The One Practice Every Consultant Should Embrace
Embrace a simple practice to stay ahead of any other consultant in your sector.
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If there is one practice which will always pay off over the long term, it’s speaking with prospective clients and learning their current needs, challenges, how they overcome those challenges, and their fears.
The insights you gain from these should change the services you offer, the content you create, your positioning, and how you sell your services.
I guarantee you the more time you spend on this, the more you will have insights no-one else has.
Let me outline the process.
Step One: Identify The Right People To Approach
One of the most important reasons to build a following is it equips you with a list of people you can approach for insights.
It’s hard to contact someone who has never heard of you and try to schedule a 30-minute call.
Why would they say yes? This sounds suspiciously like you’re trying to sell them something. They don’t have time for that.
It’s a lot easier to look at your mailing list, see who has been reading your emails, and reach out to those with a high open rate and who work at larger organisations.
My suggestion is to reach out to anyone with a 4-star+ rating on your mailing list or who has opened at least one of the past three emails you’ve sent to your list. If you don’t have a list then look for people following you on social media.
The key thing is they already have some familiarity with who you are. This makes everything else a lot easier.
(Aside: As your consultancy progresses, you might create integrations with Mailchimp/ConvertKit, Zapier, and tools like Clearbit to enrich your mailing list data with more useful information).
Step Two: Research The Person
Once you’ve identified the person, do some research on who they are and what they’re working on.
If they are working on something that’s in the public sphere, then look at it. Understand it. If they have published or regularly shared something in the past, make sure you read it. Try to get a sense of who they are and what they care about.
If possible, try to understand what their challenges might be, what they’re trying to achieve, what technology they use, and how they might be approaching the solution today.
Your mileage here might vary by industry. In my industry, online communities, this is relatively easy. You can join and explore the community and get a feel for what they’re doing. If you’re targeting accountants, that might be more challenging.
Step Three: Craft The Outreach Message
Avoid being salesy or creepy in this message.
If you sound self-promotional, the recipient will think you’re trying to sell.
If you say something like “I’ve seen you opened our last email 14 years and clicked twice, I think we should chat” you just come across as creepy. No one wants to feel their online behavior is being personally monitored.
Imagine receiving an email like the one I did recently (twice!).
It’s the dastardly combination of salesy and creepy.
Instead try to craft a message which is warm, personalised, complimentary and, most importantly, offers value!
Here’s an email
Hi [name],
I don't think we've interacted before, but I’ve seen your name on our mailing list and have really enjoyed following [relevant company project] over the past few years. Was it your that wrote [relevant article]?
I'm dropping you a line because I'd love to share some of the industry trends we’re seeing - especially those most relevant to [industry] and their implications
I would also love to learn how you’re adapting to the major trends and learn from you about what you’ve seen as well.
Even if nothing comes from it, it would be great to connect and learn more about your [topic] efforts].
No worries if you're busy. Just let me know either way.
Thanks
The goal of this is to make an initial connection and learn from each other.
You offer something of value to make it worth their time to speak to you. You also make it clear that there isn’t a one-way conversation, you also want to learn from them too.
If they say yes, make it clear they’re welcome to invite others to attend the call if they think it will be useful.
Step Four: Host The Call
Next, you host the call. Keep this simple. Zoom is fine.
The most important thing you can do in this call is to make sure you’re providing as much value as possible to the people on the call.
Highlight what you’ve learned from other organisations, explain how they compare to what others are doing, and share the advice you’ve learned from other calls about what has and hasn’t worked for others in the industry.
You want to be seen as someone who delivers far more value than they gained in these calls. Take copious notes too and summarise it in a spreadsheet or CRM.
Yet also make sure you have time to ask questions of your own. For example:
What are some of the trends you’re seeing?
How are you adapting to the trends we’re seeing?
What challenges have you overcome recently?
How did you overcome them?
A bonus question might be:
Who else in this space do you think is doing interesting work and we should speak to?
You might be able to get warm introductions to others you can speak to as well.
Step Five: Explore Potential Opportunities
It’s important to evaluate how the organisation is navigating current industry trends.
If they express not feeling prepared or able to navigate trends, this might reveal a potential collaboration opportunity.
If they aren’t adapting to the trends, you can suggest a follow-up call with their colleagues to suggest some ideas you’ve seen work well elsewhere and ask if they might be willing to scope out a project to ensure they are aligned.
These calls aren’t designed to be sales calls, but they might reveal opportunities where you can provide value. Treat sales opportunities as a bonus rather than a goal.
The primary goal, for now, is to simply gather information and insights at the bleeding edge of where each organisation is.
Step Six: Maintain Regular Contact
It would be a waste to have a positive call with someone and then lose contact immediately afterwards. That’s not a good outcome for anybody. If you’ve gone to the effort to establish a relationship, it’s important to maintain the relationship.
Consultancy is a relationship business. You never know what might come from it.
Make sure you follow up on any points they mention in the call. If you can send them useful, relevant, information in the future then make sure you do so. You never know what this might mature into.
If you learn something from a future call which might be relevant to someone from a past call - share that. Be an indispensable source of insights.
The critical thing is to always be someone who provides value people can’t gather from anywhere else.
Step Seven: Make It A Habit
The critical thing is to make this a habit. Reach out to one person each day. That’s around 250 outreach messages per year. This will typically result in 100 to 120 calls with people in your industry.
Believe me, if you have 100 to 120 calls to learn what people in your industry are working with you will be more informed than 99.99% of the people in your space. You will know the trends, the challenges, and the solutions to those challenges. It will equip you with knowledge which almost nobody else will possess.
Mining For Experiences And Insights
The magic of these calls is they equip you with information you can’t Google.
If you consistently do this process, you will stay on the cutting edge of the industry. You will be as close to the beating pulse of your industry as you possibly be. This knowledge will be the ultimate store of value. If you do it really well, you will constantly have people coming to you for insights.
This is knowledge which improves everything else you do.
It helps you avoid creating generic ‘me too’ content and focus on what people really need. You can create the kind of content and resources which won’t be widely popular with the masses but target exactly the kinds of organisations you want to work with.
You can even engage them in collaborating to write it and share it afterwards. You can use this information to create detailed comparison guides, lists of best practice examples, highlight industry trends or create benchmark indexes (note: never share anything said in confidence).
Better yet, this knowledge will help you provide a better service to clients. You will know what really does and doesn’t work. You will benefit from the experience of experienced practitioners in your space who don’t have the time to write and share their own content.
Good luck.
Yeah I agree that having your engagement monitored is creepy. A woman I enjoy and respect sent me a note saying that I had already downloaded 2 of her freebies and asked me why I hadn’t joined her academy already. No only did that not make me want to join her academy but I’m also afraid to download anything else from her. The freebies aren’t really free.