May, 2023

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How to Beat the Procrastination Bug at Your Consulting Firm

David A Fields

Most of the time, you and your colleagues at your consulting firm are hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone types. But today… well, today it’s gorgeous outside. Today you’d rather play golf, or watch golf videos on YouTube, or shop for golf gear. Hey… that time-lapse video on growing fescue looks sorta interesting! In fact, anything other than work … Continued The post How to Beat the Procrastination Bug at Your Consulting Firm appeared first on David A.

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How to Use Storytelling to Ignite Transformation with Joy Spencer

Consulting Matters

Get ready for a powerful conversation about creating your success by being yourself and using your story to ignite transformation in your consulting and coaching clients! Today, we’re wrapping up my mini-storytelling series with my guest Joy Spencer. She is a powerful storyteller. Initially, I wanted Joy on the show to share her tips and best practices on how to tell compelling stories.

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4 Tips for Putting Your Best Self Forward

Successful Independent Consulting

You have less than a second to make a good impression! If you want new clients as a solopreneur, you must make a good first impression. Clients hire experts who are accomplished and trustworthy, so obviously you need to convey those qualities immediately, but not just when you meet someone. You need to project confidence and professionalism well before your first conversation, like on your LinkedIn profile.

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Consulting Pipeline: 4 Steps To Consistent Consulting Clients

Consulting Success

Recently, a Clarity Coaching client reached out about the challenges they were having with their consulting pipeline. “My main challenge is filling my pipeline so I’ve been putting a lot of energy into marketing. This fall I changed the focus of my non-profit consulting practice. By far, most of my work had been with a.

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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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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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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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From Consulting and Coaching to IP: How to Create, Protect, and Monetize Your Unique Body of Work with Erin Austin

Consulting Matters

Have you ever wondered about the untapped potential of your intellectual property? Get ready to explore this goldmine with our special guest, Erin Austin, an attorney, business strategist, and expert in helping entrepreneurs create, protect, and monetize their intellectual property. Erin shares her journey from a big corporate law firm to working in the film business in LA and how her experiences led her to focus on helping business owners understand and capitalize on their intellectual property

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BRICS Currency – How Will It Affect International Business?

Tom Spencer

BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – are the group of five major emerging economies that have been a serious topic of discussion in recent years. These countries have some of the largest populations and have experienced rapid economic growth and increasing global influence over the past decade. These countries have been engaged in serious talks recently about creating a new BRICS currency.

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How Consultants Win BIG Clients (With Big Budgets) With Tom Searcy: Podcast #288

Consulting Success

“When you sell success to someone and deliver success to problems, your past customers never run out of problems.” – Tom Searcy. Today, Michael Zipursky brings a guest who will unravel the Secret to Big Sales. In this episode, Tom Searcy, the Founder of Hunt Big Sales, discusses how consultants can hunt and win big.

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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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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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Top eLearning Trends for 2023

Clarity Consultants

eLearning continues to evolve, leading to new trends aiming to boost the learner experience, yield better results, and create more value for learners and organizations. In recent years, eLearning has increasingly taken center stage because it supports training for remote or distributed teams. As a result, advancements are occurring quicker, causing trends to shift rapidly.

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5 Consulting Clients to Steer Clear Of (Regardless of the Revenue)

David A Fields

Running a boutique consulting firm can feel like sailing the Drake Passage during a storm on a 30-foot sloop. Stomach-lurching ups and downs, and moments of panic interspersed with general exhilaration. While most of your crew and passengers are helpful, if you spend enough time cruising the consulting seas, you’ll encounter at least a few … Continued The post 5 Consulting Clients to Steer Clear Of (Regardless of the Revenue) appeared first on David A.

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From Expert to Authority: How to Become a Thought Leader and Influencer in Your Niche with Carol Cox

Consulting Matters

Join me in this week's episode of the Enough Already podcast, where I'm thrilled to welcome Carol Cox, founder of Speaking Your Brand, to the show. Listen in as Carol shares her incredible journey from studying women's history to becoming a software developer and ultimately finding her passion in public speaking and empowering women entrepreneurs. Discover how the concept of thought leadership emerged as a core service provided by Speaking Your Brand, and learn how Carol's own experiences shaped

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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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CSR: Collaborating with NPOs for Positive Social Impact

Tom Spencer

As companies experience more success, there is a growing trend towards increased emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility ( CSR ). According to a Harvard study , around 90% of companies on the S&P 500 published a CSR report in 2019, compared to just 20% in 2011. Large companies now recognise that the environment and communities in which they operate can contribute significantly to their bottom line.

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Leadership For Consultants: Want More Big Wins? Celebrate the Small Ones

Consulting Success

In 2017, I hosted a podcast called The Year of the Peer, where I interviewed 50 successful people from various walks of life. During our conversations, I asked each of them: Did you become successful all by yourself? They all laughed at the idea, explaining that countless people helped them along the way, providing various. Leadership For Consultants: Want More Big Wins?

