Million Dollar Consulting 5E
Last read July 11, 2025
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36 highlights.
Once you walk away from a successful engagement, the client’s “state” should be better than it was when you got there, ideally in conjunction with previously determined and agreed-upon objectives (more about that later).
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Great consultants teach others how to do what they do and do not create codependencies. Counterintuitively, the more intellectual property you transfer, the more the client will value you.
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Here are the traits of professional experts who consult: • They have content knowledge (how to make glass) or process knowledge (how to make decisions) that can be transferred to their clients. • They can speak conversationally and easily about their value. • They never “sell” or “pitch,” but rather focus on contributing and offering value to improve the client’s condition.2 • They continually expand their expertise through the development of additional intellectual property, experiences, and experimentation. • They charge based on value, never by a time unit, head count, or boxes of materials.
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The analogy is that while building revenues is important, reducing labor intensity is just as important. The reason is that too many people are racing around generating money while eroding their wealth. They are making money but losing time.
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the secret to Million Dollar Consulting as a metaphor is that you have to continually work smarter, not harder.
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The bottom of the list is highly tactical, the top highly strategic. The key is to minimize labor while maximizing fees. Trusted advisors do that the best.
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You require three things to be successful in this business: • Passion. You must love what you do. • Competency. You must be good at what you do. • Need. You must identify or create client need.
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Essentially, the great careers in consulting are built around what you love to do and are great at doing.
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here:
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Buying lists for a few pennies per name from people overseas may seem like a bargain, but it is not, for two reasons: The first reason is that cold-calling doesn’t work. But the second is that such lists are never useful in terms of your ideal buyers.
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position:
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I call this approach market gravity. The idea is to create a gravitational pull that compels your ideal buyers to seek you out.
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Radio and TV interviews. Start with local talk radio shows and cable television and work your way up to network affiliates and syndicated shows. Write to the producer (not host or talent) and suggest the benefits for the show’s audience.
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Expertise: Some market gravity is passive (listings) and some is active (referrals). The key is to constantly review your market gravity for the most effective components and exploit them.
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Keep these numbers in mind: • If you see two economic buyers a week on average, that’s 100 a year. • If half become seriously interested, you have 50 quality leads.
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If half of those agree to see a proposal, that’s 25 proposals. • If half of your proposals are accepted (and you’ll see later that it should be 80 percent), then you have 12 pieces of business. • If your average sale is $50,000, you have a $600,000 year. If it’s $100,000, you have a $1.2 million year.
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Expertise: The accelerant curve does not arise by default. It must be consciously planned and examined for adjustment as you become more successful.
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Brand creation begins with the three components we discussed earlier: passion, competency, and market need.
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The starting point is your value proposition (see “Where Do You Begin?” in Chapter 1), in which you state your passion for helping clients improve their condition. 2. The next step is your sweet spot (Figure 1-5), where you identify what you are great at doing and the few, key components surrounding it. 3. Carve away everything else and create your David, the artwork of your career, based on those two factors. 4. Find your ideal buyers (Figure 1-4) for that value and competency. Remember that quality is more important than quantity. 5. Use market gravity (Figure 2-1) to attract those buyers to you, through mechanisms appropriate for them and at which you excel. 6. Place them on your Accelerant Curve (Figure 2-2) with the intent of moving them through brand, trust, and “bounce factors” toward your vault with the benefits to you of high fee, low labor intensity, and high perceived intimacy.
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“I’d like to be able to daydream, but I keep getting distracted.”
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We think “easy money” is always “safe money,” but it rarely is. The smaller the project, the more demanding the client. The more cash is tight, the more insistence on a huge ROI on your modest fee.
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We think the project is easy. It rarely is. These buyers are looking for a “magic bullet,”
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We fear we may never acquire another piece of business.
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We see others do something that seems appropriate for us.
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The “squirrel” you see is seldom relevant to your day, is almost impossible to catch, and in the long run actually tastes awful.
