August, 2018

article thumbnail

Start a Consulting Business: A Proven and Practical Guide

Consulting Success

If you’ve looked into how to start a consulting business, there’s no doubt you’ve come across countless articles or videos that make it look like a no-brainer to “get rich quick.” “Make six figures your first month!” “You don’t need any experience to be successful” There’s a lot of misinformation out there. In today’s digital age, it’s relatively easy for anyone to write an article or record a video on starting your own consulting business.

article thumbnail

Why Most Online Marketing is a Waste of Time – What Works Instead

The Fearless Marketer

When it comes to growing your business these days, all you hear about is online marketing. After all, if more prospective clients simply found your website online, you’d get more business, right? Well, it’s not so simple. After engaging in online marketing for more than 20 years, I’ve learned a lot of things. And one of those things is that online marketing can be a complete waste of your time and resources.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Close Bigger Consulting Projects Faster With This One Phrase

David A Fields

There’s a phrase that will help your consulting firm close more, larger projects, faster. You’ll use this phrase when you submit your consulting proposal (not in the proposal itself) and omitting this phrase is like forgetting to dip strawberries in chocolate. The oversight yields results that aren’t as reliably tasty or rewarding.

article thumbnail

Why I Was Wrong About 2 Second Lean

Markovitz Consulting

It’s time to admit that one of my consulting approaches has failed. I’m a huge fan of Paul Akers’ 2 Second Lean philosophy. It’s simple, easy to understand, and has an intrinsic appeal: “fix what bugs you.” “Figure out how to do your job two seconds faster each day.” Who wouldn’t sign on to a lean program that promotes that mindset? So off I went to my clients, with Paul’s videos embedded in my PowerPoint presentation, ready to show them how 2 Second Lean is the answer to their productivity prob

Energy 229
article thumbnail

State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

article thumbnail

Quick Thoughts on Boosting Versus Nudging

Steve Shu Consulting

I only recently learned about the term “boosting” Boosting takes a different worldview of addressing a person’s competencies whereas nudging tends to address immediate behavior. There does appear to be some overlap between boosting and System 2 nudges (where the nudge tries to engage a person’s slow, reflective thinking). There is also overlap between short-term boosting and educational nudges.

More Trending

article thumbnail

4 Steps to Scale Your Consulting Business

Consulting Success

Let’s look at how you can scale your consulting business. You’re in the position where you want to grow your consulting business. You want to create a lot more leverage. More freedom. More flexibility. So much so that your business can run to without your direct day-to-day involvement. Most consultants find they hold on to the stuff that they don’t need to be doing for far too long because they think that they can do. 4 Steps to Scale Your Consulting Business is a post from: Consulti

article thumbnail

What do you need in your eLearning portfolio?

Clarity Consultants

Your portfolio is one of the most important elements of your job search materials. And even if you are not actively looking for a new opportunity, it's key to keep your resume and your portfolio up to date and current so that it's ready when you need it. But if you are building a career in learning and development, your portfolio looks nothing like a design portfolio.

Resumes 203
article thumbnail

How to Combat Scope Creep While Delighting Your Consulting Clients

David A Fields

Picture yourself presenting your final results from a project to your client. The meeting is swimming along smoothly and you’re basking in the warm glow of another happy client. Then, your client asks, “Buddyboy, could you slice the data one more way so we can see impact by geographic area?

How To 225
article thumbnail

How to Take the Stress Out of Taking Time Off

Harvard Business

Laura Findlay/Getty Images. Have you ever questioned whether taking time off is worth it because the stress of preparing for a vacation is so high? If so, you’re not alone. Over half of Americans leave some vacation time on the table. Some of the reasons for the lack of vacations include feeling that their workload was too heavy or that no one could do their job while they were gone.

How To 132
article thumbnail

Less Stress, More Success: Accounting Best Practices & Processes for 2025

Speaker: Duke Heninger, Partner and Fractional CFO at Ampleo & Creator of CFO System

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Duke Heninger, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

article thumbnail

How Do Management Consultants Quickly Come Up To Speed On Projects?

