Recently she published her first eBook, its free and from what I have read its great!

It is called The Cheats’ Guide to Customizing Blogger templates and I would recommend anything she publishes fully. Good advice for starting a Blog and getting the design elements right.

It is one of the skills that I prize above all else, and would be my number one skill requirement for any professional in sales – regardless of what they were selling!

I have had a lot of success in this area. I remain in contact today with people I worked with when barely out of my teens. Sometimes it is useful commercially, but at all times it is a fulfilling connection in some way or the other.

How? I think that the bottom line when trying to manage a long term professional relationship is to make CONNECTIONS instead of CONTACTS.

This starts with one unrelenting principle (for me) – make friends. Be sincere, if you aren’t its obvious.

Ask about their families, their hobbies, restaurant preferences – all the sorts of things you love to talk about. (I love talking about my kids – so it is one of the first things I ask people generally)

Be honest – this is me! If they like you and you get along – that’s great. If they don’t, well, there are plenty more networking opportunities out there…

Think of how you are with friends.

If you can do people a favor, then why not. Pass on a name of someone looking for services in their area – or introduce two mutual contacts who could help each other out, or offer a sub-consulting role if you are able to.

Try to remember why you met – because you have at least one thing in common – a passion for whatever business that you are both in!

So that’s a good base for the beginnings of a friendship.

At all time relationships are about connecting – not about contacting. If you are just trying to fill your Roladex (does anybody actually have one of those these days?) then you will get back what you put in. (And don’t bother “contacting” with me)

Our business area has some distinct advantages over other industries such as (say) manufacturing or advertising. But it also has some distinct disadvantages. More than anything else consulting companies need to realize that they are in the “people” business, where talent is king and the companies best assets have a heart beat.

So in this post we’ll take a look at some of the pro’s and con’s of going into the consulting business as an independent operator.

Hopefully this will help you towards your own decision in this area.

Pro’s

+1. No big outlays for service providers

As a people business our biggest expense, normally, is salaries. And at the very beginning the only salary you will need to pay will be your own. There are some methods that you could attempt to try to get you to avoid cash-flow problems but we will deal with these in a separate posting.

So salaries aside, and travel costs controlled, at the beginning, to gasoline and hotels (maybe) You can get moving for relatively low cost. (Laptop, Blackberry and stationary excluded.)

+2. An abundance of free business tools to get you started.

I have posted on this before under the bootstrapping tag on the site. But, in brief, there is an abundance of free and low cost stuff out there on the internet today that you could set up a lot of the office infrastructure you need relatively cheaply.

Gmail for email, Zoho for writing and productivity tools, RSS Reader for keeping up to date, Adsense for internet marketing, ConstantContact for email marketing and Picasa for image storing – just to name a few – just a few examples of the abundance of internet tools that are either free or low cost tools for you to get moving with.

Another one of course if Salesforce.com for sales management and the whole CRM thing. Great area, great tool, one of my favorites.

+3. Quick conversion of business into cash.

90 days is not too long to wait. Not once things start moving forward. No long waiting times, no manufacturing time, nothing like that. We sell, we arrive, we deliver, they pay us. Good deal!

+4. Resistant to Recessions (?)

I have been a consultant now for most of my career. This takes in at least one official recession and maybe one or two unofficial ones as well. In all that time I have never stopped working. I have always been able to find work and generally have more work than I need.

I think that the bottom line here is that in consulting issues like profitability and productivity are the basis for our existence. And in a recession we should find even higher levels of demand. Again, this is from my limited viewpoint, in my industries and the areas where I have worked, we either help them make more money, or help them reduce their cost base.

Sometimes the road there is different, maybe through talent management, or through IT system implementation, or through data quality improvement or… whatever!

+5. No stockpiles, dead cash.
As with number one. We do not ever have stockpiles of raw materials waiting to be turned into products, and we never have stockpiles of products waiting to be picked up by the market in some form or other.

