If You Want To Make It As A Consultant

If You Want To Make It As A Consultant

If you want to make it as a consultant:

• Develop listening skills, which means you need to speak far less. Counter-intuitively, stop telling people about yourself and start asking others about themselves.

• Develop questioning skills. Learn to direct a conversation by asking binary questions (yes or no, this way or that way, it has or it hasn’t) and to open up conversations by asking reflective questions (why do you belief this to be true, what will be the impact on your company).

• Understand your value, be able to articulate it readily in terms of improving others’ results, and be motivated to find people who can pay you to procure it.

• Believe you are, and act like you are, a peer of the buyer, not a vender.

• Refuse to spend any but the minimum time with non-buyers, who will otherwise waste your time. (Ironically, the rudest people and those who don’t return calls quickly are low level people, not executives.)

• Accept advice only from those whom you ask, and ask only those who have consistently performed at the level at which you wish to perform. Don’t listen to “professional advice givers,” omnipresent “coaches,” and unsolicited feedback (which is always for the sender).

• Always provide options, moving the decision from “Should I?” to “HOW should I?” whether for the next appointment or alternatives in the proposal.

• Always seek to minimize your labor intensity. If you’re charging by the hour or time unit, you’re an amateur. Charge for your value and contribution to outcomes, maximizing those while minimizing your physical labor.

• Seek referrals wherever and whenever you can, they are the coinage of the realm.

• Realize that real wealth is discretionary time. Maximize yours. Don’t try to earn so much money that you erode your wealth.

• TIAABB: There is always a bigger boat. Don’t measure yourself by others or externally. Get comfortable in your own skin.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.