Marketing Consultants

It can be tempting to create a productized service out of your imagination.

You can get excited by imaging the scope, calculating your effective hourly rate, and visualizing people flocking to your new offering.

The problem is, there’s a good chance nobody will buy it if you do it that way. You might even be losing perfectly good prospects who leave before reaching out because they don’t like what they see.

The best way to design a productized service is to validate it before you publish it. You do that by selling it in a custom proposal first.

Custom proposals allow you to write for real people’s actual wants and needs (not the ones you think they have). They’re almost never the same.

Eventually, you’ll spot patterns. You’ll notice—in Venn diagram-like fashion—an overlap among the engagements you successfully sell.

You’ll notice people leaning towards certain price points or ways of engaging. You’ll be able to re-use parts of your proposal and massage the wording vs. rewriting it from scratch with each opportunity.

That’s when it’s time to consider productizing. That’s when you know there’s real market demand for this specific offering.

When it’s time to write up your sales page, you’ll be able to borrow specific language from your proposals for your sales copy, making future prospects feel like you are reading their mind.

So, if you want to sell a productized service, the best way is to keep your service pages a little more general. Attract people into a conversation so you can customize a suitable set of options for them.

When you look back after selling a few, it will be obvious what the market wants.

Then, and only then, will you create a highly compelling productized service that sells instead of repels. And your sales page will write itself.

—k

P.S. I’m doing a workshop next week on how to design highly profitable productized advisory services. It’s everything I’ve learned by selling and delivering over $1 million in (mostly productized) advisory services since 2017. Register here before you forget!

P.P.S. I’ve also extended the Black Friday bonus training, The 10 Ingredients of High-Performing Consulting Websites, to those who purchase before the workshop.

Apple has around 100 skews (unique products). Hewlett-Packard has about 10,000.

If you go into an Apple store, they still sell third-party peripheral products. But they don’t make them themselves—they’re a distraction from their main thing.

When it comes to your marketing practice, you could offer anything under the sun. You can find a decent sub-contractor to mark up for just about any service.

But that doesn’t mean you should.

The reality is, the more things you offer, the less effective you will be at all of it.

That’s partly why I chose advisory work. I knew I was best at creating the vision, assembling a team, and overseeing the execution work.

But running an agency was not how I wanted to do it.

With my agency, I offered too many services and was constantly under pressure with deadlines and deliverables.

It all felt like an unnecessary burden—and for what, 30% margins?

So, I imagined a world where I got paid to do what I do best: strategy and oversight.

As I pivoted to advisory, I began to introduce clients directly to the individual specialists I used to sub-contract work to.

It eliminated me as the middle-man, giving my clients full flexibility around who to hire and what to work on.

Eliminating execution work was the best thing I ever did for my business. I’d need to run a million-plus-dollar agency to make the same gross profit I do today.

I can’t even imagine the stress. Obviously, it works for some people, but not for me.

It also turned out to be a better experience for my clients, too.

—k

P.S. If you want help transitioning into advisory work—whether as a fractional CMO, advisor, trainer, educator, mentor, or all of the above—you’ll probably benefit from the membership.

A lot of people feel like they have to write something long and in-depth for it to be valuable enough to send to their email list.

So, they procrastinate.

“No time. Can’t make it perfect. I’ll do something later”.

They’re daunted by their self-imposed requirement for something long and substantial.

To me, the opposite is true. I see a lot of emails that are too long.

And what happens? I don’t read them. I save them for later. But later never comes.

Twitter has been successful because all the ideas are bite-sized. There’s no homework for later.

As consultants, maybe our emails are better off being short?

—k

Teaching and advising are kindred skills.

Advising is all about applying your expertise to your clients’ situations—usually transferring knowledge in the process. Teaching is about transferring knowledge to your students—often with advice mixed in.

They’re very similar at the core of it.

The best advisors develop a documented methodology. They organize their thinking and create training, frameworks, systems, and strategies.

Similarly, the best teachers use a curriculum. It might be one they create, one that is provided, or usually, it’s a combination of both.

Advisors advocate for their clients much like teachers advocate for their students. It comes down to the mindset of having a duty of care. Both groups usually have this.

Teachers and advisors are both in the transformation business. And frankly, I would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between them except at the margins. There’s a lot of overlap.

If you can advise, you can teach. And vice versa. Don’t over-complicate it.

The best advisors are also teachers.

What’s the cost of a poor hire?

You’d probably lose on labour costs, opportunity costs, people’s actual time—not to mention potential damages.

Now, what’s the value of a quality introduction?

Someone good at what they do—and do it for a reasonable price. Someone your clients could hire on the spot and can get good results with quickly.

When you measure the delta between a good hire and a bad hire, the difference is pretty stark.

As consultants, our introductions to people may seem like a flick of the wrist. It may seem effortless and easy. It could easily be taken for granted—and usually is.

But introductions are just one part of a very important series of value-adds we provide.

It takes time to build a deep bench of referral partners that you trust. Introducing them directly to your clients is a tremendous value—if for no other reason than it saves time finding, vetting, and hiring someone.