We have people, we can forecast ahead approximately 6 months on a good day, and we can make sure our utilization rates are at the 80%+ (Or whatever) that we need in order to stay profitable.
Con’s

- 1. Hard to predict the future.

Your look ahead on a pure-services consultancy is about 6 months tops. You can increase likelihood of continued earnings via good sales teams, a strong track record and “unique” services – but six months is the best you can reliably get.

- 2 Recurring income streams are hard to develop.

This can be done through services consulting. But it takes a bit more imagination and effort in terms of setting it all up. It also needs a willing market place.

- 3 Technology will soon replace what you are doing …

So guess what? You have to develop it first! Or just peacefully wait for the future to overtake you. Amazingly we do not learn from history for some reason or other.

Take the old-IT giants like Oracle and SAP. Both great companies, both very successful, but both of them took a long time to really “get it” with relation to the SaaS software revolution that has been taking place.

- 4. Talent is hard to find.

Unless you make it as a Rock Star consultant, or you are willing to work yourself into a lonely and short life – you need to find talent to work with you.

Finding Talent! Not easy. You need the best, so does everyone else, and the best want to run their own companies (often). A difficult cycle, finding, developing and keeping talent, and just one of the unique skil sets you are going to have to develop as an entrepreneur.

- 5. Selling – if you can’t – your finished.

Easy and obvious. No-one is going to beat your door down just because you are now in business for yourself. Sorry to tell you that. They will buy, one day.. but only if you go and sell them!

leadership is Sales. Period. Says Tom peters, and I am convinced that he is right. You need to be able to sell your vision, your company, your services, your costs, your ability to compete with other players.. and so on. The game of sales never ever stops for an entrepreneur, and especially for one in the field of professional services.

Motivators…

1. Fire the Boss!

This is probably what started you thinking this anyway. Thoughts like “whose sale is this anyway?”, “They just don’t get it” in relation to a specific idea you are trying to push, or even “why am I working so hard to make her rich!”.

Whatever, the point is part of you wants to step out so that you don’t need to answer to somebody else. And fair enough. The boss wants you to travel on your weekend, takes credit for your achievements, doesn’t promote you even though you deserve it and so on and so forth.

2. Money! .

If you can sell, have an idea about marketing, have something of value to offer, the energy and drive to be persistent, and the ability to build and maintain long term relationships – (phew) then it can be very lucrative.

3. Take charge of your families destiny.

This is a big one for me I have to admit. I am a family guy these days. And I love it, and my legacy for my children is always at the front of my mind.

4. Work the hours you want to, doing what you want to, and travel as you see fit.

Sames as the above… control over my work life means control over my family life and less sacrifices.

De-motivators…

I am sure there are more de-motivators, but I could only come up with these three right now.

1. Doing it all. (Short term)

I hate taxes and I hate payroll. But both are essential items. And if you are going it alone then the most likely to have to do this is you.

2. Hard on your ego.

For most of us the Ego went out the window several years ago. Why? Because consulting, or selling consulting, is hard stuff. You are trading the value that your skills can create, and your ability to build and hold relationships, for cash. it is a difficult thing to do.

And when you get told no it is hard not to take it to heart. But, as I said, most of us got over this a fair while ago now.

3. Security? (Short-term)

Another one that holds most people back, and probably a major factor for me also I have to admit. Right now I get paid, if I step out tomorrow I wont get paid, at least not for a while.

And there you go…

In the final analysis it is always going to be a tough call, at every turn. I have started my own consultancy once in Latin America, and I would love to do it again one day. (Maybe)

But for now I’m an employee, and while there are things that “bug” me about that – it keeps me and my family living a good life for now. So who knows? There are those who think you are wasting you life working as an employee – and they make good points.

But then again there are cold hard statistics showing the phenomenal failure rate of most start-ups.

My thinking is that any steps out to start your own business in consulting needs to be seen as a risk, but one with a substantial upside.

So your best mitigation strategy is to “be prepared”. Do your homework, work out the financial issues, get the relationships built, start working on te sales and marketing strategy, and step forward when you are in a controlled space.

