How can you take your skills and expertise and package and present it to become a successful consultant? There are proven time-tested principles, strategies, tactics and best-practices the most successful consultants use to start, run and grow their consulting business. Consulting Success teaches you what they are. In this book you'll learn: - How to position yourself as a leading expert and authority in your marketplace - Effective marketing and branding materials that get the attention of your ideal clients - Strategies to increase your fees and earn more with every project - The proposal template that has generated millions of dollars in consulting engagements - How to develop a pipeline of business and attract ideal clients - Productivity secrets for consultants including how to get more done in one week than most people do in a month - And much, much more

This book takes the IT professional through all the key issues which have to be understood and explains how to optimize your chances of developing a long-term IT consulting business of your own. This practical book explains what is involved in setting up your own business as an IT Consultant. It explains the opportunities involved and gives practical advice as to how to take advantage of them. The book looks at the full range of issues concerned with getting started and maintaining your business and gives practical guidelines about how to face the many challenges which you will encounter if you leave your job and set up on your own. Amongst the many issues involved this book specifically addresses:how to find clients; how to get more business and the opportunities areas available; how to price your services; the funding you will require; how to plan your consulting assignments And much more ...

"If more business books were as useful, concise, and just plain fun to read as THE MCKINSEY WAY, the business world would be a better place." --Julie Bick, best-selling author of ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW IN BUSINESS I LEARNED AT MICROSOFT. "Enlivened by witty anecdotes, THE MCKINSEY WAY contains valuable lessons on widely diverse topics such as marketing, interviewing, team-building, and brainstorming." --Paul H. Zipkin, Vice-Dean, The Fuqua School of Business It's been called "a breeding ground for gurus." McKinsey & Company is the gold-standard consulting firm whose alumni include titans such as "In Search of Excellence" author Tom Peters, Harvey Golub of American Express, and Japan's Kenichi Ohmae. When Fortune 100 corporations are stymied, it's the "McKinsey-ites" whom they call for help. In THE MCKINSEY WAY, former McKinsey associate Ethan Rasiel lifts the veil to show you how the secretive McKinsey works its magic, and helps you emulate the firm's well-honed practices in problem solving, communication, and management. He shows you how McKinsey-ites think about business problems and how they work at solving them, explaining the way McKinsey approaches every aspect of a task: How McKinsey recruits and molds its elite consultants; How to "sell without selling"; How to use facts, not fear them; Techniques to jump-start research and make brainstorming more productive; How to build and keep a team at the top its game; Powerful presentation methods, including the famous waterfall chart, rarely seen outside McKinsey; How to get ultimate "buy-in" to your findings; Survival tips for working in high-pressure organizations. Both a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most admired and secretive companies in the business world and a toolkit of problem-solving techniques without peer, THE MCKINSEY WAY is fascinating reading that empowers every business decision maker to become a better strategic player in any organization.

This deeply insightful guide to understanding what clients really want is “an indispensable resource for consultants” (Keith Ferrazzi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Never Eat Alone). Independent consulting is a potentially lucrative enterprise—but the reality seldom matches the dream. Most solo consultants and boutique consulting firms are perpetually within six months of bankruptcy due to the sputtering unreliability of their new business engines. The problem, according to international consulting expert David A. Fields, is twofold: 1) lack of a consistent, proven plan, and 2) fundamental misunderstanding about what clients want in a consultant. Fields, who has helped hundreds of consultants and boutique firms worldwide build profitable, sustainable practices, replaces the typical consultant’s mindset of emphasizing expertise and differentiated processes with a focus on building relationships, engendering trust, and solving clients’ existing problems. In The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients, Fields synthesizes his decades of experience into a step-by-step approach to winning more projects from more clients at higher fees. From nuts-and-bolts business advice and tactics to a deeply insightful breakdown of the human side of a very human profession, Fields, named one of Advertising Age magazine’s “Marketing Top 100,” delivers a comprehensive guidebook that is at once highly approachable and satisfyingly detailed. “If I could have just one book on client strategy, this book would be it.” —Marshall Goldsmith, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Triggers

Having outstanding Technical Skills alone is not enough to guarantee success as a consultant. In order to reach the highest levels of the consulting profession, consultants must also have outstanding interpersonal skills. Developing those Soft Skills will help a good consultant become a great consultant! The goal of this book is to help people develop those interpersonal skills. This book will teach readers how to avoid making errors that will diminish their business reputations and it will do it in a way that is both entertaining as well as informative. The lessons learned in this book will help consultants become as effective as possible..

If you want to become a better consultant or are seeking to learn more about entering the consulting field, this guidebook offers the perfect starting point. Whether youre considering your options after college, looking to switch careers or already working at a consulting firm, youll find a trove of invaluable information here. You can learn how to develop interpersonal skills that can help you succeed; improve your project management skills; approach the problem-solving process; present recommendations; and communicate clearly. Not everyone succeeds as a consultant, but its not because they arent smart enough. It usually boils down to a misunderstanding of the consulting rolebeing unaware of what to do and when to do it. In this business, timing can mean everything. Discover tips and strategies that can help you succeed as a consultant in this guide to consulting essentials. Its time to separate yourself from competitors and further your career with The Consulting Way.

Delivers the essential practical skills needed to consult and make sharp, well prepared interactions in a wide range of business situations This comprehensive handbook covers the fundamental skills and attitudes required by successful consultants from novice to practitioner level, irrespective of their specialist area. It untangles the key variables present in any consulting service and introduces practical ways to improve their effectiveness based upon the author's experience of helping consulting organisations to develop and excel in the marketplace. The book explores consulting ‘from the ground up' steering away from theory and focusing instead on practical application, providing a solid platform upon which to build further domain-specific competence. The Consultant's Handbook provides: An understanding of the key variables that can be addressed in order to improve one's own consulting performance A set of simple practices that can be implemented with immediate benefit to the reader Practical insight into day-to-day real life consulting interactions Confidence to implement the new ideas and approaches