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Servant Leadership: Principles, Popularity, and Payoff

Rick Conlow

Grasp Servant Leadership principles, popularity, and payoff to begin to excel as a leader. With employee engagement and retention on a decline this leadership approach is long overdue. Robert Greenleaf first introduced the Servant leadership style in his 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader.” The concept of servant leadership is simple: leaders focus on serving the needs of their team members, rather than their own personal interests or only emphasizing profit.

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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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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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The 3rd Annual Consulting Firm Caption Contest! (Join in)

David A Fields

Whether you’re a long-time reader or you’ve recently started perusing these articles, you’ve probably grumbled at least once… “Hold on a second… David built his practice by layering chocolate references and obscure puns on top of illustrations my seven year-old could draw? Some of those line drawings don’t even make sense!

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How Use LinkedIn to Attract Your Dream Clients (in Less Time) with LinkedIn Expert Lisa Kanda

Consulting Matters

Are you ready to harness the power of LinkedIn to make authentic connections with your ideal clients and elevate your presence on this essential platform? Okay, so here’s the thing about LinkedIn. If you’re a consultant or coach (or aspiring to become one), you’re probably on LinkedIn already because you know it’s the best social platform for your type of business.

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Facilitation 101: Tips for Running Successful Group Sessions

Tom Spencer

Recently, I had the opportunity to run an “Impact Workshop” that aimed to reflect on our role as advisors (“consultants”), explore our individual motivations, and agree on behaviors that reflect our role. Surprisingly, one of the biggest revelations was how much we underestimated the importance of facilitating and how much of a central role it plays in our day-to-day work.

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Scaling From Solo Consultant To A Team By Creating A Total Rewards Program

Consulting Success

For a solopreneur consultant looking to grow, the dilemma often is what comes first: scale or structure? Do you grow to a certain size first and then develop systems and processes — or is it the reverse? The answer lies somewhere in between. In this article, I’ll share how you can do both by creating.

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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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The Art of Communication is the Language of Leadership

Rick Conlow

The quote “ The art of communication is the language of leadership” is often attributed to James Humes. He was a an author, and speechwriter for several U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan. This quote punctuates the critical nature of communication to effective and successful leadership. Why do leaders communicate poorly? Check out these eight common factors that can contribute to ineffective leadership or management communication: Lack of clarity: Leaders may fail to articulate

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Book Birthday: Successful Independent Consulting: Focus on Relationships That Matter

Johanna Rothman

I am thrilled to announce a book birthday: Successful Independent Consulting: Focus on Relationships That Matter. People often ask me how long it takes me to write a book. Every book takes the time it takes. But this one took much longer than I expected. Here's the story of the consulting book. In the mid-2000s… I started my consulting business back in 1994.

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The Best Consulting Offering Name of All Time

David A Fields

While your consulting firm’s name is, ideally, memorable, it’s even more important to ensure your consulting firm’s offerings are mentally sticky. Imagine if your consulting firm owned an offering as widely known as Net Promoter Score (Bain & Company, Fred Reichheld) or the Magic Quadrant (Gartner). Sure, your consulting firm’s named offering and my company’s … Continued The post The Best Consulting Offering Name of All Time appeared first on David A.

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Why Character Matters in Leadership

Organizational Talent Consulting

Every leader wants to be successful. But sometimes, the results achieved come at the cost of character. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that the most dangerous person is likely gifted with reason but no morals. A blind passion for results damages a leader's reputation and the organization. Evidence from workplace studies on the benefits of character suggests that leaders with high character scores outperform others on company performance metrics.

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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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When to Work Out: Choosing the Right Time for Your Body

Tom Spencer

As a consultant , you are likely working 60-80 hours during the week. Add in 6 hours of sleep every night, 14 hours for meals throughout the week, and 14 hours for weekly commuting, and there is not much time left for anything else. In order to keep your body and mind functioning optimally, you should dedicate 30 minutes for exercise every day. But where should you put this workout?

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How To Drive Innovation & Growth In Your Consulting Business With Susan Lindner: Podcast #289

Consulting Success

We have so many brilliant minds working on producing great innovations, but we only hear from a few of them. Why? Because, often, these innovation experts struggle with their communication. Today’s guest, Susan Lindner, has observed this, leading her to create Innovation Storytellers—a consulting firm that helps companies to communicate more effectively with their ideas.

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How do I find out what makes my staff tick?

The Management Centre

In this blog, =mc Director Charlotte Scott shares practical advice on how to motivate your teams. I want my team to feel motivated in their roles – what can I do? It’s generally agreed that motivation is a good thing – and a topic all managers think about at some point. Motivated staff perform their jobs more effectively. They are also more creative, flexible and healthy.