching and the place they hold in the direct revenue stream. It’s that revenue stream that’s most crucial to the client, especially today.
• Be confident in your own value and let that confidence help you in negotiations, but don’t be overly confident.
• Follow your passions. Continue to search for the clients you really believe in and who fit your “best clients” model; and do your due diligence on potential clients.
• Use your network productively. Let colleagues know that you’ve some time available, and let them know how you can help them as well.

So let’s cast off the doom and gloom and get busy providing great consulting to our clients, both old and new.

By: Deb McClanahan