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Closing New Consulting Deals: How to Win Faster

David A Fields

If your consulting firm’s proposals take much longer to close than they should (or never close at all), a couple of techniques will dramatically reduce your post-proposal wait time. When Buddy Badideya, CEO of Bridecycle reached out to your consulting firm a couple of months ago, he seemed extremely interested in engaging you. Bridecycle’s “Wedding … Continued The post Closing New Consulting Deals: How to Win Faster appeared first on David A.

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The Long Game with Author, Speaker, Consultant, and Broadway Lyricist Dorie Clark

Consulting Matters

In this fascinating conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with the incredible Renaissance woman, Dorie Clark. Dorie is a speaker, author, writer, Broadway producer, and lyricist, with a diverse and inspiring career journey. We discussed her various pursuits, from her time as a non-profit executive director and spokesperson for political campaigns, to her experience as a newspaper reporter and theology student at Harvard Divinity School.

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Essential skills for the solo consultant

Jacq Hackett Consulting

The essential art of listening well Being a consultant is a very particular role. You are invited into an organisation to provide expert advice, sometimes at a difficult time, or when it is faced with a complex issue it has been unable to resolve with in-house resources. Your job is to provide that ‘expert advice’.

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Podcasting For Consultants: How Consultants Leverage Podcasting For Social Proof

Consulting Success

As a consultant, one of my favorite things has been discovering podcasting and using it as a way to engage with people. Using my podcast to reach out to industry leaders and connect with my target audience and clients has been extremely effective and rewarding. Prior to becoming a consultant, I worked for Fortune 500.

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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

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5 Ways to say No

The Management Centre

I find it really hard to say no to colleagues’ requests – never mind my manager – and I feel like I’m drowning at times. Help! Ah, yes – you’re not alone. One of the biggest challenges participants talk about on our management training courses is ‘I just don’t know how to say no.’ Like many people, it sounds as though you want to be a team player and so end up saying yes to every request that comes your way – whatever your own pressing priorities.

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How to Become a Better Leader Than You Ever Thought Possible

Organizational Talent Consulting

What makes certain leaders excel in the workplace while others struggle? Have you ever wondered if you were capable of getting more out of life and work? In the Netflix series Medal of Honor, inspiring stories of impossible bravery are recreated from sworn accounts and battlefield forensics. You quickly learn combat is not something great, and recipients of the nation's highest recognition don't set it as a goal.

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How to Start a Nonfiction Book to Educate, Inspire, or Influence Your Ideal Reader to Act

Johanna Rothman

Many nonfiction writers start books with outlines. I'm not big on outlines because they shortcut the writer's thinking. ( Nonfiction writers think and learn as they write.) However, some writers go off on tangents without outlines. Or, some writers (raises hand) are prone to put everything she ever learned about this topic into one book. Either of those problems make it difficult to finish a book before the writer dies.

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Pricing Strategy For Consultants – How To Raise Your Fees With Jenny Millar: Podcast #292

Consulting Success

There is more to pricing than just numbers. It is also rooted in optimizing performance and nudging customer behaviors. Helping you figure out your pricing strategy, Michael Zipursky sits down with Jenny Millar, the Founder of Untapped Pricing. Jenny tells us more about the psychology of pricing and how to raise your fees as consultants. She also.

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The AI Hype Cycle Is Distracting Companies

Harvard Business

Machine learning has an “AI” problem. With new breathtaking capabilities from generative AI released every several months — and AI hype escalating at an even higher rate — it’s high time we differentiate most of today’s practical ML projects from those research advances. This begins by correctly naming such projects: Call them “ML,” not “AI.” Including all ML initiatives under the “AI” umbrella oversells and misleads, contributing to a high failure rate for ML business deployments.

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The Art of Remote Collaboration: How to Successfully Whiteboard with Remote Teams

Just because we're working with a distributed team doesn't mean we have to abandon time-tested tools and methods like whiteboarding. Digital look-alikes often cramp creativity and all but eliminate the humanity of shared interactions. Hardware solutions are also limiting and, of course, expensive and immobile. In an increasingly digital and remote-first world, it’s important for us to select tools and processes that allow us to mitigate if not eliminate the above problems.

