Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi is often credited with saying, “A tie is like kissing your sister.” Now, for all I know, his sister was hot. But if you interpret the quote the traditional way,  I’d suggest it could also be applied to consulting. While a good consulting job is better than not working, it’s still less than fulfilling.

“Playing the game is fine, but to win, you need a strategy and a plan.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like helping others to build their companies. And if they’re willing to pay me well to help them do it, consulting is not a bad thing. BUT, I don’t fool myself into thinking that consulting is an end. For most people, I believe, it should be a means to an end.

The Problems of Being a Consultant

There are two basic problems with consulting. First, all you have to sell is your time, and that’s finite. So all you have to leverage is your hourly fee. Which is limited by the market. So to start with, your business model is restricted. Second, if you’re really effective, your client benefits much more than you do. I’m all about adding value to my clients, but I’m much more excited about doing it when it’s adding equal value to my business.

The New Normal

This topic is more important than ever because the “new normal” business environment is turning more and more employees into consultants.

So, if you provide consulting services, should you stop? Or, if you’re thinking about becoming a consultant, should you avoid it? Not necessarily. But you have a decision to make about your business. Are you in business to support yourself, or to create a valuable business? There’s nothing wrong with consulting to pay the bills and, if you’re good and your area of expertise is unique, you can enjoy a nice lifestyle. If, however, that is your business plan, quit reading about entrepreneurs who started businesses then sold them for millions and dreaming about the day.

Their financial success came from creating a business that had intrinsic value. Your consulting practice doesn’t, but it could if consulting is a means to an end, and that end is to create sustainable value that is bigger than you. How do you do that?

Suggestions to Create Value in Your Consulting Business

Following are three suggestions to help you build value that is intrinsic to the business:

1. Productize—Let’s say you’re a training consultant who specializes in leadership development. You evaluate a client’s needs, customize your program, and train and consult to make your client’s leaders more effective. Then you go try to find another assignment and hope the first client calls you again in the future because you did such a good job in the past. Instead, why not create a series of additional products that your clients can buy before, during and after your consulting assignment? Products that you create once, occasionally update, and well hundreds of times with little additional time requirement on your part. Products like a series of three online courses that the leaders take to reinforce what you presented, or that are advanced (Leading Through Crisis) or functionally specific (Sales Leadership).
2. Leverage others’ time—Bring other professionals into your consulting assignments and bill for more than you pay. This allows you to sell more than just your own inventory of time. In most cases you don’t have to increase the other consultants’ hourly rate; you can get your share by having them lower their billing rate to you by the amount saved in sales and marketing time because you found the assignment for them. The other professionals can be functional experts with deeper expertise than you in their specialty, thus increasing the value you bring to the client. Or they can operate at a different level; as an example, allowing you to work with the C-level and VP-level and your associate to handle the directors and managers. This strategy can increase the value of your consulting practice, but it creates less intrinsic value than the other two ideas. Think of it as helping you create a super-consulting practice.
3. Consult to find opportunity—Good business ideas fill an existing critical need shared by a group of buyers. It’s almost impossible to know what critical needs exist if you’re not in the market talking to buyers. Consulting gives you a unique opportunity to get detailed exposure to many different industries and niches. And if you have a conscious strategy of consulting as a means to identify business opportunities, then you’ll spot them rather than walk right past them. I’m not talking about learning your client’s business then stealing their opportunities. Rather, I’m talking about noticing opportunities in areas that are related to your client’s business but not relevant to your client’s mission. This strategy can allow you to start companion businesses to your consulting practice that are typically vertical, often very niche, but grow rapidly because they are filling an existing, high priority need.

So, go forth and consult. But be intentional about why you are doing it and where you want it to take you.

Tom Brooksher is founder and CEO of Zipline Performance Group. Zipline provides training and consulting services to help other companies improve their performance as a strategy to find opportunities to create products and identify other opportunities. Brooksher has more than 30 years experience starting companies and launching new products, primarily in the business-to-business market. http://www.ziplineperformance.com

Tags: Business, Career Path, consulting, intrinsic value, management, strategy