But that’s me, and by nature I am a little risk averse. One thing I do know for sure is that often when you finally make the leap – strangely there are things there to catch you.

I have never really been into podcasts. Very dull, boring and not very inspiring oratory generally. Young Mr. Weiss has blown yet another illusion for me with this excellent podcast on taking risk and the benefits as a consultant.

We are uniquely placed to generate traffic through blogging, particularly in areas of business and technology. We have deep subject matter experience, we are (should be) prolific networkers, we have to be ahead of the curve with relation to technological advances and business trends, and we have one final advantage…We know how to write!

Show me a consultant who doesn’t regularly burn the midnight oil trying to get through (yet another) 75 page report for an impatient client (or clients) and I’ll show you someone who thinks he’s a client.

So in terms of the skills to do it, we are okay…But why should we bother?

Why Blog??

There are a lot of reasons why Consultants should look seriously at developing their own individual or company produced blog site. But chief among them is for marketing!!

Today we are all starting to get pretty savvy about marketing. We know that our potential clients have diverse interests, use diverse media sources, and use different networking techniques than they used to even two short years ago!

So if you are going to reach our targeted audience then marketing tools we use need to cover a lot of diverse areas. Print media, online ads, targeted online networking, letters of introduction, cold calling and free seminars all have their place. And so does blogging.

Being able to have an online, search-able base of content relevant to your target audience means that they are more likely to stumble on it when they search for information related to what they do. Not only that, but they can subscribe to the feed, having regular updates in their email of RSS Reader.

As well as prospecting for new clients, you can use your Blog to keep in touch with old clients, reach other levels of the organization within current clients. Once you have your attention you can use your blog to point out finer points of areas that you work in, detail new services and technologies your company is now offering, or even to provide a contrary point of view.

Have a look at some of the recognized names in our field; David Maister (The Trusted Adviser, Strategy and the Fat Smoker), or Alan Weiss (Million Dollar Consulting, Getting Started in Consulting) or a company like CapGemini.. all have supported their existing large scale online presence through actively communicating with prospects and clients through blogging.

There are some rules to blogging though… these are unwritten rules. The sorts of things that are decided quietly by the viewing masses of internet traffic. So we will look in a little more detail about how to start your blogging project, the “rules of engagement” in blogging, and some of the ways to drive it to new heights. (Some of which I am still learning)

Step: 1 – Get a Name

Work out what you are going to blog about and find a drop-dead GREAT name. Ten years ago this was not too difficult, but today you have to think not only about the name itself, but the domain also. There are some pretty good tools online to start playing around with words, one of these is Morewords, and there is another one called WordLab.

Another source is also to start scouring the internet and looking through the sites and blogs that are dedicated to what you are doing. (Inspiration WILL come to you on this)

I am still not sure where “Consulting Pulse” came from, but it really describes the intentions of what I am trying to do with this blog.

Step: 2 – Registering and Domains

With the title now decided you need to start building the Blog site.

I am not a WordPress fan. For me the Blogger site from Google is a great product. it allows you to build a good looking blog site very easily using drag and drop functionality. So for beginning bloggers, as I was, this is my choice. register a name and get started almost instantly.

Next stop is optional: Register a Domain.

I have used GoDaddy.com for a while now and they seem to be a pretty good, very reliable source of web hosting. I had cause to call their customer service one time and the young man who answered the telephone, in perfect American English, was extremely polite and helpful – for that reason alone GoDaddy.com gets my vote.

The argument goes like this; if you want anyone to take you seriously as a blogger, then having a website called Fantasticblog.blogspot.com just won’t cut it.

It also helps to further deepen your brand recognition and get people to start entering your address by typing rather than searching.

Step 3: Does it look alright?

Blogger is very easy to use and will enable you to get going pretty quickly. The blog I write in my own consulting area (very dry engineering themes) is on a standard Blogger template and for now I am happy with that.

But for this Blog, I wanted to create something that looked great, drew people in, and gave me space for advertising, promotions and for cross linking. So I have created a modified template format, as well as putting a range of additional functions on there.

