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Littlefish Ian Gotts 20170210

Little Fish Meetup - Ian Gotts

Speaker: Ian Gotts Talk: The Business of Consulting

Note: Ian wrote about 10 books and his first one still gets him business today.

  1. Three R's of Ian's talk:
  2. R
  3. Remember
  4. Reveal

Winning Work

As a consultant you are winning work or performing work and it's hard to balance.

Winning Rewarding, Profitable Work

Rewarding - The work takes you where you want to go

Profitable - You can do it

Credibility
  • Starts with not having a gmail account
  • Starts with a real business card
  • Starts with a decent name
  • Example: xenogonyx
    • Most of your work comes from word of mouth
    • If your client's can't remember, they can't tell anyone about you
  • Example: IG Partners
    • Says you are consulting and your clients can remember it
Ian's first impression is:
  1. Linkedin
  2. 3-5 page website
    • home, services, about, contact us, resources

  3. Some orgs put aol.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com accounts right in the bin

    • People that have no technical competency?

  4. AOL still makes 917 million a year on dialup accounts, residual income

Build a brand

Acronym: "Every Consultant Is Awesome"

These are in order. 1, most important.... 4. least important

  1. Expectation
  2. Commonality
  3. Intent

  4. Ability

  5. Expectation - Most important. Are you the consultant they expected?

    • Are you wearing a suit if that is expected
    • Dress and behave for your audience
    • Business card like they would expect
    • "It's about Clues, not Views"
      • You are 'disappointed about the superbowl' but they won... oops
      • Political views, technology views
      • let them explain how it all works
  6. Commonality - Do you have anything in common with them?
    • Kids the same age, musical instrument interest, anything
  7. Intent - Are you there to help them get it done?
    • Are you just there for the day rate
    • Are you there to make it work
    • If you can't help them, don't go!!
  8. Ability - Can you do the job?
    • Clearly it's important, but it's below the other three
Differentiation

Price is the main difference between two consultants that can do the work. How do you differentiate your work? Why is one person worth $1000 a day and another $1200 a day.

Anecdote, he worked with a client and they did a perfect job on a $150MM job and all the client could remember a year later was day rate.

  1. Intent: What are you passionate about? What are you good at? Skills?
  2. Web Designer: There are so many of those.
    • Align yourself with a product.
      • Example: Be a salesforce consultant, or something.
    • You don't know when a client wants to start
      • You don't know when they want to make a business change
    • Need to spend time getting up to speed on a product
      • It's like the trains are going by and you gotta jump on the one

  3. It's great to do something you love, but is it profitable?

    • Is money your primary measure? If so, you have to adapt.
    • Are you going to build a 40-person business marketing to startups?
    • Salesforce's limiting factor for growth is business consultants
      • Probably true for microsoft azure, google cloud, aws, rackspace

  4. How do you make your project URGENT?

    • "You cannot make a consulting project start by sheer will"
    • Tying yourself to a product
    • coaching based on their business pipeline
    • Compliance is another fantastic URGENT incentive.
      • "If we don't do this by december, the FDA fines us 100MM dollars"
      • We have to start now, just write the check.

  5. What about IP to differentiate yourself?

    • A business methodology - for example Accenture's 'Lightning' Method
    • I have methodologies out there right now
    • Methodology used in your "sales cycle"
      • Way you perform the business cycle with your client
    • Example: lawyer -
    • Methodology can be used to convince a client
      • "Trust me we have the metrics and here are our standard templates"
    • How much does your methodology increase your day rate and win rate?
Profitability

Make enough to spend your life the way you want to spend it

A sold consulting firm in silicon valley makes 1 to 1.5 times revenue An investor wants to make 5x revenue on that form

The three things discussed below:
  1. Fix bigger problems
  2. Project Management
  3. Minimize Bench Time

  4. Annuity Revenue Streams

  5. Sorry, but it's REALLY HARD to build a consultancy to the second stage.

    • Up to 5 is pretty good.
    • The next stopping point after 3-4 people is twenty.
    • The bit between 5-20 is REALLY HARD.
    • Consulting business with 30+ starts to get momentum: marketing, salespeople

  6. Your consultants need something to do between assignments, they aren't just going to develop the business, it isn't what they do.

