methodology

You’re not in the business of selling tasks, hours, days, months, or deliverables.

As an advisor, you’re in the business of selling outcomes and benefits.

And that means doing things your way, not following instructions and taking orders from your clients.

Gather the information and ideas you need to do your job well. Input is a good thing—accept as much of it as you can.

But solve your client challenges in the way you are uniquely capable.

That’s why you’re hired in the first place. Trust your way of doing things.

I had a friend in high school who was incredibly bright. He graduated with something like a 99% average.

He received a Rhode Scholarship at University of Oxford and went on to start and later sell a successful tech company.

Interestingly enough, he’s the one who taught me the basics of HTML when I was 14. Those little lessons, written on literal pieces of paper, were what set into motion what would become my career as a marketer.

But that’s not the lesson of today’s story.

The lesson was something he said when I asked him after graduating high school what his “secret” to success was.

He told me he likes to set “arbitrary goals”.

There was something so… unassuming his response. And yet, it intuitively makes a lot of sense.

His answer sticks with me nearly two decades later, so I guess it made an impact.

His goals – call them arbitrary, even if they were extremely high, forced him to back up his actions in order to get there.

It seems like the word “arbitrary” is used because whether he hit it or not, he had a target to aim for and coming close would still make him successful.

So what goals can you set, whether it be a number of inputs (i.e. blog posts per month) or a lagging outcome, like monthly revenue?

It might just get you closer to where you want to be.

“There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial”.

— Warren Bennis

In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis composed a list of the differences between managers and leaders for added clarification:

– The manager administers; the leader innovates.

– The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

– The manager maintains; the leader develops.

– The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

– The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

– The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

– The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

– The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader’s eye is on the horizon.

– The manager imitates; the leader originates.

– The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

– The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.

– The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

This is a good distinction for us consultants to internalize.

Consultants are not managers. We’re leaders.

Sure, we can help empower the managers we work with. We even can be one of many leaders within the companies we work for.

But as Warren Bennis said, the distinction is crucial.

Be a leader.

SpaceX can send rockets to space and land them again successfully using a series of checklists and processes.

If they can do that, you can create a Methodology that gets results for your clients consistently, too.

It may not be the perfect checklist the first time you create it. It may not even be a checklist. It might be a general process you follow that ensures every box is at least considered if not checked.

But if you invest in documenting your process over time, improving and adding more detail as you go, your Methodology will become your single greatest asset in your business.

You’ll not only deliver better, more consistent results, you’ll also attract more opportunities and create more leverage down the road.

If you want a starting point to copy for your own marketing Methodology, join Mindshare Pro to get access to the one I use in my own consulting business.

Learn more and sign up at https://howtoselladvice.com/membership.

One of the many benefits of consulting for a niche is you get to develop a one-of-a-kind Swipe File full of in-the-wild marketing examples in your niche.

Instead of generic examples of ad copy, landing pages, or whatever else you might consult on, you can have a series of niche-specific samples that nobody else in the world will have.

This level of specificity makes it both rare and valuable—where else will you find such niche-specific examples? It also becomes part of your Methodology if you build it right.

I have a small one for my coworking consultancy and it regularly comes in handy. I keep the examples in Airtable—though I could move it to Trello to keep everything in one place.

I link to it from my membership as a perk and from within my Methodology concepts stored in Trello.

Whenever a client wants to start something new, I can point them to several examples with my notes on what I like about each so they can get inspired and create something of their own.

Over time, it becomes a great asset to have on hand. You can even store non-niche-specific content into it as long as you tie back the relevancy in your notes.

If you don’t have a swipe file, it might be a good time to start creating one—even if you’re not yet focused on a niche.

You can use it in your consulting work as proof-of-concept starting points, add it as a perk to your memberships, or even use it as a lead generation resource to drive subscribers to your list.

It’s also a good habit to get into as you build the discipline to create and maintain your own Methodology.

Your Methodology becomes leverage for everything you do in your marketing practice, so you might as well start small and build from there.

If you need help creating a Methodology or Swipe File, join Mindshare. You’ll get access to resources like this and personalized coaching to help you grow a more profitable marketing advisory practice.

All my marketing advisory clients go through a detailed process that I’ve created over the course of several years. It’s my methodology.

It begins with my onboarding process then jumps straight into triage. My goal is to get short-term wins racked up quickly then go back to build the marketing engine properly.

But here’s the thing: I don’t let my methodology dictate my process. I always prioritize common sense over my process.

Yes, it’s critical to have all your ideas mapped out into a well-documented methodology. It ensures a consistent application of your best ideas, which creates more consistent results for your clients.

But it shouldn’t replace your thinking. It should be flexible to what you know is the right next thing to do.

You are hired to get results, not follow a process blindly. 

Sometimes it makes the most sense to put the fires out and start the kettle before you worry about the big picture.

Your method does not replace your thinking

To be a great consultant, you need to develop your Methodology.

To develop your Methodology, you need to specialize.

To specialize, you need to actually like the people you serve.

Why? Because it takes a long time to build a Methodology that makes you sufficiently unique and sought-after.

It also takes a long time to build your audience and reputation. There are no shortcuts there, either.

If you don’t genuinely like who you serve, you won’t be around long enough to turn your Methodology into something meaningful.

Something you can sell at scale. Something you work hard at to improve day in and day out. Something you can make your life’s work.

If you’re starting on the journey of specialization and you want to building a meaningful business over the longterm, remember it’s important to like who you serve as much as it is do like what you do.

You gotta have both or it won’t work.

If Elon Musk can send rockets to space and back, you can create a systemized approach to the work you do for your clients.

It doesn’t mean you need to follow your process exactly the same way every time. In fact, you never will—that’s not how life works.

But it should provide structure and consistency that produces similar results each time you run it. It should also get more refined over time.

Sure, you will need to adjust for the particulars of any situation and do some maneuvering based on what’s happening.

But that doesn’t preclude you from having a process to work with that gets smarter each time you apply it.

All great consultants have a methodology. Especially, ones who work in a niche—that’s where it really takes off.

Get into a niche, formalize your process, run it a bunch of times until it reliably works, then package and sell it without your direct involvement.

That’s it. That’s the playbook for successful consulting in a nutshell.

Related articles:

• What makes a good consulting methodology?
• The compounding power of turning your work into a methodology