Things like hiding the blue blogger bar, the “Read More…” links at the bottom of each post, the menu at the top of the page, the site logo, and I am still working on a few more little changes here and there.

All of this I gleaned from the sire BloggerBuster.com The author, Amanda, has done a great job of building templates, posting tips and keeping up with trends in the world of blogging. Here site is my first port of call when I need to know how to do something that I have seen and is impressive.

There are other resources around the web. Widgets for recommendations, comments, tracking and so forth. Some are okay, some are garbage, and some are traffic scams.. so take care with it.

Step: 4 – Traffic

This is what its all about. To get traffic you need three things. a) A good site, b) great content and c) social marketing.

If you enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to this feed, or you can subscribe to Consulting Pulse by email.

Namely, what if not everyone is in the same community?

The MySpace concept is now all through the web with communities springing up with all sorts of different functionalities. I am an avid user of LinkedIn, but I also have a page on Facebook of course. They were talking about Dopplr a site which allows you to post travel plans for your contacts to see. The benefit? They get to see if you can get some “face” time at any point.

Great idea, but I won’t be moving over there. A lot of my network is already on LinkedIn and I am not asking them to move over. I get two or three requests every two weeks to join one site or another these days, but I really don’t want to water down the entire networking experience and potential for me.

This got me to thinking… whats the angle here for consulting opportunity?

What we need in the Web 2.0 space right now, or very (very) soon, is a platform for Web 2.0 type applications. Let’s call it Community-as-a-Service (Ah no.. another one!). The idea would be something like the Force.com idea where developers are given access to the stuff in the background so that they can create their own modifications as they like.

Not the small apps like in Facebook, (Where you can already pull in the Dopplr schedules by the way) but something altogether larger – enabling people to grow their own micro communities with their own specific functionalities. (As opposed to the not-really-scalable stuff in Facebook right now)

For example, CapGemini (lets say) gigantic consulting behemoth, covers most of the world (and what it doesn’t cover doesn’t matter) with consultants all over the globe. The LinkedIn base functionality gives them a good way to stay in touch initially, but they need to take it to a new level.

So, building an in-community ability to post travel schedules, meeting schedules, share track record stories, recommend restaurants and other places all over the globe, vote on them, organize for virtual (Second Life) meetings and – who knows what else…

I think this is what Web 2.0 needs now, and I really hope that it is LinkedIn who does it. I really don’t want to change social network and try to drag all of my contacts with me to another universe.

But, the real thing that hooked me with this idea is that it is an extraordinary opportunity for consultants right now. We missed, most of us, the SaaS revolution, and we are in danger of missing this boat also I think.

So, a service offering that consults on , designs, builds and implements Web 2.0 customized networks based on one of the existing majors would have to be a great Community-as-a-Service starting point.

Is anyone doing anything like this now? I am trying to find out what the IBM Lotus Web 2.0 suite does, but I think it is a little removed from this.

Late update: Just after posting this I read a post on TechCrunch about a product called Mahalo, could be a good starting point?

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In my own origin country of Australia we had Paul Keating, in the USA there was Bill Clinton and in the UK Mr Blair. What did these three characters have in common aside from their professed center-left political bias? They loved to win!

If you watch any of these three on the stump it was obvious that “they wanted it” more than the other guy. They almost willed victory at every turn. In fact it is arguable whether Mr Clinton’s instincts in this aspect may even be partly responsible for his wife’s predicament in South Carolina on the weekend.

Barack Obama
Originally uploaded by Stephen Voss

Tony Blair was so focussed on winning and doing what he thought was the right thing that he faced numerous revolts in one of the British parliaments biggest majority in recent history, Mr Clinton negotiated to get his chosen legislation through an aggresively oppsed senate, and Paul Keating won the unwinnable election, against a driven and ideological opponent.

I was always impressed by all three of these guys when they were on the campaign trail. They never took a backward step, they never let anyone catch them with their guard down, and they always (ALWAYS) came out fighting.

