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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