Become a highly paid Consultant, Adviser, Coach or Trainer

This Lecture focused on the actions needed to be taken to become a highly paid and valued consultant, business adviser, trainer or coach.  Developing a successful consulting business requires both focus and belief in self.  Identifying your personal barriers is critical in shaping an effective business.   You must invest in yourself and create the necessary experience to make you credible.

Key advice is always to tailor your business to meet client’s needs 100%, and that means treating the client as unique.  This builds value for you as the advisor, coach or whatever.

The introduction briefly covers: personal branding and business strategies, marketing, adding value to clients, building relationships, methodologies, being proactive and taking action.

Lecture 2: Brand You: Building Rapport & Relationships in your Consulting or Advisory Business

In order to become a highly valued and paid consultant you need a unique ‘brand’ and here we focus on you as the brand.  This means taking a good look at yourself and assessing your personal strengths and limitations and working on your strengths.  It is important to realise that being successful is about being able to communicate effectively and creating a good first impression is vital.  Here you have the ability to self-assess your brands using SWOT analysis whilst maintaining your authenticity.

Lecture 3: Features & Benefits - Selling Your Professional Services

Clients buy the advantages and benefits that will accrue to them because of your advice and counsel, rather than the features of what you have to offer.  In this lecture you get the opportunity to build your own benefits and rehearse how you will deliver these to your client.  The session finishes by focusing upon the psychological contract which is central to an effective relationship with your clients.

Lecture 4: Attracting & Winning the Right Clients

Your success in consulting and the fees you command are down to attracting the right type of clients in the first place.  You have to be selective and know your ideal client as an individual or an organisation.  Here, you have to align your clients with the Service Portfolio Matrix, which allows you to explore the services you provide and assess which ones appeal to which client base.

Using this Matrix is critical in assessing whether the services you offer are Dogs, Problem Children, Stars or Cash Cows.

Lecture 5: Delivering Value to Clients, Setting Fees, Protecting Your Boundaries

Here we focus on delivering value and calibrating your fees.  You also need to explore your own personal boundaries and ensure you deliver at the top of your game.  You should aim to be earning in the top 5-10% of your industry norm rather than charging average rates.  You should never, ever over-charge the client.  You need to portray highly ethical and professional standards.  Philip describes how the rates you charge are directly related to the value you deliver to your client.

Lecture 6:  Developing profitable long-term relationships with your Clients

This is about developing long-term relationships, but this session also deals with rejection and dealing with it.  This particular session asks you to define your ideal client in the most precise way and differentiate them from time wasters and clients that don’t fit the service you offer.  You need clients that reflect who you are and what you do.

Lecture 7: How to become completely client focused

Be client, rather than sales, focused.  You have to be authentic – you are working with them to develop solutions that work – not selling them stuff from the shelf. Philip explains what it is to be truly client focused and introduces the student to the buying cycle – differentiating it from the ‘selling cycle’ and explaining how to use the buying cycle to best effect.

Lecture 8: Applying the Consulting Cycle to Successfully Manage Change

This deals with the five stage consulting cycle and explains how best to ‘make things happen’ at each stage.  It is really important to understand this process and map the client’s position exactly, and how you can move them towards solving their problems by analysing this process.

Lecture 9: Building Rapport & Relationships in Implementing Change

This session focuses on the four key actors in any change relationship. These include the Coach, Trainer, Consult or Advisors as well as the Client, Stakeholders and Implementers.  This lecture deals with how to manage each to best effect.

Lecture 10: Building a Strong Profile, Action Planning and Marketing Your Business

This concentrates on the purpose behind any consultancy, advisory or training work which is implementing improvements and building a solid reputation.  Here the student can focus really on what they want to be, to do and have as a consultant or adviser and goes on to explain the use of the media, publishing articles, giving powerful presentations, networking.  This series finishes by asking the student some really key questions to promote themselves and their work in the future.