Recipe for Success, by Alan Weiss

Recipe for Success

By Alan Weiss

Can you imagine a chef inviting you into a restaurant but cautioning, “I’m not that good, and there are far better kitchens, and if you’d like to make any suggestion about food preparation, I’m happy to adjust my approach”?

The great restaurants, which are difficult to get into, make it known that they have the best food anywhere, the chef is a star, and even frown upon any substitutions requested by diners. You tend to trust these kitchens, at least the first time around, because you’re hoping they know more than you do and possess unique talents. No one attempts to bargain about the bill.

Why is it, then, that consultants are so inclined to lose eye contact, lose confidence, and lose the high ground when they approach (or are approached by) prospects? I’ve heard consultants actually state, “The fee is $25,000, but if that’s too much there are options to reduce it.” I’ve heard clients dictate to consultants, “Here is the project, here’s what we want you to do, now give us a bid.” My question is: If you’re so smart, why do you need a consultant, especially one who’s going to follow your advice?

I’ve always advocated that a consultant deals with processes, and needn’t know the content of the client’s business. After all, the client has content experts sleeping in the hallways, and it’s clear they’re insufficient to solve the problem and/or raise the bar to a new level.

However, it’s vital that a consultant understand consulting! That is, unless a consultant understands his or her craft and the value that can be conveyed, then the consultant will always just be another hired hand, no different from the person cleaning the windows or paving the parking lot. That’s low-value, commodity work.

In addition to understanding the value of the consulting intervention, there’s an attitudinal challenge. To be more precise: Most consultants don’t feel they’re really worth a lot of investment. After all, they don’t have a discrete degree; they can’t guarantee a result; the profession is often mocked as composed of people between jobs; and there are all those “hot” business approaches written by academics which form the latest craze (“Who Moved My Seven Effective Cheese Habits?”).

Self-esteem arises from the true belief that you can help people through your intervention and approaches. Those interventions and approaches are learnable skills. (People who say, “I just talk to people and help them,” are generally frauds, and any coach without a specific methodology isn’t a coach but merely a bystander who wandered onto the field.) In this business, confidence and self-esteem are about the acquisition of tangible skills which can be employed with clients.

Here’s the rub: Many consultants don’t want to go to school. They love to attend meetings and lie to each other about how well they’re doing and share purely theoretical and nonsensical models. But they don’t invest in their own development because they don’t want to admit that someone else just might know more than they do. And they’re often too poor to pay for the learning, because they don’t have enough business, because they don’t have enough learning…well, you get the point.

Thus, here’s the recipe for success: Identify the value you wish to bring to the marketplace to improve the client’s condition, and about which you are passionate. (If you don’t have the passion, then sell insurance or open a coffee shop, because you won’t make money in solo practice consulting.) Then continually—forever—go about acquiring the skills to increase and deliver that value. Eventually, you’ll establish a brand and image synonymous with certain value, and then clients will beat a path to your door.

If you have those skills, you’ll never be intimidated, you’ll always provide a great meal, and you’ll know when to accept and reject a customer’s request.

Consequently, the final consideration is to be careful to whom you listen. The great chefs share a common heritage: They all studied under great chefs.

There are more people giving consulting advice today than there are good consultants and, frankly, some of it is laughable. Most of the stuff that isn’t laughable is just plain wrong. Ask yourself whether the person you intend to listen to, or whose work you will read, or whose workshop you might attend, has actually “been there and done that.”

I don’t want a theorist telling me how to ski down the mountain, because I might just break my neck. I want someone who has skied down that particular mountain with expertise and success.

You don’t want to follow the advice of someone who describes how to make Duck L’Orange. You want someone who can cook.

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Alan Weiss is one of the most successful solo consultants in the world, with a blue-chip clientele and twenty-five books in seven languages, including the perennial best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting. You can download hundreds of free articles on his website at www.summitconsulting.com.