How to attract great consulting clients

Attracting great consulting clients: photograph of Adrian Segar—in striped shirt—working with participants during a peer conference
These days I am blessed with clients who are a joy to work with. But that wasn’t always true. Here’s how I learned to attract great consulting clients.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway. Everything that follows assumes that you have something of value to offer potential clients, you’re competent enough to supply it and have a realistic opinion about your worth. If you’re looking to get consulting work but don’t have all the requisite skills or expect to be paid unrealistic fees, this post won’t help you. But if you are a consultant who somehow keeps ending up with difficult clients, read on!

In the beginning…

In 1984, after careers in academia and small business, I began a consulting journey that has continued to this day.

Running a monthly local community group—the Southeastern Vermont Computer Users Group, long defunct—exposed me to businesses that needed advice and support on using these new-fangled “personal computers”. They hired me. Early on, I remember telling my wife that I had a few months of work booked but didn’t know if there would be more. After about five years of making similar statements, she pointed out that I probably didn’t need to worry too much.

Wondering about how much work I’d get, I accepted everything I was offered that I could do.

And sometimes, that didn’t work so well.

Three lessons learned

Charging enough

A local lumber mill offered me my first IT consulting job. I had no idea how much to charge, so I asked a friend. He asked me the hourly rate I thought I should ask for. When he heard my answer he laughed and said, “Double that!”

He was right. I had been doubting my value. The client didn’t even question my fee, and neither have hundreds of subsequent clients. Over the subsequent years, I discovered the truth of one of my mentor’s Secrets of Consulting:

“The more they pay you, the more they love you. The less they pay you, the less they respect you.”
Jerry Weinberg, one of his ten laws of pricing

In fact, if a potential client tries to aggressively negotiate with me over my fee, it’s a warning sign that our relationship is going to be less than ideal.

Working for free

I was once asked for a detailed proposal to fix problems with a client’s complicated database management system. The client told me they’d fired their previous consultant. I spent a significant amount of time determining possible solutions and submitted a comprehensive proposal. Imagine my disappointment when the potential client gave the proposal to the supposedly “ex-” consultant and told him to implement my solution.

This taught me an expensive lesson.

Since then, I simply won’t do creative work for clients without payment. I’m happy to have an initial call (typically 30 – 60 minutes) without charge and send a general proposal. But I won’t work after that point without a signed contract.

My advice: avoid any potential client who insists on detailed creative ideas before a contracted relationship exists.

Depending on trust—but getting it in writing

I used handshake agreements for years. They worked almost perfectly for me, but that’s because I eventually discovered I have a good (though not infallible) intuitive sense of whom to trust. But eventually, I began requiring written contracts for one important reason.

A written contract is a great tool to minimize misunderstandings.

Despite my best attempts to clearly communicate and agree on task scope, execution logistics, and the many other components of a professional relationship, I still find that what ends up in my head can be different from my client’s understanding. The creation of a signed written contract, which sometimes goes through a few drafts, is a great process to maximize the likelihood that our expectations match. And it acts as a great de-escalation tool if one of us forgets what we’ve agreed to.

The most effective way to attract great clients

But the best way I’ve discovered to attract great clients is to know who I am and share myself publicly.

What does that mean?

It means continuing to learn as much about my core self as possible, figuring out my mission, and sharing who I am with anyone who’s interested.

For example, this blog includes hundreds of articles posted over the last 16 years. Those who care can learn about my views on a wide range of topics, such as meeting design, facilitation, consulting, life lessons, facilitating change, the meeting industry, personal effectiveness, technology, and much more.

I’ve been happy to participate in many video interviews and podcasts, allowing people to learn more about my ideas, approaches, and personality.

On Twitter, I post on an even wider range of subjects, sharing content and ideas I like as well as, these days, a lot of political commentary.

Though I’m well aware that I, like everyone, still maintain personas, I continue to try to minimize the difference between the me I present to the world and who I truly am.