  7. First way is to charge more. How?

    • FIRST THING: Fix bigger problems
    • Application developers - awesome - ukraine
    • Configure systems - above applications
    • Management consultants - above configure (doing business and development)
    • Run big projects - above management (12 weeks, name the day rate)
      • 3500 a day, 12 weeks, bring in the team, i pay you on top of the team
      • Ian: i
      • ROI for that client was 95,000 a day
      • Ian's biggest project, never got that again
      • Running workshops, business consulting
    • Run big programs - above projects

  8. Writing books - MARKETING GOLD DUST

    • "Common Approach, Common Results" - gets them business today, it was his first one
    • You can't throw a book away, you can give it away but never get rid of it
    • Way better than white papers, they've got a spine!
      • jogging vs marathon
    • Secret is 80 pages - then you have a spine, and it's a book.
    • people love books
    • How do you turn those blogs into something?

  9. Project Management - best way to increase your day rate

    • Scope is the intersection of: time, cost, quality
    • If you don't have it down at the beginning you've lost the project
      • If you can't get the scope agreed, leave the project!!
      • This is a real lesson he learned in accenture.
    • Scope, timeframe, skillset => all comes back to scope
    • "What's the case study going to be like when we get you up on stage?"
      • Get them focused on how they deliver the project, so you can focus on how they deliver the project

  10. Minimize Bench Time

    • Get people around you so you can work together and rely on each other and make sure no one has any bench time
    • Work for clients who don't screw you over all the time
      • ShipClients - glassdoor for clients, was renamed to "RateClient"
      • For independent consultants to rate clients on 3 things
        • Too long to get project started
        • Scope creep
        • Pay you correctly and on time
      • http://clientsfromhell.net

  11. Annuity Revenue Streams

Writing books isn't it! You don't make any money out of books, they up your day rate. Books also cost very little.

Silicon Valley is all aboute Annuity Revenue Stream.

  • Could you license some IP?
  • Could other consultants use your metholodogy?
  • Can you get 20% of a revenue stream?
  • Could you build a support service?
Be the best you can be

Always be yourself, unless you can be Batman. Then always be batman.

Always test the boundary of how much you can charge.

Day rate: $500, $800, $1000, $2000 - always move it up!!

Notes

He says technical skills are worthless, amazing eastern european developers cost $20 an hour, so it's all about access to technical skills.

Innovative websites don't work. It's why all product websites and carts are the same.

Questions
  1. How do you be awesome if you don't have a resume that says you worked for the big 5?
    • Ian: It may not be who you worked for but who your clients have been in the past.
    • Example: The best part of the book is the back cover with quotes by people that love them. Everyone reads the back -- this book must be incredible.
  2. How do you get a client to use your name?
    • A bunch of clients will, some people won't put it through their legal people.
    • Find people who will bat for you.
    • If it's a book, it can further their career. Find win-wins.
  3. What about partnerships?
    • Equity partnerships - you need to be super careful. Getting a divorce is hard.
    • Are you both aligned? Are you both putting the same amount of time on it?
    • "We'll work it out in the end?"
    • Very difficult to unwind if it goes wrong.
  4. How much do you spend on marketing when do you stop?
    • As a small business, SEO, facebook marketing, etc. are a huge waste.
    • BEST: Networking events where you can work together to figure out how to get clients.
    • BEST: Write a book or a paper, they hang around forever!
    • BEST: Linkedin relationships, article worth reading on linkedin
    • Make sure to get writing out there.
    • What are you really good at? Where are they?
      • Salesforce: all on twitter. Why? No one knows!!
      • 430 salesforce user groups - marin, sf, etc. Every other week.
      • half consultants and half clients!! there's an ecosystem
      • remember: salesforce growth blocker is consultants.
  5. How do I move up a tier on project size?
    • Confidence to bid for bigger projects
    • Being there already - take a bigger project with a current client.
    • Who else do you need around? Project management skills?
    • The people who are winning those projects, how are they doing it?
      • What does their website look like?
      • How do I get $2000 a day? Answer: put less on your resume
      • Behave how people are operating at that level behave