Your value doesn’t just come from your effort. It comes from what and who you know—and how to deploy those things to get a result.

Often, the most valuable things you do look effortless. Make sure your clients see the value—not just how easy it looks.

Pre-covid, I went to a fair amount of industry conferences.

I got to meet clients, past clients, industry leaders, and a wide wide variety of potential contacts.

Almost unanimously, the ROI was positive. One person introduced me to another, who introduced me someone else—each needing what I offered.

I met the key people of influence and eventually collaborated on podcasts, webinars, products, and even conference talks.

Meeting people IRL is a completely different experience than online. It opens up and solidifies relationships in a way that online correspondence can’t fully do.

A combination of having two children under 3 plus the pandemic made it difficult to travel. But now that I’m coming up for air, it’s time for me to get back out into the real world again.

If you want to drum up new conversations and opportunities—try to get into physical proximity again with your target market.

It’s been a while for most of us. But it works.

I recently announced that I’ve decided to shut down the Mindshare Community forum and move conversations over to my paid Slack community.

Thought I’d share the news with you in case you were interested in migrating to the new home for our discussions.

WHY MAKE THE MOVE?

The main reason is that I don’t have the bandwidth to juggle multiple communities and give the forum the attention it deserves.

Having a forum that was quietly collecting dust didn’t feel like a good reflection on me nor a value to its members.

I also prefer Slack for a number of reasons—mostly because I use it daily for my consulting and coaching work. But also because it’s more aligned with my core strategy: intimacy.

And that’s my goal with this stuff. To help you in a personalized and intimate way.

Slack makes it easier to do that.

WHAT’S NEXT?

If you want to join the Slack community, you can sign up for $99/year and unlock all the channels except the Group Coaching channel.

As Community members, we will arrange periodic meetups, guest workshops, bonuses, and a few other goodies along the way.

But mostly, it’s about being a part of a unique community of peers trying to create leverage around our expertise.

BUT WHY CHARGE $99?

I tried to keep this as near-free as possible. The community is on Slack’s Pro plan, which is about $87/person/year. Your membership covers this cost.

I chose the Pro plan so that messages could last longer than the 90 days you get with Slack’s free plans. I wanted niche channels to accumulate and store more ideas over time instead of disappearing.

Also, I think charging something creates a tiny bar—but it’s big enough to bring in only people who are committed to this journey.

At least $99 committed. 🙂

WANT TO PARTICIPATE?

If you’re interested in being a part of a community of consultants who are packaging their expertise—not just their hands—through advisory services, knowledge products, and other leveraged offerings, you can join here.

To reiterate the value of the Community membership, you’ll receive:

• A community of like-minded peers to stay connected and exchange ideas and feedback
• Full access to all channels except the group coaching channel
• Occasional Zoom meetups with community members
• Access to guest webinars and past recordings
• Occasional discounts and special bonuses

Thank you all for being part of this wonderful journey so far. I genuinely hope to see many of you in the new community 🙏

Sincerely,

Kevin C. Whelan

Have you ever walked into a consulting call and your client immediately asks you what to do next or why things aren’t working—and you have no idea where to even begin?

Yes, it helps to have a documented methodology to reference for ideas. But first, you need to see at a glance what’s going on in their business.

There are three main things to look for:

1. Processes
2. Projects
3. Performance

If your client can’t easily show you these three things, it will be hard to do your job without getting deep into the weeds.

It’s probably a good opportunity for you to help them build the structure needed to do that first.

They’ll likely run a more effective business or department if they do.

I’ll break down why they are so important.

1. Processes

Do your clients have a list of processes they use on a repeat basis?

Anything that gets done repeatedly, whether on a schedule or as-needed, should ideally be written down and documented to the extent reasonable.

Much like your heart beats automatically around the clock, these are the beating heart activities that happen on a regular basis within a company.

2. Projects

Aside from tiny to-dos that make up our days, any large project or task should also be stored somewhere.

Basically, what is getting done currently in addition to the routine processes that take place?

Show me those along with your recurring processes and I’ll be able to see almost everything major that’s going on in the business.

If you can’t show me, there’s a good chance nobody knows. And that makes it hard to advise on (or manage) from a high level.

The more you scale a business, the more these things matter.

3. Performance

Most things can be reduced down to a number. Inputs and outputs.

Find the key activities and results that drive a business. Turn them into a number and put them into a spreadsheet.

You might call them leading and lagging indicators. Or they may include OKRs. Or any other such metrics-driven practice.

Find out what key things are being done and what outcomes are occurring as a result.

In closing…

If your clients don’t have a way to quickly look at these three areas, it’s a good opportunity to help them do it.

Help them create a project management tool to track recurring tasks and manage projects.

Help them create a KPI project and determine the key numbers that really matter in their business.

If at any point something needs to be worked on or improved, you now have a structure you can review quickly to find areas for improvement.

If you lack any of the above, it will be hard to advise without talking to a hundred people about what’s going on. A lot of companies operate without one or more of these three things in place.

If you’d like more info on this, hit reply and I’ll see about doing a training in the near future.

Happy advising!