Allowing potential clients to see who I am helps them decide whether I might be a good fit to work with. Sharing who I am attracts those who like what they see. And, I’ve found, I’m likely to like them too! Which, as Seth Godin points out, can be a win-win:

“Like your customers and they’re more likely to like you back.”
—Seth Godin, The likable brand (or person)

How to attract great consulting clients

To summarize, let’s assume you can be of value to potential clients. Then to attract great consulting clients, you need to do three things:

  • Learn how to identify and say no to potential clients who are not looking for a win-win relationship with you.
  • Work to understand who you really are and your mission in life, and then be that person (no games). This is probably the hardest step. But it pays rich dividends in so many ways, not just in your professional life.
  • Market yourself—your core beliefs, skills, and personality—to potential clients. Those who have a need for your services and like what they learn about you will be drawn to get in touch.

That’s my recipe for attracting great consulting clients. It’s been working for me for years. If you’re a consultant who ends up with difficult clients more than you would like, I hope it helps you too!

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

 

 

Lessons I learned from an online workshop

Lessons learned at an online workshop: a graphic of a person attending an online meeting on a computer with camera and microphoneIn 2022, I ran a workshop, hosted by the Manitoba Chapter of the Canadian Society of Association Professionals (CSAE), on the design of participation-rich events. Here are the lessons I learned from this online workshop.

[Note: This event was a workshop, not a presentation. Sessions are often advertised as “workshops” that aren’t. If you want to know the difference, read this.]

Allocate enough time for workshops so you don’t have to rush

I think my biggest regret about this workshop is that it felt rushed. Why? The quick answer is that I tried to include too much for the time available. But it’s more complicated than that.

Don Presant asked me to offer a CSAE session of up to an hour in length. I asked for the maximum. In retrospect, I should have asked for more time. (I might not have got it, but it never hurts to ask.) After the workshop, Don asked me how much time I would have preferred. “Two hours,” I replied immediately.

Over the years I’ve become good at keeping to the time allocated for sessions. My approach is simple; I practice what I plan to do with a stopwatch running and keep paring down what I’d thought to include until it fits. I note the elapsed time at the start of each new segment and check how I’m doing during the session, adjusting accordingly.

This workshop didn’t work out so well. I cover the logistical reasons below. But being rushed is never good. I had never tried to run a one-hour online workshop before. And one lesson I learned is that I’m not going to try to run one in just one hour again.

Additional concerns when a workshop is online

My workshop was designed to include two chunks of content and two participative exercises. As is usually the case in my workshops, I work at two levels. I try to make the workshop personally useful for the participants by allowing them to learn about each other. Simultaneously, participants experience and get familiar with how the formats I use work.

This workshop would have been better in person. I probably could have done it in an hour. What made it rushed online was the time taken to switch between content and participative segments, and the toll this took on the flow of the session.

If I’d run this workshop in person, I could have easily run it by myself. Online, I needed two assistants — thank you, Don and Carrie Fischer! Don did the intro and close, monitored the chat, and fed me questions. Carrie hosted the meeting on Zoom, set up multiple breakout rooms, and messaged instructions while the breakouts were in session. There’s no way I could have run this workshop without them. Yet I now realize that having one of them or a third person manage the context switches between the interactive and content portions of the workshop would have helped me a lot!

Over the last couple of years, I’ve run multiple successful two-hour or longer online workshops. Looking back at the run of shows, these workshops had a similar or fewer number of context switches between interactive and content segments. Consequently, I’m going to allocate longer time for workshops than an hour from now on.

Logistical concerns that made this workshop rushed

One unexpected logistical concern occurred just before the workshop started. Instead of using CSAE’s Professional Zoom account, we had to use mine. Fortunately, my Zoom settings were set as I needed them to be, but I did worry that this would require me to take over some of Carrie’s work. Luckily, with Don and her as co-hosts, Carrie was able to handle the usual Zoom support.

Unfortunately, I was responsible for the context switches between Zoom Gallery mode and sharing my keynote presentation slides. That was a mistake; at least the way I tried to implement it.