Phenomenal stuff! So who are todays inheretors of this? Until recently there were not many. The new Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, has won over an electorate that was more bored than upse4t with the previous government. Not hard to do when your opponent is possibly one of the most boring men in recent Australian politics.

The UK have retreated into no-personality characters like Gordon brown. (Smart, probably honest, but dead boring) But then there the USA…

I have been watching this campaign, like everyone else, and I cannot help but be impressed by Barrack Obama. An incredible campaigner, he has added an element of spark to the current political season that I have not seen in a long time. He is starting to look like an incoming tide and you almost have to wonder whether the Republican nominee would have any chance of upsetting this wave of popular reaction.

So why so popular? No clue, not for me to speculate.. but I can see one thing very clearly.. he wants it! He wants it very badly, and he is not afraid to show it!

I saw his concession speech in New Hampshire, and this was what really got to me about the man. It was one of the most rousing and inspiring pieces of political oratory that I have seen in a very long time. There were no backward steps, no allowances for defeatist thinking, no remorse over the spilled milk of New Hampshire… just a relentless “yes we can” drive toward the future and a more positive state of thinking.

This drive to win is a powerful phenomena that sets up a forceful dynamic. Never stopping, never taking a backward step in the overall drive forward, never giving in to hopelessness, and maintaining the positive message at all times all the way through; something that can enhance the implementation of any consulting project. (Big or Small)

Particularly when you are driving for wide ranging user support of a new initiative, technology or process. Implementation is something I have been doing a lot of thinking about recently and something I am going to be posting a lot about here over the next few weeks. But for me, this is step one – if you don’t believe it, get it, support it, and champion it – nobody else will!

What do I mean by that? If we look at it, all he did was to take large amounts of data, reliable data, and use it to inform his judgements on the issues involved. True, his skills as an interpreter of data and trends allowed him to reach truly unique conclusions – some of which many people have had a very hard time accepting – but he seemed to recognize that making definitive statements about any issue at all requires data, reliable data.

This for me is the legacy of Freakonomics, decisions based on data are difficult to refute, and change the dynamics surrounding any decision at all.

For me, the same goes for any professional organization or Enterprise. When there is an abscence of real and reliable data, then decisions are made using age old trusted techniques.

What are these? Political maneuvering, coalition building, strength of character, emotional pleas, cronyism and all of the really Machiavellian elements of management. (Most of which we have all had to participate in to some degree or another to get things done in the past)

So how can data change this? When you make decisions based on data then the entire dynamic of making decisions is changed permanently. No longer are decisions made by “he who shouts loudest”, but instead they are made based on irrefutable facts. True, the interpretation of these facts is sometimes open to question, but at least the field of choice is substantially narrowed.

So for companies where ERP systems have not yet delivered on their promise, or where Business Intelligence still refers to the experienced people who are about to retire, then they still face a gigantic opportunity in terms of their ability to reduce the time to high confidence, accurate decisions about the future of their organization.

Looks like a good book and I am thinking of reading it over the next couple of weeks. (Between the other rash of books I need to read) But it really started me thinking, some of the best presentations that I have delivered have actually been without software.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a dedicated PowerPoint user, all my courses, seminars and presentations generally involve some element of PowerPoint slides in them. But I have also been on the receiving end of several presentations that could only be described as “death by PowerPoint”. So I think it is wise, as well as good practice, for every consultant to be versatile enough to deliver a presentation “cold” without any software at all.

So here are my top ten tips for delivering presentations without software, feel free to add to them if you think I have missed something.

1. Don’t rush!

It is always tempting to tell them everything you want to tell them within the first five minutes of starting. Particularly if you don’t have a visual aid to slow you down.

Resist the temptation – show a little restraint. Your points need to be built up, and laid out in a manner that will ensure they are understood. Also, don’t try to fit everything you could possibly do into a one hour slot, just build the key issues up.

2. Have a routine

If you are going to go without a net then you need to make sure you know what you are going to say. In the early stages try to have a rough outline of what you are going to run through. Have your strap-lines well rehearsed, sound-bites, emphasis points, sequences and transitions are all a key part of delivering a smooth and coherent message.

