In any economy - whether up or down - consultants need to differentiate themselves from their competition. And in these challenging times it's business-savy to sharpen your differentiators. I find Jay Levinson and Michael McLaughlin's discussion of differentiators in their book Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants thought-provoking. I've made my own list below -- leveraging some of Levinson and McLaughlin's list (marked "L&M"), adding my own, and categorizing the differentiators. Your … [Read more...]
About Deborah Plumley
Learning from a Retrospective
October 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Big Companies and Post-Mortems At a Fortune 500 company where I used to work, the project team would convene after a project ended to conduct a post mortem. I used to think "How morbid" -- to view a project like a dead body. But often we'd find out that we should've done something differently. We'd also congratulate each other on what went well. And then years later at the same company we'd ask our consulting teams to conduct a retrospective at the end of an engagement (preferably with the … [Read more...]
Building Your Advantage Through Consultant Learning
October 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Developing a Competitive Edge as a Consultant... ...for me, it's constant. I'm always building skills, content, and knowledge in my field. And then there are other areas of expertise, such as marketing (honing my website for the 50th time, for example) or running my business (tipping my balance sheet, etc.), or expanding my business (making very passive income, for instance). I frequently develop these through gotchas, tips, and best practices. Finding Consultant Learning and Development … [Read more...]