Using Keynote in Zoom

There are several ways to share a Keynote presentation in Zoom. My favorite is to share my Keynote presentation as a virtual background in Zoom. Zoom has described this functionality as “beta” for a while, but I’ve not had any problem with it to date except for the minor bug I found this time, as described below. My “talking head” is superimposed on my slide at the size and position I choose. Here’s an example (this is my view as the presenter):

lessons learned online workshop

This works well for a one-off presentation in a Zoom meeting. However, it turns out to be painful to implement when you need to switch in and out of Keynote during a workshop. Here’s why:

  • When you switch to displaying a Keynote deck via this method in Zoom, there’s a short delay while Zoom loads the deck. We tested this during our tech rehearsal and the delay was acceptable (a few seconds) with the setup and bandwidths we had. This is not a big deal, though it’s not what a professional production team would do.
  • More seriously, if you stop sharing your deck and then want to share it again, you can’t continue from the last slide you displayed. Zoom reloads the entire deck from scratch. My workshop involved three shares of my master deck, interspersed with participative portions in Gallery view. To avoid having to step through previously viewed slides, I split my workshop presentation into three Keynote decks. And that’s when I found a Zoom/Keynote bug…
  • The Zoom/Keynote bug. After splitting my presentation into three separate decks, I began a rehearsal. I ran through the first deck, stopped sharing it, and then selected the second deck. Zoom picked the wrong deck to display! (At first, I thought I’d clicked on the wrong deck, but it quickly became clear that Zoom+Keynote was to blame.) This was not acceptable! I realized that each of the three decks had the same long filename with a number appended to the end. I guessed that Zoom was not reading the entire filename, and that’s why it was picking the wrong deck. Sure enough, when I renamed the three decks with a number at the beginning of the filename, Zoom reliably picked the deck I had chosen. Phew!

Better ways to manage context switching

During the hour workshop, I had to perform six context switches while facilitating: Gallery->Keynote->Gallery->Keynote->Gallery->Keynote->Gallery. I found it distracted my mental flow, especially the several steps involved in starting up a different Keynote deck each time.

In Gallery View, I used breakout rooms and a camera off/on technique for simple human spectrograms and fishbowl discussion during the last segment of the workshop. This was complicated to manage in the short time available, and I felt the quality of the workshop suffered.

I mentioned these problems to my friend and event production expert Brandt Krueger, who sympathized. He pointed out that I had encountered limitations of software-based solutions to what are essentially production issues. For example, I could run Keynote on a second machine (I have three in my office) and use a switcher to instantly switch video between the Zoom and presentation computers. (Brandt loves the ATEM Mini switcher, and I have come close to buying one on several occasions.)

Consequences

I had assumed that what I’d rehearsed might take a little longer when I went live. And I expected to spend some time answering impromptu questions during the first three segments of the workshop. But I had reserved what I thought was enough time for the open-ended final discussion so I could still end on schedule.

As it turned out, I underestimated the slowdown from context switching. Answering a couple of questions brought me to the final segment about ten minutes later than I had planned. The time for the concluding discussion was shorter than I would have liked. We went over a few minutes, and I cut a final “lessons learned” pair share I had planned to include.

Although I covered everything I’d planned, the workshop felt rushed to me, and I don’t do my best work under the circumstances.

Well, that’s how you learn. I’ll do better (and allow longer to do it) next time.

Conclusion

There are some of the lessons I learned from this online workshop. I hope they help you avoid my mistakes. If you have other suggestions for improving the challenging exercise of running an ambitious online workshop, please share them in the comments below.

Lessons from my association leadership transitions

association leadership transitions: a photograph in distorted colors of a person walking toward the camera down a subterranean flight of stepsIn June 2016 I stepped down as President and Executive Director of edACCESS, an association I co-founded 25 years ago. This was the third time I’ve left an association leadership position. Here are some valuable lessons learned from these association leadership transitions.

The Solar Association of Vermont

Although the rapid growth of the solar energy industry may appear to be a recent phenomenon, North American boomers will remember the late 70s and early 80s when the 1979 “oil crisis” hit and interest in alternative energy generation soared. I moved to Vermont in 1978 and joined the management of a fledging solar hot water manufacturing business. After a couple of years, I helped to found the Solar Association of Southern Vermont. Eventually, we became the Solar Association of Vermont (SAVE!) We’d hold monthly meetings in the tiny rural town of Brattleboro and sixty people would show up. SAVE went on to produce many of the earliest alternative energy conferences in the United States.

