We created a new Women in Consulting member benefit late in 2009, the WIC Mentoring Program. Our successful six-week pilot run ended in mid-October.

The pilot included seven mentees who agreed to help us test the new program. These were WIC members who were interested in the program, but also ready to invest some time (and do some homework!) in order to apply the information we shared with them to help improve various aspects of their businesses.

Desiree Lehrbaum (Lumen Consulting) and I (J. G. Richards Consulting) worked together as a team to mentor the pilot group. We’ll also lead the spring session, which runs from March 24-April 28.

Desiree’s mentoring focus is on marketing and business development of mentees’ businesses. I lead the vision-setting, action planning and “optimizing your business operations” parts of the program.

Once again, the spring session will use a webinar format once a week for an hour, supplemented by a 30 minute 1:1 mentoring call between each mentee and each mentor in the final weeks of the program. We hope to hold our kickoff session as a group, in person.

So how did the pilot go?

I’ll let the Fall, 2009 mentees speak for themselves. Here’s some of their feedback, provided on the anonymous feedback survey we sent them soon after the pilot was over:

“The content was awesome! I can’t imagine it being better.” (This came from a participant during our follow-up call a month after the session ended).

“Not only did I learn specific skills, but I felt more focused on my business and more motivated to actually get past hurdles and get things done.

“A very practical way of approaching the steps of marketing for my business, and identifying and confronting issues holding me back.”

“The program was extremely well thought out, structured into a business development focus with actionable tips and tools to take my thinking to the next level.”

There are more participant quotes I could share, but I think that gives you enough information to know if this is a program that sounds right for you, too.

If you’re interested in the Spring, 2010 WIC Mentoring Program, send me an e-mail at jan@jgichardsresults.com to let me know. We’re finalizing the Spring 2010 Mentoring group soon.

I had the pleasure of attending WIC’s general meeting last Thursday, where Kate Purmal shared insights into how we can make 2010 our best year yet…without breaking our necks! I particularly like that last part!

As part of the networking exercise, everyone was asked to answer the following question:

If you could choose between the following, which would you choose:

• You double your revenue in 2010 but work the same amount of time
• You keep your revenue at the current level but work half the time
• Your revenue and the amount of time you work remain the same but your projects are 2x more satisfying

That was a tough one for me. I want to keep my revenue at the current level and work half the time (I have a young daughter)—but I also want the projects to be 2x more satisfying. An overwhelming amount of Thursday’s attendees voted to double their revenue but work the same amount of time.

What would you choose?

Digging a Little Deeper

If you attended the meeting and would like a copy of Kate’s PowerPoint slides from Thursday’s meeting, email her at kpurmal@gmail.com, and she’ll send them to you. She’s also offering meeting attendees special deals on two of her upcoming workshops, geared to building sales and your thought leadership.  

Sales Boot Camp

If the presentation whet your appetite and you’d like to take your sales to the next level, Kate has an upcoming Sales Boot Camp on February 18, 2010. The one-day workshop is $495 for WIC meeting attendees.

In the workshop, Kate digs deeper on several topics from the WIC meeting:

-       Role-play to perfect the art of creating a “trial balloon” proposal in a single meeting
-       Create a phase 1 or Trojan Horse proposal for your business
-       Develop a phased model for your services
-       Build an action plan to fill your sales pipeline
-       And much more

For more information and to register visit http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=196613

Thought Leadership Workshop

Kate and her personal guru Mark Levy, author of Accidental Genius, are hosting a one-day intensive workshop where you’ll use private writing and exercises to develop a compelling thought leadership platform. You’ll tap into your creative genius to brainstorm high-level ideas and review them with the group to pick the most compelling and captivating concepts. By developing a platform for thought leadership you gain access to a wider range of potential clients and can charge more for your services.

The workshop is $495 for WIC meeting attendees.

For more information and to register visit http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=196828

It seems that the recession is finally ending. But if you’re like me, my business took a beating and I have some major planning to do to be poised for opportunities in 2010. However, it seems so overwhelming to do it all by myself.

Luckily, WIC has a workshop on December 1^st that can help me – and you – be ready to take advantage of the business upswing. Seven experts are available to explore all aspects of our businesses, in a one-to-one setting, and help develop the best strategic approach.

We’ll walk away with:

• A blueprint for our businesses
• Valuable tips from the experts on sales, marketing, resourcing, process improvement, competition, client/market assessment, and branding
• Action items to kick-start our success in 2010

So carve out some time to concentrate on your success and join us at the WIC December  “Jumpstart Your Business for 2010” Workshop:

December 1, 2009, 8:00am – 12:00pm

Network Meeting Center

5201 Great America Parkway, Suite 122, Santa Clara, CA 95054

(408) 562-6091

www.networkmeetingcenter.com

Learn more and register at www.womeninconsulting.org

In Part I of “Should I Become a Consultant,” I wrote about understanding what a consultant’s life really involves, exploring the waters a bit, answering the question about whether the entrepreneurial life is right for you, and researching the field that interests you, whether its marketing, management, sales, or some other field.

Next, research specific areas and ways you can help clients.

What Problems Can You Solve Well?
Think about the types of problems you want to solve, the organizations and people with whom you want to work, and the issues you have successfully solved for an organization in the past. What challenges come to mind first? What successes come to mind quickly?

Cite some specific examples to illustrate your problem-solving history. Describe them during your informational interviews with consultants currently working in your field of choice. See if how you like to work and what you like to do is a fit with that area.

Who Needs Help with this Type of Problem?
As a first fast pass at research into your market, search Monster.com or other major job hunting sites with a few appropriate key words. See who’s hiring for those types of skills. This gives you a sense of the best markets for your services, either as an employee or as a consultant. If available, a business research tool, such as Hoover’s, can provide additional insight.