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We tend to use client generically. When I ask people who their ideal buyer is, they tell me “General Electric,” or “utilities,” or defense contractors. These aren’t buyers, they are buildings. An economic buyer is a person who has the ability to write a check (have a check issued) for your value without the approval of anyone else.
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Thus, your ideal buyer may be someone in a large company with P&L responsibility, or the executive director of a nonprofit, or the owner of a small business. Those are people whose needs can be discovered, created, and addressed.
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With your existing economic buyers, you should always be striving for the breakthrough relationship. This is characterized by: • You and the buyer immediately disclosing information that has a material bearing on the success of the project (e.g., learning that a key person is being courted by a rival, or that the board is considering a divestiture). • The buyer asking your opinion on key decisions and following your advice. • The rejection and overcoming of complaints about the project (and, often, you) from those threatened by it. • Mutual flexibility in deviating from a prescribed course to take advantage of opportunity and/or make better use of time and expertise.
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here’s how to accelerate the positive, trusting relationship that existing buyers already have with you: • Create a peer-to-peer dynamic. Don’t appear as a supplicant of the buyer, and don’t be obsequious. • Always keep in mind that you are there to offer value, not to “take” anything. You are not “selling” in the sense of seeking money, but “offering” in the sense of an equal transaction, dramatic improvement, and equitable compensation. • Gauge the other person’s sense of speed. I’m not talking about personality profiles, which are notoriously ineffective (we are far too complex to be branded a “green” or “low Z” or “NINNY”). If the buyer wants to go fast (“What can you do for me?”), go fast. If the buyer wants to move slowly (“Tell me about yourself”), move slowly. • Guide the conversation. Remember the boat rides for children in the amusement parks? The boats seemed steerable, but they were actually guided by the current and kept oriented by the nearby walls. They would always arrive at the intended destination. Your conversation should be the same with the buyers, allowing for twists and turns, but always directed by your “current and walls” toward your destination of trust, conceptual agreement, and a proposal. • Show confidence. You must exhibit the confidence in yourself and conviction needed to convince the other party that you’re strong and competent. You can’t be afraid to make statements such as: “I know I can help you.” “You and I are meeting at precisely the right time.” “I have better means of approaching this than what you’ve tried in the past.” “Let me suggest how we can best work together.” • Push back when appropriate. You can’t seem to be “chasing money” or too readily agreeing. There is a reason the buyer is taking the time to talk to you, and it’s because he or she has a need (or at least a “want”) that is unmet, and there is a suspicion that you may have the answer. However, the buyer’s doubts will seldom be met by your blanket agreement (or else the issue would long ago have been resolved). Thus, logically, what’s required is someone suggesting that the buyer’s alternative is not the best, his or her evaluation not valid, his or her suppositions not based on empirical evidence.
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It’s important to regard your existing buyer, in most cases, as a prospect as well. The credibility challenge here is not in convincing the buyer you can be of help—presumably, you’ve already demonstrated that—but in convincing the buyer that you can be of help in additional areas and dimensions.
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The sequence in the process of acquiring business looks like this: Project Launch Proposal Accepted Conceptual Agreement Need Identification Issues Discussion Trusting Relationship Determination of True Buyer Initial Meeting Leads
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You need sufficient trust with a nonbuyer to be directed to the true buyer, but you need significant trust with the true buyer to initiate a discussion of issues.
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The lesson here is that you must walk the talk and talk the walk. Always be on time. Never gossip. Don’t cut corners. Never exaggerate what you can accomplish. Use evidence and observed behavior, not supposition or third-party claims.
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You can’t be a supplicant or appear obsequious. You should appear as a peer of the buyer. That means your examples should be relevant to his or her level and situation, and your frames of reference should be appropriate for the industry.
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To control the conversation, you also need to interrupt the buyer. That’s right, interrupt. Otherwise, with the best of intentions, polite discourse could take you to territories uncharted and far removed from your intended destination.
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May I summarize what you’ve been saying, to make sure I’m on the right track?
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