Consulting Success Podcast

In the consulting world, unfortunately, there are times where people are being put into projects or roles that aren’t necessarily their best fit. That bothered Donna Brighton, founder of Brighton Leadership Group. Donna believes in two things - understanding people and placing them in positions where they can be their absolute best and doing the right thing for clients. Her goal is to help high im...

Life presents itself for most of us if we're open to it. For Michael Brenner, going out on his own and become a consultant literally had people and mentors pushing him in that direction. Michael is the CEO of his own company called Marketing Insider Group where they do marketing consulting, leadership coaching, and keynote speaking for conferences and brands all over the world. Michael says shifti...

It's not about how much money you make. It's about how much you keep, what you do with that, and how it impacts your life, your freedom, your flexibility, your family, your community, and so forth. This is what profitability consulting is all about according to Thor Conklin, founder and CEO of Peak Performance Group. Sometimes it's as simple as shifting around the mindset from the tactical side to...

When you’re selling yourself, a project, or a technology, at least from a technical perspective, firms want to find a technical implementer that can talk the tech talk but even more importantly be able to relate to those that write the checks. That's what Scott Eastin, owner of Eastin IT Security, would say is his big advantage. Scott can do the technical work, but more importantly, he can get up...

When people think of innovation, they're often looking externally at products and services, but there's so much innovation that can happen within companies. Oftentimes we create systems that we think have one outcome, but they can often have another or implications that we haven't seen. Workplace anthropologist and lead inventor Erin Hersey talks about her work as an innovation consultant. Erin go...

To productize consulting services and build a sellable company, the ultimate challenge is to try to find something that you offer which is truly unique to what you do. It's very likely that if you canvas your customers, there is one or two things that you do better than anybody else. The raw material is going to be customer insight. Bestselling author and founder of five companies John Warrillow s...

Recent buyer research proves that buyers respond much more to people who engage with them as leaders versus stereotypical sellers. Sales and leadership expert Deb Calvert thinks people should abandon those old stereotypical ways of selling that make them feel icky or pushy because that’s not selling; that’s manipulating and forcing. Manipulation not helpful to guide people to the place they want t...

If you're going to be successful in business, you have to be a salesperson. King of Sales Jeffrey Gitomer gives an account of his journey from selling Encyclopedia Britannica to consulting to writing and to creating a sales training empire. Jeffrey says consulting is a very easy way to begin to make money, but a very difficult way to continue to make money. He decided to stop and dabbled into writ...

Maybe it’s time to reconsider your marketing approach, particularly in your path to becoming a 7-figure consultant. While some people invest a lot of time into creating content or figuring out how to do advertising or speaking or going to a lot of trade shows, Barc Holmes of Coral Mountain Consulting has found an approach that works well for him. He is a master of not only building and nurturing,...

The people that I see that struggle the most are those that say to themselves,  “I want to see greater success. I want to see a greater result in my life and my business,”  but yet, they're not prepared to change anything that they're currently doing. They're just trying to do more of the same stuff. If the same stuff isn't getting you to where you want to go, then doing more of it is not going to...

Growing portfolio companies must focus on their sales, messaging, and go-to-market. Craig Wortmann of Sales Engine consulting reveals the key to sell more:  networking.  People may roll their eyes, but it’s true! Networking is all about prepping beforehand, being crisp, articulate, compelling, and magnetic in the moment, with unbelievable follow-through. Try studying the follow-up that companies h...

Whether you’re an executive, a VP, a director, or whatever your level is within an organization, in most cases, it's not about you. Everything that you do is about the company. Even though much of the success the company is seeing is directly connected to you, you somehow feel uncomfortable talking about your accomplishments and contribution. When you leave the corporate world and decide to become...

A lot of times, what we see for new product companies are you’ve got a couple of founders where one knows the product well because that started the idea, and then one knows how to market and sell the product. Once you have those two things together, the next piece is the ecommerce operations piece. Many times as companies grow quickly, the sales and marketing of those products quickly outpaces the...

Anytime you’re solving a business problem or anytime you’re offering a service, one of the best ways to figure out what you should be offering is to find out what the market wants and figure out what problems the buyer is having and focusing on that. Open innovation catalyst Scott Wagers has been trying to address that question over the course of his career. Scott helps put together and deliver pr...

Lead generation webinars are a powerful tool for generating high-ticket sales appointments. In recent years, building high-converting sales webinars and sales presentations have become a top priority for coaches, consultants, and solo entrepreneurs looking to sell their courses through specialists. One such company is The Webinar Agency, run by Joel Erway. He’s been in the game for nearly four yea...

What's the most productive time of your day? What would happen if you dedicated one hour of your most productive time to the most important person in the world every day? This is part of Bob Urichuk’s daily routine, and it has resulted in positive improvements to his business. He would visualize, doing anything to help him get where he wants to go at seven o'clock. Any behavior that gets recognize...

Sending hourly invoices to your client can get awkward really fast. Same thing for project-based consultants. But what if you can secure a contract that says, “The contract value is this much, but you pay me over the period of time”? And what if as a consultant, you can deploy the assets as you go? Well now you can do so by making the switch to subscription-based consulting. Jeb Blount, CEO of Sal...

If you aspire to make it as a Fortune 500 company, then you might want to consider corporate consulting to help you bridge that gap from strategy to execution. Luckily we have Suzanne Bates to guide potential leaders with her company, Bates Communications. Based in Boston, they work with leaders and teams become more effective in accomplishing their tasks – both as teams and as individuals. By inv...

When stakes are high, people turn to RSM Consulting’s Joe Decilveo, Jr. His expertise is frequently tapped in areas around shareholder litigation, regulatory investigations, plea agreements, commercial disputes and other potentially difficult situations. Joe joined RSM in 2011 with a small team of professionals to complement RSM’s Chicago-based bankruptcy and insolvency practice. Under his leaders...

You might be focused on growing your business, but what do you have planned after that? Maybe it’s time for you to start an exit strategy the BraveHeart way with Randy and Ellen Long to teach you how. Randy is CEO of Long Business Advisors, LLC, creator of the BraveHeart Planning Process, and author of the book, The BraveHeart Exit: 7 Steps to Creating Your Family Business Legacy. Ellen is a mento...

Roadblocks.  Every company wants them removed, but very few consultants can truly tell you how. Glenn Mattson is President of Mattson Enterprise Inc., a Sandler Training consulting firm specializing in sales and management productivity and effectiveness. Glenn’s work with Mattson Enterprise Inc. in conducting public and private workshops, corporate programs, and one-on-one strategic sessions...

When you put yourself in your client’s shoes, you’ll understand that the resistance to change comes from their fear of the unknown. They have attached themselves to practices that have been serving them well in the past but isn’t working for them in the present. She explains that this situation is very common that it has become the norm rather than the exception. As a consultant during these situa...

Looking into what we really think, how we make decisions, and what gets us to act keep us in check. This is very crucial to know because what drives us as individuals is indicative of what is important to us and the direction that we want to take our business. This could also help you really focus on the few things that matter instead of focusing on everything and anything that's out there, and wo...

As a consultant, your goal is to make connections and help clients realize that they can trust you to make the changes their company needs to make. This often means that you will be consulting through resistance. Kelly Roach came into the business of consulting by always hearing people around her saying “Who does this kid think she is, coming in here and telling us what we need to do?” Instead of...

One of the barriers in a consulting firm is having every form of competition and figuring out how to reinvent yourself to stand out from the crowd. Having the mindset of reinventing yourself plays an integral role when you are a solo consultant because it helps you provide different types of value to clients. President and Managing Director of North Highland, Alex Bombeck, has always believed that...