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    Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly: Systems and Templates you need
    Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly: Systems and Templates you need
    Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly: Systems and Templates you need
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly: Systems and Templates you need

    By Cindy Tonkin

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    About this ebook

    So now you’ve set up your consulting business, you know a few people, and everything is humming along.
    This book gives you tips on
    - selling your services
    - putting together proposals
    - understanding your needs in contracts
    - getting your accounts together
    - getting the right advice.
    We’ll also look at ways you can keep up the maintenance on the greatest asset in your consulting business – you.
    There's a bonus explanation for the essential business templates you need to run your business, and a list of professional associations.
    Each element is described step-by-step, with Cindy Tonkin's classic stories from the real world of consulting.
    This book is one of the 11 books in the Consultant's Guide Series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCindy Tonkin
    Release dateOct 9, 2015
    ISBN9781311792754
    Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly: Systems and Templates you need
    Author

    Cindy Tonkin

    Cindy Tonkin is the consultants’ consultant – specialising in working with people whose consultative skills differentiate their product and service. Managers, sales people and consultants. A qualified NLP-trained trainer she combines an extroverted, energetic presentation style with a strong understanding of what makes people tick. The results are fun, dynamic ways to make your sales force, your management team or your cultural change program work.Her solid background in consulting and training means she can design a change program with whatever change elements you need – coaching, training, workshops, action learning projects, whatever suits your organisation’s culture and outcomes!With more than 20 years experience in reengineering and productivity improvement, she has the project management skills to deliver your requirements on time, on budget and in the way you need them to work long term with your organisational culture and market. As a comedic improviser, Cindy can link anything to anything, and surprises often result.Her first book, The Australian Consultant’s Guide, was an Australian Institute of Management bestseller. She has written more than a dozen other books for consultants and managers since then

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      Book preview

      Keep Your Consultancy Business Running Smoothly - Cindy Tonkin

      Keep your business going!

      So now you’ve set up your consulting business, you know a few people, and everything is humming along.

      This book gives you tips on:

      • selling your services

      • putting together proposals

      • understanding your needs in contracts.

      Please remember that this is not legal advice I’m giving – rather tips from my experience. Always ask a qualified solicitor to look at any contracts prior to signing.

      Then we’ll look at how to maintain your business, from the technical point of view – getting your accounts together and getting the right advice.

      Finally we’ll look at ways you can keep up the maintenance on the greatest asset in your consulting business – you.

      Running a consultancy business can be a challenge. However, the better you set up your business systems and systems of work, the easier it will be to continue running your business.

      Running the business is about constantly monitoring what works and what doesn’t, and adjusting the systems that support what works, and eliminate the things that don’t work. So let’s get into it.

      Selling your services once you have a contact

      You have contacted your clients, done your industry research, and now you are ready to sell your services. In this chapter we will look at how to:

      • identify client needs

      • create a thirty second commercial

      • put together a proposal for work

      • decide what needs to be in a contract.

      Identifying client needs

      If you know what your client wants it makes it much easier to tell them about the relevant parts of your services. This does not mean you should lie to the client. That’s definitely a bad idea. It does mean that as consultants we wear many hats. Sometimes we have what the client wants, but if we try to sell them what we think they need, instead of what they identify as what they need and want, we can miss a fantastic opportunity.

      I once had wardrobes built in my home. I had three people quote on the work. The first person confirmed the appointment a few hours before and arrived on time. Then he sat down with me at the kitchen table and asked what I needed in a wardrobe, what other things I might want to store in the wardrobe, how many people needed to use it and whether I had any preferences for how it should look. He then worked with me to measure my coat-hangers and the lengths of my overcoats and the height of my boots and we created (together) a wardrobe that met all my requirements. He left me with a copy of the plan and promised to send me a quote within a few days (which he did).

      The second person to quote walked in forty five minutes late. She asked to be shown to the bedroom where she immediately began measuring the room. She didn’t ask any questions, she just measured, and then asked if we had quotes from anyone else yet. When I mentioned the competition she immediately began to rubbish them telling me how their doors were poor quality and how the Managing Director of the company had a shocking reputation in the ‘industry’.

      When I asked for a few of the features I had identified with the first quote to be included in the wardrobe she told me that they would be too expensive and that I wouldn’t want them. She had asked no questions about my budget.

      She faxed the wardrobe plan and quote a few days later, and followed up with a phone call, where she tried the emotional blackmail trick, saying that she worked solely on commission.

      The third person to quote didn’t turn up. The first quote got the job.

      Which of these service providers are you modelling your consulting on? When a client asks for a quote do you turn up when you say you will, work through their needs, identify a solution that will meet the needs they have identified, then show how the consultancy plan works to meet their needs within their budget? Or are you late, and selling a solution to problems the potential client hasn't even identified?

      When what they need isn’t what they’re asking for

      Of course, consulting is a little bit more complicated than fitting a wardrobe. The client may not know how to diagnose their problems. Sometimes you sell them what they say they need and fix the thing that will make the difference later.

      Brian’s client once asked for help with a restructure. After poking around for a few hours he found what they really needed was team building and conflict resolution. When he asked if this was what they needed, they agreed. This had not been identified in the initial briefing because they didn’t know it then. Brian used the restructuring as an activity for the new team to learn to work together to resolve their difficulties.

      This is a common occurrence. In medicine, it’s often true that the symptoms do not identify the problem. Giving someone aspirin to fix a headache caused by broken bones would be irresponsible without also treating the broken bones. In consulting, treating symptoms can work, as long as during the treatment you also identify

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