Steve Shu Consulting

This answer is based on the response to a question I was posed on Quora. Here are some of the main ways I’ve seen consultants get briefed on projects. Engagement manager – The engagement manager has responsibility for the client problem statement and the problem-solving structure (i.e., project tactics). As the on-the-ground, field leader, the engagement manager can help to get new people on the project oriented both from a high-level and with their role on the project.

article thumbnail

#8: 5 Reasons Why EVERY Consultant Needs Systems Thinking

Consulting Matters

Download Episode Transcript. I have two children. When they were small, they used to go to daycare. What this meant in practicality to me was: two kids + daycare = many fevers and visits to the doctor’s office. As the parent, I was able detect and even treat the fever. However, in order to get rid of the fever, I had to rely on my doctor to discern whether the fever was caused by a bacteria or a virus and, if so, what part of the body the bacteria or virus was infecting.

System 216
article thumbnail

Michael Zipursky on The Daily Grind Podcast

Consulting Success

Michael was recently featured on The Daily Grind Podcast, which you can listen to here: The Daily Grind with Michael Zipursky One of the biggest challenges early on in my career was working in Japan. I was in my early 20s, fresh out of college, wasn’t fluent in Japanese — yet I was working and living among this culture that was so different from my own.

Culture 214
article thumbnail

Employee Retention Series: How Does Good Training Benefit Your Employees?

Clarity Consultants

An effective eLearning program provides the flexibility and the power to train your employees and keep them around for the long term. Here's how. The post Employee Retention Series: How Does Good Training Benefit Your Employees? appeared first on Clarity Consultants - Learning and Development.

Training 195
article thumbnail

PowerPoint Best Practices for Creating Stellar Presentations

Mastering data visualization in PowerPoint will help accelerate your career because it positions you as someone who can present data that drives business decisions forward. think-cell's PowerPoint Best Practices eBook was created specifically for professionals aiming to master the art and science of data-driven storytelling. What’s inside: Practical Insights: Uncover valuable tips for crafting engaging and persuasive presentations.

article thumbnail

Five Emotions that Stall Your Consulting Firm’s Business Development Efforts

David A Fields

Consulting is an emotion-driven purchase. If you don’t understand your consulting prospects’ desires and fears, their sources of happiness and anxiety, your business development efforts will hit hard ceilings. But what about your emotions? Could they be undermining your success? Dolls. Miniature people that kids play with.

article thumbnail

Why We Procrastinate When We Have Long Deadlines

Harvard Business

Alice Mollon/Getty Images. “Can you get that to me by the end of the day?” isn’t a request many employees like to hear. But for many people, having shorter deadlines instead of longer ones — “Do you think you can do that by the end of the week?” — might actually help them complete a task and see their work as being less difficult.

Study 133
article thumbnail

The Five Pillars of Marketing Success

The Fearless Marketer

Does the following give a pretty good picture of your current marketing activity? You have a website but you’re not really satisfied with it. You go to networking events once in a while. If someone asks you to give a talk, you’re happy to do it. You post on Facebook and/or LinkedIn semi-regularly. When you find the time, you send an article to those on your relatively small email list.

Marketing 110
article thumbnail

#11: How to Position Yourself as a Credible Consultant

Consulting Matters

Download Episode Transcript. Do you know the ONE thing that will have the biggest impact on your ability to provide amazing consulting solutions to highly influential senior leaders? Is it your technique abilities and unique certifications? Is it your business acumen and ability to speak the language of business? Is it your aggressiveness to convince a senior leader to include you in their strategic work?

article thumbnail

Savings Consultants Are Needed in Today's Market More Than Ever

Savings Consultants are needed in today’s market more than ever. With an increase in expenses, businesses are looking for opportunities to save. Often unknown to businesses are savings in expense reduction, specialized tax savings, specialized savings including medical underpayments, health benefits cost reduction, zero cost processing, and more. Blue Coast Savings, with over 20 years in business, assists Savings Consultants in helping these companies move toward more profitable businesses.

article thumbnail

The Four Stages of Marketing Maturity For Consultants

Consulting Success

Let’s talk about how marketing changes based on the current level of maturity of your consulting business. The first thing that’s really important to understand here is that it’s your marketing will change not just based on the maturity of your business, but really on the maturity of the marketing in your business. What I mean by that is you may be in business for 10 years already, but you’ve received all your business from.

