112 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
◾ Who are the key people who influence the influencers?
◾ How will you empower your champion?
◾ What is the informal organization structure?
◾ Who is the real owner of this assignment?
◾ Who has the real clout in the organization?
Opportunities Abound
Sometimes, when consultants are struggling, they may blame external fac-
tors such as the marketplace or clients. They get stuck in a negative spiral of
emotions, which is not healthy for the consultant’s self-esteem or their busi-
ness. Self-mastery and shifting focus positively is critical to managing self,
brand, expertise, and talent.
You have met the enemy. It is you.
Do not be discouraged. Remember, value is in the eye of the beholder.
Opportunities are everywhere. You need not go a long distance to find
opportunity. More than any other factor, your unique selling proposition
determines your engagement and fee. Consider the following questions:
◾ What is your unique proposition?
◾ What is your area of expertise?
◾ Define your value contribution.
◾ How congruent are your branding and marketing strategies?
Great consultants—Odyssey consultants—focus on ideas, concepts,
models, strategy, value creation, and outcomes. The vast majority of average
consultants focus on deliverables, events, needs, and time. They scratch their
heads and wonder about the nonperformance of their businesses. Running
a low-profit consulting practice, with non-Ideal Clients, is a vicious circle.
It is the “peddler syndrome” that takes you out of the professional business
category.
Remember, no business is often better than poor business. Remember
also that bad business could have been good business that you accepted at
the wrong price because you were poorly positioned.
To restate, set your fees based on the value provided, not the time spent
or what you do. Be absolutely clear about the 10% to 20% value differentia-
tion that you bring to the assignment. If you do not have that 10% to 20%
The Business Behind Consulting ◾ 113
difference, then get working on an Odyssey strategy to create your unique-
ness in the mind of your client.
The Art and Science of Setting Fees
in a Consulting Practice
Setting fees in a professional services business is fundamentally different
than price setting in a product-based world. Professional advisors and
consultants get paid for services rendered. Their fees reflect not what they
do in a particular transaction but rather what they have done over a lifetime
of building expertise and experience. They get paid for their talent rather
than the product they deliver. You cannot easily price talent, whereas there
are many time-honored formulae for pricing a product.
There is a story told about Picasso. He was sitting outside a café in Paris
when along came a father and son. The father recognized the great artist
and approached him.
“Mr. Picasso, would you be so kind as to do a little sketch for my six-
year-old son?”
“Yes indeed,” said Picasso, who took out a paper napkin and completed a
short sketch, then and there.
“Oh thank you, Mr. Picasso!” said the man. “Such a privilege! Such an
honour! Let me give you a donation.”
Picasso said, “No, no, no,” and the man said, “Oh, I insist. I insist.”
Picasso shrugged and said, “Okay, one million francs.”
The man stood back and gasped. “But Mr. Picasso, all it took you was
five minutes!”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong my friend,” said Picasso. “It didn’t take
me five minutes to do this. It took me my whole lifetime.”
As an Odyssey consultant, you must make the paradigm shift from a
product-based, commodified view of the world to one where your talent and
intellectual gallantry is rewarded for the real value contribution you make in
meeting the challenge that the client presents.
In the product-based world, your competitors and customers go a long
way in determining the price of your product. In value-based consulting,
you are not in a race with your competitors. You are in a race of one, where
you differentiate your talent and intelligence to such a degree that the value-
based fees you charge are actually welcome.
114 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
Charging appropriate fees is directly related to the caliber and quality of
the relationship you have developed with the client. Your courage and clar-
ity are vital in justifying the value-added proposition. Again, value is in the
eye of the beholder (Figure 5.3).
This graphic captures the two ways of looking at metrics and how they
relate to fees. The upper section illustrates the fee dynamics of talent-driven
consulting, and the lower shows the dynamics of time-driven, activity-
orientated consulting. If you are simply charging for what you deliver today—
the workshop, the survey, the coaching, whatever it is—you are living in the
lower part of the model. On the upper half, you are charging for achieving
results. You are looking at the value added you achieve by bringing higher
sales, profit improvement, reduced costs, and strategic advantage to the client.