But in the 80s Reagan was elected. He removed the solar collectors that a colleague of mine had installed on the White House. By the mid-80’s oil prices had returned to pre-crisis levels. Interest in solar energy dried up and SAVE meeting attendance shrank to a few people.

What did we do?

We shut SAVE down.

We held a big end-of-the-association party, inviting everyone who had been part of this brief flowering of community interest. Little did we know that our work would set the stage for the meteoric rise of solar photovoltaic systems today.

Lessons

As time passes, the key motivations for an association’s existence can transmute, or even disappear. I’ve worked with hundreds of associations, and seen some continue to struggle on long after their mission has become irrelevant. Check regularly that your association’s mission remains congruent with its circumstances. If not, change your mission or your operations to stay relevant. Or, if necessary, close up shop (not forgetting to celebrate all your good work if you do!)

A local association

After a number of years serving as a board member of a local chapter of a national association, the board offered me the presidency. The national was recommending that chapters fundamentally change the way they operated, a change I agreed with. I told the board that I would happily accept the presidency if we allocated the resources needed to make this transformation happen, arguing that the change would improve our financial resources by allowing us to significantly increase our community fundraising.

Unfortunately, the board refused to allocate the resources I requested.

Consequently, I reluctantly turned down the presidency and left the board, as I did not want to lead an association whose board did not support the vision I had for its future.

Looking back on the subsequent evolution of the association, I don’t regret my decision, though I wish I’d been better able to convince the board that my approach was a better alternative to staying with the status quo.

Lessons

Before taking an association leadership role, share your vision for the future and make sure the rest of the association buys into it. If they don’t, don’t take the job!

edACCESS

In 1991 I co-founded edACCESS, a 501(c)6 that supports information technology staff at small schools. Initially, I had a professional interest in the organization’s mission for many years and served for free. As my consulting focus shifted increasingly towards meeting design, I moved into a paid part-time executive director role.

In May, 2016, I decided to give up the position, with the goal of making the handover to new leadership as smooth as possible. I announced my intent at the June annual conference and offered to stay for a year in a supervisory role, coaching new leadership as needed.

The existing leadership handled my announcement very well. I told them I would provide any desired assistance and advice around leadership changes, but felt it was important not to be intimately involved in ongoing decisions. I was gratified by the response, which to me reflects the fundamental health of the association I helped to create.

The transition went well. The full year’s notice allowed me to take new and existing leadership through an entire life cycle of the core association process. The association stayed in good shape after I left.

Lessons

I have seen (and experienced) a number of associations that were severely stressed by the sudden departure of leadership and the total lack of any leadership succession planning. To be honest, edACCESS is small enough that we did not have a formal plan in place. I am glad I have the flexibility to offer what will hopefully be sufficient time and support to allow the association to continue effectively carrying out its mission. Don’t assume that key association staff or board members, will stay with the organization forever, or give you ample warning before they depart! Pre-emergency planning for leadership, staffing, and succession will minimize the turmoil that can be generated without warning when key personnel leave unexpectedly.

Association leadership transitions

Have you made association leadership transitions? What lessons have you learned that others may value? Share in the comments!

Photo attribution: Flickr user by_andy

How many mistakes have you made?

How many mistakes have you made? Illustration of the word "mistake" spelled as "mistaek" with a ticked checkbox next to itHow many mistakes have you made? It depends.

From one perspective: millions. The step you attempted at eleven months but fell and skinned your knee. Your shame on hearing the gasps in class on announcing a sixty percent pop-quiz test score because you were supposed to be smarter than that. The time when you were so nervous at the interview that IBM turned you down for an internship. Girlfriends you fell for who dumped you. The partner who kicked you out of your solar energy business after five years of hard work. The decision to adopt infant twins that led to so much heartache during their adolescence.