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5 Benefits of Internal Strategy vs Consulting

Tom Spencer

Last year, after 2.5 years in management consulting, I transitioned to a Fortune 50 US company in an internal strategy role. Having had about a year on the new job, I want to highlight the benefits of this transition to give the many consultants out there some perspective. Before outlining the benefits of internal strategy, I want to highlight a few things: I generally enjoyed my time as a consultant and view the firm I left with high regard.

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Synergy Unleashed: The Power of Great Teamwork

Rick Conlow

A great leader knows that employee synergy unleashes the power of great teamwork. Conversely, mediocre or bad bosses enable poor attitudes and destroy teamwork. We collaborated with other consulting firms to work with a global client that had intense competition and needed significant performance improvement. Our assessment identified a silo mentality throughout the organization and minimal leadership development or training.

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Here’s The Way Experts Avoid B2B Digital Marketing Blunders

Henry DeVries

Learn the biggest digital marketing blunders B2B organizations make, and tips on what to do instead.

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Gamification: What Is It and How Can You Use It to Engage Employees

Clarity Consultants

Knowledge retention and skill development are typically goals when organizations design training programs. Keeping employees engaged through the coursework is essential to achieving those objectives. Without engagement, it’s easy for learners to functionally tune out, reducing how much information they’ll recall later. Fortunately, it’s possible to boost employment by harnessing the power of gamification.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Buyer's Guide for Management Consultants

Whether you're a small firm or a large enterprise, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Buyer's Guide for Professional Services is a must-read for any Professional Services firm looking into Microsoft Dynamics 365. This guide will provide an overview of the entire platform and answer questions about features, selection, purchasing, implementation, and support of the Dynamics 365 suite of solutions.

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When Blind Hiring Advances DEI — and When It Doesn’t

Harvard Business

As a decision-making strategy, “blind hiring” involves blocking evaluators from receiving potentially biasing information about a job candidate until after an evaluation of their application materials are complete. Most famously, the tactic was used to boost the hiring of women in orchestras by having people audition from behind a screen that concealed their gender.

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LinkedIn Hacks for Management Consulting Applicants

Tom Spencer

LinkedIn is an often overlooked part of the management consulting application. A candidate might spend hours on their resume and cover letter but put little thought into their LinkedIn profile other than a profile picture and a cheesy blurb in the “about” section. LinkedIn is actually a key part of the management consulting application. Although it may be less important than a resume, it is a crucial way to sell yourself as a qualified candidate.

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The Folly of Hourly Billing

Alan Weiss

I pioneered value based fees for consultants in the late 90s and my book, Value Based Fees, (Wiley) is now in its third edition and on audible. I first published the concept in the original Million Dollar Consulting (McGraw-Hill) in 1992, today in its sixth edition and on audible. There have been three kinds of people I’ve encountered in consulting since I began spreading the word.

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Beware of ‘Greatness’: Don’t Get Hooked by Phishing-as-a-Service

Kraft Kennedy

Bad actors are getting creative in their quest to access sensitive information. Awareness is one of best forms of defense and to that end, we’re sharing a two- minute overview of a notable newly discovered Phishing-as-a-Service (PHaaS) platform dubbed “Greatness” What is Phishing-as-a-Service (PHaaS)? Phishing-as-a-Service entails cybercriminals offering subscription based access to phishing services and a collection of advanced phishing tools.

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The B2B Sales Leader's Guide for Any Economic Environment

When economic headwinds pick up, sales leaders are the first to sound the alarm — and chart a new course. Longer sales cycles, larger buying committees, increased price pressure, and smaller teams can quickly combine to reduce your margin for error and increase the urgency to find a solution. To thrive in a challenging environment, sales teams need a rock-solid grasp of the fundamentals and the biggest force-multipliers they can get their hands on.

