One of the ways you add value as strategy consultant is by having partners you trust to do tactical implementation work for your clients.
After all, if your clients get hung up on implementation, your work comes to a halt—or you won’t get hired in the first place!
You want to make implementation seamless with your advice.
And while it might seem easy to make intros to people you know, it’s actually super valuable to you and your clients if you pair them with the right people.
It’s valuable to you because you don’t need to micromanage. Your partners learn your ways and you learn theirs. Your work becomes more streamlined and effortless.
It’s valuable to your clients because they save the time, effort, and potential sunk costs of hiring people who aren’t the right fit.
The reality is, hiring good implementation partners is not easy.
It’s even hard for me to find the right people to do execution work. It takes time to find, talk to, and vet people for any given job.
Plus, you never really know how good someone will be until you work with them—and that makes the process even more difficult.
If it’s hard for people like us, you better believe it’s even more difficult for your clients.
The only difference is, your clients learn this the hard way in the middle of a project when they realize they’ve made a terrible mistake in who they hired.
And at that point, it’s too late.
They end up trying to salvage an outcome they really hoped for while becoming exhausted in the process and disappointed in the outcome.
Having a Rolodex is a key part of the value you provide as a strategist.
If you want to build a successful consulting practice—or even as a freelance who relies on other people to get a result—it’s worth taking the time to build your bench to support you.
—kw
P.S. I’m in the process of finalizing a shared Rolodex for Mindshare members. It will include vetted and some yet-to-be-vetted but credible developers, designers, copywriters, ad buyers, and more. It’s just one of the growing number of resources being added to the equation. Join here to get access to those names when they become available soon—plus all the other benefits the group has to offer.
P.P.S. If you want to be considered for being added to this Rolodex as an individual or agency partner, reply with examples of your work and let’s talk.