Map out your presentation before hand, make sure you have the customary beginning – middle and end, and make sure you reveal the right points, with the right emphasis, at the right time.

Big tip - commit it to memory in the beginning. After a while your goal is to have a range of “routines” that you can pull from your memory depending on the situation. I have a vast number of these that I have built up over the years related to the areas I consult on personally.

I once arrived at a site in Canada (from the UK at the time) only to find that I was expected to deliver a three day course. I had nothing prepared, the client was paying good money for this engagement, and I had not bought a lot of my normal training materials with me. (Aargghhh!)

The results? A three day stand up routine with flip charts and the white board… a resounding success and I still provide advice to these professionals today. (Now from the Middle East)

3. Use Graphics

Even with PowerPoint graphics are an essential element to the transferral of knowledge. They tie in with peoples ability to learn visually and to perceive things without words. They also do a darn sight better at relaying a message than two pages filled with hard to read text.

So, if you don’t have software what can you do?

Flip charts are a fantastic prop to work with. In my view even better than PowerPoint in some aspects. Why? Because they provide you with a level of interaction with the audience that software does not, and you can easily flip between them to discuss previous points etc.

So have a few illustrations ready to go, develop routines to allow you to build them over time, revealing key points along the way, and try to build them to provide a prop for discussions with your audience.

4. Be Socratic

You can either “tell them” or “ask them”. If you are telling them, then they may listen, they may take notice, and they may recall what you were burbling about. But if you ask them then an entirely different dynamic starts to take place.

• If you ask then whether they answer you or not, they think about your question… it is an unconscious reflex.
• If you ask … they answer..
• If you ask and they answer, then they are more likely to think it is “true”, because it reflects their own experience, than if you tell them and they just listen passively
• If you ask then then they interact with you… and you begin to build the number 1 sales tool… a relationship!
• In brief, if you ask… then they are far more likely to become engaged in the process.

The goal, ultimately, is to develop sessions and routines where your entire role is to ask the right questions along the right vane. Using their inherent knowledge to reveal the points you wish to reveal to them.

I have integrated Socratic principles into my training, sales presentations, seminars and consulting discussions. (Socratic Conversation) For me, this was a revelation in training techniques and it is something that has undoubtedly improved my fortunes in the consulting game.

5. Tell Stories

There is something almost primal about the power of storytelling to make a point, relay a message, or to transfer knowledge. Storytelling, when well done, allows you to present facts to back up your case, provides you with an opening to establish the relationship with the client, and gives you some borrowed credibility (from the originator of the story) to make a specific point with some authority.

Stories build over time, I have been able to gather together lots of stories from my own experiences and those that have been shared with me by clients. All good stuff, all great for making very exact points, and they are also all generally very inspiring tales about the potential of human beings to achieve great things.

6. Make Connections

When you don’t use a presentation another dynamic starts to take place. Instead of looking wearily at a screen on the wall, people start to look directly at you! So things change right? You now have a direct opening to create a relationship. (Which is always part of the goal of any presentation – sales or not.)

• Use your voice! Soft speaking draws people in, changes in volume emphasizes points, load speaking creates urgency, fast talking creates an illusion of depth (sometimes – Tom Peters style)
• Move! Controlled and contrived movement draws attention. Set out your routines to be done with two flip charts, u-shaped tables allow you to get close to everyone in the room … and so on. Speak to them, not at them!
• Eye contact! Look at them in the eye, make your points seriously, non verbal cues like nodding agreement, or shaking your head in complicit disagreement (with their issues like “management doesn’t listen” etc)

I am sure there are a lot more useful tips and techniques. These are just a sampling of some of them that I use a lot. if you can deliver stuff without software, then it adds to your credibility as a professional consultant, and as a subject matter expert with deep knowledge.

Also there seems to be another dynamic happening when you talk, particularly Socratically. The believability factor, for reasons I don’t quite understand, seems to go up markedly!