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Leadership Challenge: Empower Employees for Extraordinary Results

Makarios Consulting

Do you want dependent employees … or enabled employees? To phrase it another way, do you prefer your team members to wait for your direction and instruction before taking action (any action)? Or do you get excited when your employees grab hold of the company’s vision, goals, and objectives with both hands and get the job done? With few exceptions, leaders want enabled employees.

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How to Keep Cyberattacks from Tanking Your Balance Sheet

Harvard Business

The threat of cyberattacks — and potential impact on corporate balance sheets — is only expected to grow. Technological advances in areas such as generative AI and automation have strengthened threat actors, leading to new and evolving threats. Against this backdrop, it becomes increasingly crucial for corporate boards to align their organizations’ cyber-risk management with their business needs.

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What Every Leader Ought To Know About Rebranding Your Team

Henry DeVries

A team’s purpose might become unclear as an organization evolves. Manisha Dhawan of MPath Coaching tells us how a rebranding strategy can improve clarity and engagement.

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There May Be A “Magic Bullet,” but “There Is No “Magic Software”

Alan Weiss

Of seven people I know who invested substantially in software creation for their businesses to sell to their customers and prospects, two did so successfully and one of those successfully sold her business with that increased value. Five abandoned the projects after at least a year. For the latter group, a great deal of their time and energy were absorbed by managing the project, dealing with people overseas who did not fully understand their intent, chronically missed deadline, and flawed softw

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The Law Firm Billing Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Automated Billing

Traditional billing practices can leave paralegals and many staff at law firms spending countless hours manually creating and sending invoices, tracking billable hours, and processing paper checks. In this guide to legal billing, we uncover what it takes to create an efficient billing process that optimizes your time while improving the accuracy of your billing.

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AI Magic Unleashed – Practical chatGPT Examples From the Trenches

Chad Barr

Everyone, myself included, is discussing chatGPT and its remarkable impact on our lives and businesses. I would like to share with you how I’ve utilized chatGPT over the past several months, starting with these 5 examples: Improving my weekly newsletters: I provide chatGPT with the crux of what I intend to write. I then solicit additional insights, examples, and quotes from renowned leaders.

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Getting un-stuck

Consultants' Consultant

Consultants Consultant: The essential of being stuck is to understand what the actual problem is. This. The post Getting un-stuck appeared first on Consultants' Consultant.

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Research: The Flexibility Options Your On-Site Employees Want

Harvard Business

Gallup surveyed more than 5,700 fully on-site workers in the U.S. to find out which flexibility options are available to them — and which would entice them to switch jobs.

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Critical Success Factors in Multi-Project Management

Epicflow

What do you need to achieve successful delivery of every project in a multi-project environment? In the flow of tasks, milestones, dependencies, resources, etc., it’s very easy to lose focus of what matters most for achieving the projects’ goals. Knowing the critical success factors can help you navigate this endless flow of multiple projects’ elements and take care of the most important things.

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2022 On-Demand Hiring Pay Rate Trend Report

With two-thirds of consulting firms saying they’re short-staffed, high-performing consulting companies are closing the gap by adopting on-demand hiring. But how are independent consultants pricing their projects? Find out in this report.

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Pricey! That’s What Watching Sports on TV is Going to Become! Also, UX v. Ticketmaster!

Wakeman Consulting Group: Dave's Blog

Hey! What did y’all think of yesterday’s webinar? Let me know by replying to this email. Check out the growing Dave shop. New offers and opportunities will be coming now that I have a technical issue fixed. Also, I’m doing my first in the new series of monthly webinars on brand management for professional service firms. This is probably good for the folks that are here that sell into the industry and not directly to ticket buying customers.

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Leadership Lessons on Scaling, Mentorship & Decision Making W/Laura Terrell

Strategic Planning and Management Insights

What are some fundamental leadership lessons that apply to both the public and private sectors?

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Collaboration and Trust

Consultants' Consultant

Consultants Consultant: This Psychological Tweet-a-thon podcast from the You are Not So Smart podcast is ten. The post Collaboration and Trust appeared first on Consultants' Consultant.