Is Free Advice Really Free Or Can it Be Very Expensive?

In my interviews, we find that it is good strategy for a consultant to advise clients on how-to bring on another marketing person and still collect the original consulting fee. Why? The reason is the more marketing, hands-on help, the better. Especially help that understands and welcomes your help. That is why certain things work out well for some companies and not others. They welcome the help, but do so, only if they know what they are already missing. Many times a consultant will find people already on staff that can be redirect to new and necessary marketing efforts. Sometimes these assets are already there, but hidden and unknown.

This is a wonderful strategy because when you are selling consulting services there is no doubt your client has to do some work on their part as well. There’s also a big chance they may not want to do get involved or are too busy working in the business rather than ‘on the business’. I can see this as being important to do and recommend that your clients either allocate some labor within the organization to handle much of the execution of certain marketing tactics. This was you remain in a more consulting position that helps take some of the workload off others.

In one interview with Richard, he said: “Yeah. It kind of goes along with what was said earlier. You need a champion type of person in the clients company that understands and can work with you. The more you get help like that, the more chances there will be for success. This champion can be someone they hire to work with you, or one of the managers or employees. It could be the owner.” Richard had a client that he was struggling with because the sales people had not caught the same ‘vision’ that the business owner had.

So this business owner was forcing these changes, forcing these mindset changes. Richard says: Because I saw this, I made the owner the champion. This owner then started to say; “You know I just found out that I have mere order takers. I really don’t have anyone that can sell.” He was then seriously beginning to contemplate who to fire, who to let go, because problem that Richard the expert uncovered.