—k

When a blockbuster film gets produced, they start promoting it long before the film isn’t even finished.

It begins with the news announcement about the actors involved, the story, and when it will be released.

Eventually, a teaser is created. A glimpse of what to expect.

Actors do interviews and go on tour talking about the film leading up to the date.

The trailers get longer and more detailed. The release date gets more specific.

The first screenings get shown and reported on. Early reviews come in.

A year after conception, the film is released to the public.

Now that’s what you call pre-selling.

If you want to sell any new product, it’s critical that you pre-sell in advance—as early and often as possible.

You want people primed and interested to buy long before the product is ready. You want the decision about whether to buy or not to be locked in before the doors open.

If you’re thinking about selling a knowledge product for Black Friday, I highly encourage you to use the date as a forcing function to stop you from procrastinating and actually commit.

And if you do decide to do it, I recommend you start talking about it now.

Tease it out. Let people who follow you know something is coming soon.

To demonstrate what I mean, this is your notice that I’ll be releasing a small course on how to design your productized advisory services around Black Friday.

It will cover things like:

1. How to pre-validate the offers before you productize and publish them to your website
2. How to structure each of your advisory options (i.e. retainers, projects, group, private, hybrid, etc.)
3. How to price your offers and make them a no-brainer for your ideal prospects
4. The three ways to position each offer so they are an obvious choice to your different client segments
5. How to write the sales copy that feels like it reads the minds of your ideal clients
6. The core ingredients to use on your sales page to get the best results
7. How to demonstrate the business case for your offers so it’s an obvious choice to your prospects
8. How to de-risk the engagement for you and your prospects using guarantees

And a lot more detail and nuance.

All of this stuff is nuanced, so I don’t spare details.

Stay tuned for more on that.

In the meantime, get pre-selling!

—k

A lot of people talk about offering group coaching options as a way to create leverage around your expertise.

And that can be a great model for many.

But I also believe you can build highly profitable 1:1 advisory options that don’t always demand a lot of your time and energy before you need to go for more scalable options.

In this email, I’m going to share with you three ways to design highly profitable 1:1 engagements.

If you do it right, your business can reach several hundred thousand dollars without consuming all of your waking hours. I’m proof of this myself, so none of this is theoretical.

Below are three ways to design highly profitable 1:1 advisory retainers.

Option 1: The front-loaded retainer

In this scenario, you can front-load your engagements with higher fees since most of the heavy lifting and value delivered will be done in this phase of the engagement. After the original commitment period—6 months for example—you can then offer less involved and lower-priced down-sell retainer options to continue working with you.

This approach is especially useful when you work on large and complex projects and you anticipate that there’s not going to be as much of a need for your services over longer time horizons.

This method allows you to capture more value upfront and then have options for continuation at lower fees, if you both feel it’s suitable.

Option 2: The smoothed-out retainer

The second option is where you keep your prices fairly consistent indefinitely with the expectation that clients will need you for a long time.

In this scenario, your prices are kept fairly flat and consistent with what you believe your clients can sustain over a long period of time based on their cash flow and size.

Usually, the assumption is that results will take a long time to come to fruition, work will be steady, and you’ll need to iterate slowly as you go. So, your approach is to spread out your workload and plan for a longer-term engagement so you can be around to help the final results come to fruition.

Clients who have smaller budgets, fairly steady workloads, and/or will need to DIY much of the implementation over long periods are particularly ideal for this.

You’re giving them access to your brain for as long as they need to get a result—without breaking the bank—knowing it will take time for things to pay off.

With this method, it’s less about big projects and rapid investment and more about long-term strategic changes that need time for data to come in and for iteration to create a result.

Option 3:  The lightweight retainer

The third option is to make your services a no-brainer price that provides the 80/20 of access to you.

Maybe you offer unlimited email consulting over six months. Or personalized answers from you in a membership forum. Or a hybrid of group calls and 1:1 DMs in Slack.

With this option, people get light access to you but they get all the benefits of having access to your brain on their particular challenges. They may even get access to training resources you’ve created to help make your direct involvement less critical to their success.

This approach is ideal for scenarios where you’re working with individuals (i.e. coaching or mentoring) whom you can help 1:1 only if you can make it affordable.

You have to be careful with this one and manage scope closely to avoid it becoming a negative experience for both parties, but it can be a highly profitable way to give 1:1 advice—for you and them.

In closing…

Advisory retainers are all about the alignment of value, cash flow, and workload between you and your clients.

You want your clients to not feel like your fees are a burden—or if they are, they’re only a burden for a short while as they do hard things for short periods.

The best retainers are sustainable—for you and your clients. They’re not about squeezing the value out of each engagement. They’re about mutual profitability and alignment over extended periods of time.

If you want to sell short-term engagements or projects, it’s usually best you seek to extract (and provide) the highest amount of value possible within a shorter window.

After all, your expertise didn’t come cheaply to you, so you need to capitalize on it one way or another.

But if you want to sell retainers, the above approaches have worked best for me.

Did I miss anything? Got another experience to add? Did you have a lightbulb moment?

Reply and let me know.

—k