From another perspective: none. How else could you find out how to walk without all the attempts and resulting falls? Would you have ever dealt with false shame if you’d never become aware of it? How long would it have taken to discover your dislike for working in large organizations? If your first girlfriend had been the woman who has now been your wife for 48 years, how would that have turned out? What other way could you have learned so much about running a business and managing employees in such a short time? Would you have absorbed so many vital liberating lessons about yourself without the hard truths you were forced to confront during the painful process of being a better parent?

All the learning that grows out of every single mistake.

How many mistakes have you made? Millions or none? It all depends on your perspective.

A story about letting go of control at a conference

letting go of control at a conference: Two women joyfully kayaking through turbulent water. Image attribution: flickr user donaldjudge

Letting go of control at a conference

The last session of Conferences That Work is called a group spective—a time for participants to look back at what has happened for the group and forward to possible futures together. During the spective, I use a variety of activities to encourage and support reflecting, sharing, brainstorming, and deciding on next steps. One process is a simple go-around. Each participant in turn answers a few open-ended questions about their conference experience and ideas about what might happen next.

When using a go-around format, the first person to speak can have a significant influence on the subsequent sharing around the circle. Others tend to pick up and echo their brevity, tone, and emphasis, in the same way a minor current at one crucial spot can greatly influence a boat’s subsequent track on a river.

My concern

I used to worry that this could pose a potential problem. What if the first person who spoke had little to say, or was very negative about the conference? So I’d often pick someone to start who I thought would provide a “good” model of how to share.

My eyes were opened at a conference where I thought we had, over the years, arrived at a close-to-perfect schedule. At the group spective, I casually chose the attendee sitting next to me to start the go-around sharing. I listened in dismay as they offered criticisms and made pointed suggestions for improvement. The overall tenor of their remarks was quite negative. Other attendees followed their lead, refining their critique and adding their own judgments. Despite my initial consternation, as I listened I heard many good ideas. Ideas that could well improve the conference format in ways we hadn’t considered. Slowly, my excitement about these new possibilities overcame my fear of the critical tone of the spective.

During the discussion that followed, it became clear that attendees were also pumped up about these potential format changes. Many felt these could make an already great conference even better. Rather than make spot decisions during the spective, we ended up using an online survey over the next couple of weeks to consider and compare the proposed scheduling alternatives.

What happened

At the following year’s conference, we incorporated several of the changes suggested at the spective. There was wide agreement that the new design was better than anything we had done before.

It’s scary to let go, to let the unexpected happen. It’s hard to find the courage to watch without interfering, as an unexpected event leads to a host of consequences. As we sit in our boat, formerly safely floating down the conference river, but now suddenly veering alarmingly towards an indistinct muddy bank, most of us have a natural tendency to want to grab a paddle and attempt to wrest the craft back into the middle of the flow. Yet, if we surrender to the current, using our facilitation paddle merely to moderate our speed and make fine course corrections, we may find that the bank, once we reach it, is full of unexpected delights and possibilities.

[Adapted from a story in Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love]

Did you ever let go of control at a conference? What lessons did you learn?

Image attribution: flickr user donaldjudge

6 lessons I’ve learned about volunteers at conferences

Using volunteers at conferences: a photo of a rectangular iced cake with "Thank your Volunteers" written on the top in yellow icing.
I’ve never run a conference without volunteers. I’ve spent over thirty years organizing meetings. Here are 6 lessons I’ve learned about volunteers at conferences.

1) Is this conference marketable?

One of the most important ways I leverage volunteers is during the earliest conference planning stages to determine whether a proposed event is marketable.

Here’s my simple rule of thumb when deciding whether an idea for a conference might work.

Can I find at least five people enthusiastic enough about the proposed combination of topic/theme, audience, location, and duration to volunteer their time and energy to make the event happen?

If I can’t easily find at least five volunteers enthusiastic about a conference, I’ve (painfully) learned that the event is almost always unviable.