Marketing 203
article thumbnail

Top 10 YouTube Channels for Learning & Development Professionals 2018

Clarity Consultants

Instructional designers know that video is one of the best tools for learning. So what better place to find up-to-date learning and development (L&D) information and insights than YouTube? We wanted to find out which YouTube channels had the best content for L&D professionals, so we did our research and compiled the following list of what we think are the most interesting and useful channels.

article thumbnail

What’s the Right Amount of Repeat Consulting Business?

David A Fields

The roofer spiffying up my Connecticut abode should be done in a day or two, then I’ll see him again, uhm, never? Roofing seems like a tough business. Always hustling for completely new customers because the repeat cycle is a few decades.

article thumbnail

4 Strategies for Overcoming Distraction

Harvard Business

Sarah Lawrence/Getty Images. In the flurry of statistics that exist around personal productivity, there’s one I find especially alarming : The average person is distracted or interrupted every 40 seconds when working in front of their computer. In other words, we can’t work for even a single minute before we focus on something else. Sure, sometimes it’s easy to get back on track.

Strategy 132
article thumbnail

TOOLS and METHODOLOGIES for developing DECISION SUPPORT PACKAGES

This White Paper targets opportunities for Management to develop proficiency in the Decision Framing and Analyses element of input to Decision, & Risk Analyses for Major Project Funding Decisions.

article thumbnail

The Eight Best Marketing Podcasts

Henry DeVries

“Podcasts are fantastic resources to gain further insight and optimize your social media content,” says social marketing expert Rachel Pisani.

article thumbnail

#12: Who Else Wants To Make Marketing Effortless and Fun?

Consulting Matters

Download Episode Transcript. Here's a common conundrum. Smart and values-driven consultants typically don't like marketing. Yet they hate being the world's best kept secret. Same goes for internal consultants. Just because you have an official role in the organization to support leaders through change and transition doesn't mean that they are aware of who you are and how to best leverage your expertise.

Marketing 215
article thumbnail

Guide to Become a Consultant: How to Start a Consulting Business

Consulting Success

If you’ve looked into how to become a consultant and start a consulting business, there’s no doubt you’ve come across countless articles or videos that make it look like a no-brainer to “get rich quick.” “Make six figures your first month!” “You don’t need any experience to be successful” There’s a lot of misinformation out there. In today’s digital age, it’s relatively easy for anyone to write an article or record a video on starting.

article thumbnail

Employee Retention Series: Lay The Groundwork To Retain Your Top Talent With Strategic Onboarding

Clarity Consultants

Employee retention is a much sought-after goal for any growth-minded business. To drive those high retention rates, you need to invest in the strategic talent development and processes that develop high performing employees. Onboarding is a surprisingly important part of that strategy in part because those first couple months are critical in retaining new employees.

Talent 189
article thumbnail

Why You Need to Use Case Studies in Sales and Marketing (and How to Start Now)

Case studies are proof of successful client relations and a verifiable product or service. They persuade buyers by highlighting your customers' experiences with your company and its solution. In sales, case studies are crucial pieces of content that can be tailored to prospects' pain points and used throughout the buyer's journey. In marketing, case studies are versatile assets for generating business, providing reusable elements for ad and social media content, website material, and marketing c

article thumbnail

How Transformation-Ready Leaders Learn

Strategy+Business

Take the time and effort to look for new ways of doing things, and turn away from old habits that block that process.

78
article thumbnail

Assessment: How Productive Are You?

Harvard Business

Are you feeling overwhelmed by your obligations at work and home? You are in good company. A majority of U.S. employees complain that they feel overwhelmed, according to surveys. As a coach and mentor focusing on productivity, I’ve heard this complaint hundreds of times, from managers and officials across the world. Productivity has many aspects.

article thumbnail

The Greatest Business Branding Strategy In The World

Henry DeVries

“When it comes to branding, don’t overthink it,” says branding expert Yali Saar. Branding is about creating a positive image for the company in the consumer’s minds.