I hung up the phone thinking that I'd just met an insightful, skillful consultant. He knew his area of expertise from every angle and had that rare ability to make the complex easy to understand. I was impressed.

Curious to learn more, I clicked over to that consultant's web site. At first, I thought I'd gone to the wrong address. What I saw was an amateurish design, insipid writing, and an out-of-date description of the consultant's services, track record, and client list. I checked the address twice, and I was at the right site. What a waste.

In the past, we did a survey to find out how satisfied consultants were with the marketing and sales effectiveness of their web sites. We found that most weren't satisfied at all.

Part of the reason for that dissatisfaction is the yawning gap between what consultants know and can do and how they express those capabilities on a web site. Too often, consultants' sites look like an afterthought instead of an important part of the business.

If you've got all the clients you can handle and they already know everything about you, maybe you can get away with a second-rate web presence. But most of us find that prospective clients go to our sites before we hear from them. So if what they find is not compelling, the chances are good they'll never contact you.

When was the last time you took a good look at your web site? If you need a place to start, try these articles: Eleven Principles of Great Consulting Web Sites and Fire Up Your About Page.

Enjoy this month's issue.
And send me an email if you have comments.

Michael McLaughlin
Editor

Beating Feast or Famine: Blog Round Up

Last month, the Beating Feast or Famine blog focused on topics suggested by readers, plus a few that I'd been meaning to write about for some time.

Here are some samples with links to blog posts from March. You can easily subscribe to the blog's RSS feed using the subscribe button at the top right corner of any blog page.

The Myth of the Dumb Question - You can get away with asking clients "dumb" questions--up to a point. Here's how to use dumb questions to your best advantage.

Surprises - You may not be able to prevent unpleasant surprises, but an early-warning system can help predict them before you have a full-blown problem on your hands. Consider these nine common causes of surprises that can put any client project on the ropes.

Set Your Ideas Free - Some consultants are reluctant to reveal their best ideas until clients sign on the dotted line. Your ideas can’t do you any good if you hoard them. Here’s why you must set your ideas free and how the benefits of doing so far outweigh the drawbacks.

Why Clients Call You Back - You shared a great idea with a client, suggested next steps, and then...nothing. The client won’t return your calls. To avoid that frustration, you need to understand the three reasons that make clients want to call you back.

Grab the RSS feed here.

By most accounts, the economic recovery is well underway for the global services business. Proving the point, the MCNews 12 Index continued climbing in March, reaching 995--a 5.6 percent increase over the previous month and its highest level of this year. As usual, though, there's good and bad news.

Eight of the MCNews 12 Index companies posted strong stock price performances for the first quarter of 2010, but the overall MCNews 12 Index return hasn't kept pace with increases in the S+P 500.

In the first quarter, Navigant Consulting executives watched the company's stock price slide by 18 percent, which is understandable given that the firm's first quarter earnings report disappointed the market. Navigant's CEO offered a predictably vague explanation for the firm's performance and hinted at a better future.

It's probably too soon to call the recession over, in spite of some economists' willingness to do so. But there's cause for optimism. Reports from The Conference Board show increases in the Leading Economic Indicators for the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Korea. The Index dipped slightly in Australia in March, but that decline followed eight consecutive months of increases.

In the US, corporate profits rose 8 percent from the third to the fourth quarter of 2009. In spite of that and relatively positive indications since then, consumers still aren't convinced that the economy is turning around. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index remained flat at 73.6 in March, as compared to the prior month. It's hard to imagine that Index improving much until the US unemployment rate falls substantially.

On the scandal sheet, Robert Moffat, a former senior vice president at IBM, was the latest person to plead guilty to criminal charges in the Galleon insider-trading investigation. Moffat admitted to providing insider information about Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, and Lenovo to Danielle Chiesi, who is also under investigation.

Learn more about the MCNews 12 Index

One of the enduring truths about achieving success as a consultant is that, eventually, you must become a successful seller. As you might expect, I have definite opinions about this; my book, Winning the Professional Services Sale, is, after all, about this very subject.

Well, my friends at RainToday are launching an online learning program to help consultants build the business development skills they need, and you should check it out.

Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling is based on a popular, in-person program that RainToday's consultants have delivered for years. In response to the needs of consultants, the program is now available in an online, subscription-based format.

As part of the program, you'll have access to more than 25 training lessons delivered in text, video, and MP3 audio. You'll also participate in monthly teleseminars with the course instructors, and have an opportunity to interact with an online community of like-minded professionals.

To give each participant the right level of attention, the program is only accepting 200 members between now and April 16. Once the program has 200 members, it will be closed until later in the year.

The program is an innovative one, and there's a money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied. Have a look at the program description and see if it's a fit for you. As you read about the program, you'll find that some of the sales language is a bit over the top. But the underlying program is outstanding.

Check out the details here.

Disclosure: We are affiliated with this RainToday program and receive compensation on subscription sales.

At some point in their careers, most people have worked with or for a jerk. Robert Sutton, a Professor of Management at Stanford, decided there were enough jerks in the workplace that he wrote a book called The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

In Sutton’s view, "asshole" behavior includes bullying, interpersonal aggression, emotional abuse, abusive supervision, petty tyranny, harassment, and incivility in the workplace. I asked Sutton if he had any advice for working with a client who behaves that way.

McLaughlin: If you could give a consultant just one piece of advice about working with an impossible client, what would it be?

Sutton: I guess my perspective is do you really need to do it? Can you avoid it in the first place? Of course, that's not always possible. When consultants really need the work, they start taking on bad clients. They'll say I know I shouldn't do this, but they do it and then afterwards they say I shouldn't have done it.

The research on managerial decision making shows that people often give others better advice than is reflected in their own behavior. If you could be your own client, what would you tell yourself about taking on a potential asshole?

People are much better at predicting the odds that somebody else will succeed or fail than the odds that they will succeed or fail. So we should all be wary of our tendency to be overly optimistic about our own prospects, especially the hope we can overcome the disadvantages of working with a jerk.

Available Now

Citrix Online Webinar: “Winning the Professional Services Sale in Any Market”

It doesn't matter whether the economy is flying high or reeling, one trend is certain: clients have made profound changes in the way they buy professional services. View this complimentary, on-demand webinar as I share the essential strategies to win profitable sales in this era of the new services buyer.

Download this complimentary, on-demand webinar.

Coming Soon

Consulting Magazine’s Consulting Summit 2010
Adapting to Market Realities: Balancing Optimism with Caution
Wednesday, May 5, 2010, Chicago

As one of the featured speakers at this conference, I will discuss “When Client Demand Bounces Back: Strategies to Thrive in a Post-Recession Market.” The session will focus on five imperatives for reinventing your firm to win profitable work, retain existing clients, and succeed in a period of rapid change.

See you there.

Find out more about Consulting Summit 2010.

Anyone who has suffered through mindless business meetings, felt pressured to work long past exhaustion, or tried to cook up an assumption-laden, long-range marketing plan should grab a copy of the new book, Rework, and read it--cover to cover.

Authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson offer up a cogent argument for reworking just about everything in business. And they eviscerate some of the most widely accepted practices, including doing everything ASAP, fretting over the competition, and being a workaholic.

Then they offer their own take on how to run a business, which is based on the success of their own company, 37signals.

This isn't a theoretical, research-driven tome, but an easy read with ideas that you can absorb quickly. You're not going to find a detailed scheme for changing your business in this book as much as a refreshing mindset on managing and leadership.

Everyone will take away something different from this book, which is part of what makes it valuable. Whether you want to find out about the benefits of firing the resident workaholic or why planning is just guesswork, have look at this book. You'll be glad you did.

"One of the pernicious side effects of the rise of strategy is that it's made for a greater division within corporations between the elite, who are making the strategy, and everyone else."

Next month, we'll talk with Walter Kiechel, a former Managing Editor at Fortune magazine, who was also the Editorial Director of Harvard Business Publishing from 1998 to 2002. Kiechel's new book, The Lords of Strategy, recounts the rise of the major consulting firms and how they came to influence every aspect of the competitive behavior of today's corporate executives.

We’ll ask Kiechel if the ideas of pioneering consultants and academics played a part in today's economic crisis, and how the concept of business strategy is evolving.

Look for the next issue of Management Consulting News on May 4, 2010.