By going south, you are looking at time and inputs and task-driven
consulting. By going north, you are looking at talent-driven consulting that
focuses on outputs, ROI, and value-driven results and outputs.
ACHIEVING
DOING
Talent-Driven Consulting
Time-Driven Consulting
Based on the Objectives of the Client as You Both Diagnose It
Focus on Outputs / ROI / Value
(Higher Sales; Profit Improvement;
Reduced Costs; Strategic Advantage)
Are You Charging for Added Value Results You Achieve?
Are You Charging for the Work You Deliver?
(D
ay; Workshop; Survey; 360; Coaching, i.e., "deliverables")
Focus on Inputs / Time / Task
Based on the Needs of the Client as They See It
Figure 5.3 Talent-driven consulting.
The Business Behind Consulting ◾ 115
Time-based consulting is founded on the needs of the client as they alone
see it. They call you in to do a survey, a workshop, or an assessment where
you are paid on a piece-work basis (Levels 1 and 2). With talent-driven con-
sulting, you and the client collaborate and partner to diagnose and cocreate
custom high-value, long-term solutions (Levels 3 and 4).
If you want to move into the higher echelons of the profession and
become a talent-driven consultant, what action steps must you take?
◾ What do you need to stop doing?
◾ What might you need to start doing?
◾ What might you need to continue doing?
The Client/Consultant Value Match
Talent-driven consulting is about building primary relationships with your
client, which may be a single person or an entire organization. In either
case, the most important objective is to ensure that the relationship with the
organization is nurtured through your champion and advocate, who has the
power to invite you in at the right level to meet the right people at the right
time and place.
Building that relationship takes time. Consultants, driven by their impa-
tience, misplaced instinct to commodity sell and urgent revenue hunger,
often miss this most important lesson. It is about several strategic meetings,
networking, mapping out staged agendas, mini presentations, and generally
taking the longer view … and following the Odyssey Arrow.
Begin by profiling your current client base. Are you connecting with the
right buyer to deliver a value-based service? Your relationship, which must be
one of peer-level respect, is best served by connecting with the key stakehold-
ers in the organization, which include the economic buyer, the technical buyer,
and the user buyer, as well as the all-important advocate and champion.
Examine your current clients to achieve an intimate appreciation and
understanding of their business:
◾ The psychographics and the demographics
◾ Business model, vision, strategy
◾ Size, shape, structure, metrics, industry sector
◾ Culture and modus operandi
◾ Stage of growth and development
116 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
Presence Creates Value
During the marketing and branding module of the Odyssey Competent
Consultant program, a consultant commented on the promotion of his prac-
tice. He said, “Promotion is a key ingredient of my marketing strategy. I have
used advertising and social media extensively to provide an array of promo-
tional opportunities.”
As our coaching sessions progressed, he began to realize that this was
not the solution for developing his consulting practice.
The business of consulting is different from other businesses. It demands
a more personalized and sophisticated promotional strategy. Average consul-
tants do not understand this concept. They tend to copy traditional promo-
tional methodologies and eventually discover that these methods are both
expensive and ineffective.
The promotion of your consulting practice must be centered around you
and your principal consultant presence (PCP): your personality, style, skills,
values, emotional intelligence—in short—your unique factors, together
with your portfolio of solutions. For who you are and what you do are
inextricably linked in consulting. The client contracts you first, then what
you do.
This is not to say that the Internet’s wide array of promotional oppor-
tunities cannot help, but blogging regularly and maintaining high visibility
online cannot be seen as a substitute for the previously mentioned factors.
Consider how much time and money you are spending right now on pro-
motion. Are you getting a sufficient return on this investment?
◾ Packaging you is the vital promotional element of your sales and mar-
keting strategy. First impressions really count in consulting. Critically
assess your visual appeal and image. Are you dressed for success?
◾ How professional do your presentation materials and portfolio of solu-
tions appear? Are they congruent with who you are?
◾ Consult a designer who understands your personality, business model,
and portfolio of solutions, one whose concepts will radiate professional-
ism, excellence, and, of course, you!
The consultant in the Odyssey Competent Consultant program who
realized that he had been misdirecting his promotional strategy ended up
starting afresh. He dumped his website and instead built out his “presence,”
defining who he was and what he did as a consultant. The result was a
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