Would You Really Rather Be an Employee?
During your research, as is sometimes the case, you may find the perfect job. Pursuing one direction — consulting — can lead to full-time opportunities you might otherwise have missed or roles that you didn’t know existed. For example, you might start a career in marketing and then research the possibility of consulting, which then leads to an opportunity you really want, a full-time job in a larger company, working in corporate social responsibility.

However you resolve your curiosity or drive toward consulting, do your research first. A lot of questions will be answered in that process, which will help you decide whether or not to move further down the consulting career path.

With the current economic uncertainty, more and more people will likely be contemplating a consulting career. Odds are, if you’re reading this blog, either you know someone who’s entertaining the idea or you, yourself, are considering making the move.

So, what’s the first step in deciding to become a consultant? Start asking questions. Understand what’s involved. Explore your options. Some may think it’s easy to start, manage, and grow a consulting practice, while others may be frightened by the prospect. The only way you’ll know if it’s right for you is to do your research.

WIC members have a lot of experience in this area, so I thought I’d summarize what a few of them had to say. Hopefully, these ideas will help you answer the question.

Understand a Consultant’s Work Life
The consulting life is a good work life, in many ways. You have the opportunity to help people solve problems and achieve business results much greater than they initially thought possible. Conversely, you may not get the chance to see things play out, once you’ve made your recommendations and handed off the project. Or you may not be able to help execute the plan without being asked first.

Many of the benefits are clear—flexible hours, removed from corporate politics, and creative freedom to name a few. But what’s often not so readily apparent is that being a consultant takes A LOT of work behind the scenes.

A consultant, unless employed by a larger firm, is a small business owner, an entrepreneur, who must devote a lot of time to business development in order to thrive. The most successful consultants make it look effortless, but they’re always marketing in some way. Experienced consultants say you should expect to spend 20 percent of your time each week developing new business with new clients, a critical step to ensure continued success as the economy ebbs and flows.

Running and growing the business are satisfying, if you’re an entrepreneur at heart. But some people don’t like that part of consulting. Many people don’t realize just how much time a consultant spends running the business. In addition, we’re often re-inventing our businesses based on changes in our interests and the marketplace. That means “re-starting,” in some fashion, throughout the life of the business.

Test the Waters First
It’s important to test your entrepreneurial interest before going too far down the consultant path. Study a few issues of Inc., Fortune Small Business, or Fast Company. All of these publications address small business management quite well, as do a number of websites. Look at Fortune’s small business case studies in “Ask the Experts.” If the problems they’re solving aren’t interesting, it’s a sign you may be missing the entrepreneurial DNA that’s an important part of consulting success.

If you pass the “Am I really an entrepreneur?” test, the next step is to do your homework about the field that interests you. Select a few consultants who work in that field and approach them for informational interviews.

To find these people, search the WIC consultant database or social networking sites, such as LinkedIn. Identify several consultants with skills like yours. Contact them and request a little time in person or on the phone to learn more. Ask about their specific experience and career path, and seek advice about what you need to learn and do to prepare for a consulting career in their field.

To search for consultants in WIC’s database, use the advanced search feature (coming soon) on the Women in Consulting website.

Do Some Background Prep
Think about the types of problems you want to solve, the organizations and people with whom you want to work, and the issues you have successfully solved for an organization in the past. What challenges come to mind first? Marketing? Management? Business process? Sales? Project management? Fund raising? Infrastructure or systems?

As a consultant, you concentrate your business and marketing efforts in one specific area, not all possible avenues. It’s important—and good business—to specialize, because it makes it easy for the right clients (your target audience) to find you.

If you’re to be a successful consultant over the long-term, you have to be clear about who you are, and what you do to make your clients (organizations or individuals) more successful.

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 customer). We didn’t want to call them post-mortems — even though the customer had undergone a near-death experience! 

Seriously, we wanted to find out what had gone well, what hadn’t gone well, what should have been changed on the next engagement, and most of all, what were the key things that we learned. These insights were shared with other consultants around the world.

Retrospectives as a Ritual
Norman Kerth describes retrospectives in detail on his website. There he classifies the retrospective as a ritual held over the ages, to pass on learning-from-experience from one generation to the next, from one project team to the next. He says the retrospective can fashioned into the structure of a story. 

Consultants and Retrospectives
As a consultant, it’s hard to reflect on your consulting engagements. At the end of a project, we’re likely focusing on the next gig, moving on to wild selling, or scheduling a vacation. Instead, it would be better to:

• Ask your client a few questions: what went well, what could have gone better
• Hold your own retrospective, asking yourself: 
  • What was the story of that selling and consulting gig? 
  • What would I like to repeat on the next gig? 
  • What did I learn that I could use to enhance the value that I bring to my clients?

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 50^th 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 Resources
Everybody learns differently (which is why Women in Consulting offers so many options for getting up to speed on the latest best practices). They key is finding the method(s) that works best for you, be it:

• On the job: Each client engagement offers an opportunity to improve your selling and your consulting skills.
• Formal training: Conferences and class, while very traditional, can yield knowledge, contacts, and state-of-the-art trends.
• The Internet: If you find formal training passé, you can tap newer learning methods, such teleseminars, webcasts, blogs, podcasts, and Wikis. Even Internet searches can yield a wealth of valuable information.
• Expanding your network and learning from the consultant community: Perhaps the best resources for immediate insight into current best practices are your fellow consultants and small business owners. Find a community that you resonate with and tap it for tips, insights, mentoring, and feedback.

Evaluating the Learning Experience
You can evaluate the effectiveness of a learning experience by asking yourself the following questions:

• Will the information help me strengthen the foundation and infrastructure of my business?
• Can I use what I learned to build my profits?
• Can I now create more value for my clients?