Mountains of Arizona
Cloudy 69 Degrees
4:44 p.m.
When you’re selling ideas to the world, there’s a smart way to do it and a not so smart way.
I tried the latter for years until I wised up.
Let’s say you’re a consultant and you want to stop getting paid ONLY for doing and you want to start getting paid for thinking.
This is an admirable pursuit and one I started working on years ago.
Most consultants give the thinking part of their craft away in an effort to win the doing part of the business.
They most commonly give away what is actually the most valuable part in a form commonly referred to as a PROPOSAL.
I have a different label for this: Free Consulting.
It’s a great gig if you can get it, and it’s an easy sell…but it’s not sustainable.
So how do you start getting rewarded for thinking?
Well, put yourself in the shoes of the client.
There aren’t too many clients who will jump at an offer stated like this:
“I really don’t know the best course of action here. So if you pay me for my strategy, then I’ll sit down and figure out what I recommend for you to do.”
This is not attractive at all. In fact, it usually confuses the hell out of someone who is coming to you for GUIDANCE.
When you make it clear you have nothing specific to offer in that department, you kill any confidence they had in you.
The smarter thing is to package up the RESULT they receive once they hire you to do your thinking.
There IS a benefit to that. And you can articulate that long before you even know what your specific recommendations will be.
This is YOUR work to do as the business owner. If you get the package right, the selling takes care of itself.
If you get the package WRONG, you just confuse people.