2) Use volunteers for creative work

You’ve got a bunch of willing volunteers—what should you have them do? I try to allocate volunteers to creative jobs at conferences. Research indicates that paying people to do interesting work can make them less motivated! Here are some examples of conference tasks well suited to volunteers:

  • greeting arriving attendees
  • introducing attendees to each other
  • facilitating sessions
  • organizing and running fun activities

I generally use volunteers for creative work and reserve mechanical tasks for paid staff.

3) Check in with your volunteers

Talk with each volunteer individually well before the event. Ask them how they’d like to help and come to a clear understanding as to what’s expected from them.

4) Plan to have enough volunteers

Volunteers are sometimes less reliable than paid staff. Ensure you have a few people who can cover for last-minute gaps in your volunteer staff during the event.

5) Reward your volunteers

Reward your volunteers throughout the event. Make sure volunteers receive refreshments, meals, and access to conference amenities. If they are attending the conference, offer them reduced or free admission. Reimburse them for any incidental expenses they incur.

6) Never take your volunteers for granted!

Make sure you recognize their contributions, not only publicly, using appropriate perks, awards, and publicity, but also privately. Show them you genuinely appreciate their contributions, and they will become your biggest boosters.

These are the 6 lessons I’ve learned about volunteers at conferences.

How do you work with volunteers at your events? What lessons have you learned?

Image attribution: flickr user sanjoselibrary – creative commons share alike 2.0 generic

Five lessons event planners can learn from the iPad launch

Seth Godin wrote a powerful post—Secrets of the biggest selling launch ever—about why Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of the iPad launch. Here are five of his secrets that are 100% relevant to the fundamental challenges facing event planners today.

Seth Godin's blog illustration: the top of his head

2. Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what? (Please don’t gloss over this one just because it’s short. In fact, it’s the biggest challenge on this list).

Designing events so that they will appeal to the least adventurous attendee guarantees the same-old snooze-fest. Event planners need to aim higher and use innovative formats, even at the risk of jolting people who didn’t expect to be jolted.

3. Make a product worth talking about. Sounds obvious. If it’s so obvious, then why don’t the other big companies ship stuff like this? Most of them are paralyzed going to meetings where they sand off the rough edges.

How many events have you attended that you still remember years later? (Or a month later?) It’s possible to create memorable events. And the best ones are memorable not because they had great content or great presenters, but because wonderful, unexpected things happened there. We know how to create events like this: by using participant-driven approaches. But we are afraid to take the risk of trying event formats that are different. Apple took that risk with the iPad launch. If we event planners won’t take the risk, who will?

6. Create a culture of wonder. Microsoft certainly has the engineers, the developers and the money to launch this. So why did they do the Zune instead? Because they never did the hard cultural work of creating the internal expectation that shipping products like this is possible and important.

Until we fully embrace the belief that it’s possible to successfully employ powerful interactive formats at our events, we’re going to be churning out more Zunes than iPads.

7. Be willing to fail. Bold bets succeed–and sometimes they don’t. Is that okay with you? Launching the iPad had to be even more frightening than launching a book…

Apple has been willing to make mistakes: the Lisa and the Newton come to mind. You can’t have great success without risking some failure.

Every time I facilitate an event I welcome the possibility of failure. Not the kind of failure where the event is a total bust—I’m not that far out on the edge—but the failure of a session’s process, or the discovery of a flaw in a new approach. And you know what? The new things I try that succeed more than outweigh the failures I experience. And, bonus, I get to learn from my mistakes!

So take some risks with your event designs. Have the courage of your convictions, trust your intuition, and be willing to make mistakes.

9. Don’t give up so easy. Apple clearly faced a technical dip in creating this product… they worked on it for more than a dozen years. Most people would have given up long ago.

We event designers can learn a lot from the success of the iPad launch.

I think we face a long hard road in changing people’s perceptions of what is possible at an event. It’s not easy to challenge hundreds of years of cultural history that have conditioned us to believe that we should learn and share in certain prescribed ways. But the rapid rise of the adoption of social media has shown that people want to be active participants in their interactions with others, and we need to change our event designs to satisfy this need when people meet face-to-face.

I’m willing to work on these issues over the long haul. Will you join me?