Monthly Archives: February 2020
Don’t fret about giving away advice…
Giving away advice can be good marketing, and inexpensive too.
This was prompted by a recent query. With rare exception your potential clients do not want to “steal” your ideas — rather they want to know you understand their problems and can fix them. And those who do want to steal your ideas are not worthy clients in the first place.
Here are three examples where giving advice away paid big dividends in my consulting business… sometimes years later.
Giving away advice turns into a class…
This recent example occurred when I booked an in-house class with virtually no sales effort. The client merely wanted to know when I could be there, and how much it would cost. So we agreed on a time, and I provided a quote.
Total time: under ten minutes. The purchase order arrived a few days later.
Upon arriving at the client site, the client mentioned why it went so fast and easy. It seems many years ago he had a problem, and Bill, my late business partner, gave him four quick things to try. Number four worked.
Happy to have the problem solved, the client offered to pay. Bill said, “No, we don’t charge for quick solutions. Just keep us in mind for future business.”
Years later, now at a different company, my client was asked for a recommendation on a training class in our specialty. He immediately gave me a call (Bill having passed on.) He shared his story, and said how much he appreciated our approach.
Was it with it? Of course, in good will alone. But financially, the return on investment was well over 1000:1 in terms of revenue from the class versus revenue from billing a few minutes of time. Plus I had a very happy client.
Not holding back, but “opening the kimono”…
In addition to not charging for a few minutes, our policy was to not hold back — but rather to share whatever we knew.
One exception, of course, was not sharing another client’s confidential material. However, we shared lessons learned from other consultations. It is your experience that clients seek.
As I was going into a detailed description, I asked “Is this too much information, or do you want me to keep going?”
The client replied, “Please continue — I appreciate it. By the way, the last consultant we hired (for different problems) would hold back. We assumed he was afraid that if he gave away too much advice we would not hire him again. Well, after he solved he immediate problem, we all agreed not to work with him again.” Ouch!
This occurred early in my consulting career, and stuck with me ever since. We jokingly called it “opening the kimono.” It served us well.
The on-line endorsement…
Several years into our business, I ran across this on a popular forum.
Someone asked for a consultant in our specialty. A quick reply was, “Call Kimmel Gerke Associates. Not only are they good, but are easy to work with and they won’t nickel-and-dime you.” You can not buy that kind of advertising.
I immediately called Bill with my discovery. We both agreed that our policy of sharing information and not charging for quick answers was the right approach for us.
Other ways to give away advice…
Writing articles and giving free presentations were central to our marketing efforts for many years. These often turned into paid consultations and training classes.
Nothing like getting a free sample to whet your appetite for more. It also enhances that ever important visibility and credibility.
More thoughts here from an earlier post.
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Don’t Wait for Others… Just Do It…
As a board member at an HOA (homeowners association) one of the residents kept asking me, “Why can’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?”
Finally, in polite desperation, I said, “Why don’t YOU do it?” If you feel strongly about it, take the ball and run. If you wait for others, it may never happen. Just do it!
So it is with consulting. Waiting for others to act will not solve a problem, nor will it make things better.
Here is an example from my consulting practice 20+ years ago. At the time, there was a dearth of information on electromagnetic field levels in hospitals. So when I saw a session on the topic at a conference, I high tailed it to the meeting room.
But instead of learning something new, the meeting consisted of a bunch of researchers asking each other if they had any information to share. Furthermore, they complained about a lack of funding to do field research.
Annoyed, I discussed this with my business partner who had been at a different session. Over a beer (highly recommended in the engineering world) we devised a study to get the answers, which we would fund ourselves. “Let’s just do it,” we said.
Upon return from the conference, we contacted some past clients at two prominent hospitals (one a world famous clinic) about doing a quick survey of various locations within their hospitals. We would supply the equipment (which we already owned), record the data, write a report, and share the results. No cost to anyone.
We spent two days over the Christmas holidays, when the hospitals were not busy. We got solid data, and had fun doing it. In one case, we had to dress in scrubs while making measurements in a surgical suite. It was the closest I came to becoming a brain surgeon 🙂
Kimmel & Gerke performing surgery on a lap-top computer.
We shared the data, but it did not stop there. We offered it to a leading magazine in the medical device community. We had been writing a technical column for them as part of our long term marketing strategy.
The loved it, and with our help, turned it into a technical report they offered for sale. The money earned from the report was minuscule, but the publicity was priceless! It further established our firm as a world-class leader in our niche. Not too bad for a couple of goof ball engineers out in Minnesota.
The report was well received, as it provided needed timely information. Meanwhile, the researchers were still twiddling their thumbs, while we gained visibility & credibility critical to our success as consultants.
We just did it! And you can too, but YOU need to take the initiative. Not only in consulting, but in life itself.
Cheers — Uncle Daryl
Ideas are good, but “ideas + action” are what get results.
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