There is a lot of activity on LinkedIn #OpenForBusiness which is exciting to see. A quick analysis of these new businesses shows 20% are in what I’d call the ‘people & performance’ consulting space, so I thought I’d share these lessons I learned from 23 years around in this consulting sector.
1. Simplicity Is King
You have many years of education and hard-earned experience and can handle even the most complex of assignments. This is excellent news as you will no doubt need it. The challenge is, your client does not care, they just want their problems solved simply, quickly, and affordably.
Therefore, make sure any solutions you deliver are:
- Easy to understand.
- Easy to buy.
- Quick to implement.
- Deliver measurable outcomes.
Remember, providing the above equal repeat and referral business!
2. Non-Billable Hours Kill Consulting Businesses
Your main source of income as a consultant is often ‘billable hours’. Therefore, the more non-billable time you spend the less revenue you can achieve.
Tips for reducing non-billable hours:
- Automate – use tools that automate all diagnosis, reporting and client recommendations.
- Do not Recreate the Wheel – why spend hours recreating coaching and training materials when instructional design experts have already done the hard work. Yes, you may want to personalise them, but tweaking is quicker than creation.
- Integrate – find a range of tools that are fully integrated, so you don’t have to spend time making them work together and, keeping them simple for your clients (see 1 above).
3. Pay-For-Use or Subscription?
Now you know the benefits of buying rather than creating and to look for integrated and automated solutions, how should you pay for them?
Because cash-flow is important to any business, consultants often decide to use pay-as-you go tools and resources. Not long ago, pay-as-you-go or pre-paid licences where the only options available, but these days there are unlimited use subscription packages which can save 70-80% on costs and, spread payment out over monthly payments.
4. The Seemingly Impossible is Now Possible
When I first started using DISC profiles, I had to get the client complete a paper-based questionnaire, manually score their results and then armed with their DISC graphs, go to a set of manuals containing the master profiles that I had to diligently type into a report. Not pleasant for a D.I!
Thankfully, in the 1990’s the PC started to do the scoring and reporting for me and by the year 2000 I was able to do everything from collecting participant’ responses to producing and sending out reports via the internet – heaven! But in 2020, there are consulting ecosystems that do so much more that.
Today, I’m pleased to say that The REACH Ecosystem has been designed by the OrgDev Institute to address each and every one of the points above to give people & performance consultants #OpenForBusiness everything they need to build a successful business with minimal costs and global revenue generating opportunities.
For just $5,940 Inc GST (or just $495 Inc GST per-month) including user training, you will have unlimited use of everything you need to increase your client’s people performance from recruitment to retirement. But don’t take my word for it, contact our global network of REACH Practitioners and ask them what they think.
Please REACH out to find out more.