61. Exclusive Q&A Session from our Business Consulting Network

Exclusive Q&A Session from our Business Consulting Network [Everything Business Consulting EP 61]

Everything Business Consulting is giving you access to a Q&A session normally exclusively for our Business Consulting Network.

In this episode, we dive into Questions from some of our newest Business Consultants.

We'd love to hear your feedback on this episode - it's something we've had to do because of a local lock-down, but maybe it's a good thing? Let us know!

Transcript

Julius: Hello, and welcome to Everything Business Consulting, a podcast dedicated to creating business consulting success. Today's episode is quite different to normal because we've been locked down. We've been locked down and kept away from each other here in Auckland, New Zealand, thanks to COVID. My co-host David and I can not meet in-person to create an episode, but I thought that it would be a great opportunity to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes at a ConsultX Q & A Webinar.

Now, this happens once a week where we answer the questions of our members within our consulting network, and this is all to help them achieve success. Now, before we get into that, here's a quick word about ConsultX. Should the average person be allowed to run a business? David today we're going to dissect and decide, perhaps, whether the average person should be allowed to run a business. And what a typical business owner looks like. 

David: Welcome to Everything Business Consulting, a podcast dedicated to business consulting success. It's for those of you who already are a business consultant and you want to improve your skills, are an accountant and want to offer consulting services, or you may be an ex-corporate who wants to get out of the rat race and become a self-employed business consultant, or you may have owned a business before and you now want to use the skills that you've learned to help others in business. I'm David Thexton.

Julius: And I'm Julius Bloem. 

David: Everything Business Consulting is brought to you by ConsultX, a global business consulting company that has everything you require to become a successful business consultant or offer consulting services in your existing professional firm. If you'd like to find out more, visit consultx.com. 

Julius: I hope you are ready for the Q & A section of this podcast. Now, this is taken directly from a network Q & A webinar like I said before, and I'm sure there'll be a ton of value within this. After you've listened, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this episode, so please reach out to us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube, just search ConsultX HQ, and leave a comment or send us a message. 

Now before we start, we don't normally share this kind of content with just anyone it's normally just for people that are a part of our network, but today the Everything Business Consulting show must go on, so listen all ears as we get into it.

The first question we have David, is what is the best way to engage team members and coming up with tasks and completing them? 

David: Well, as you're building the business plan, you're going to have the team members absolutely fully involved in building the plan itself. Remember we've always said that the answer's always in the room and we're referring to the team members and the owner.

So as you're going through and you're working with the team members and probably week two, week three, week four, you'll get to know who they are, what they know, what they do. You'll have a list of their roles and responsibilities. So you'll know naturally who does what, and you'll know who to delegate the tasks to, and to work with them and to ask where they think the completion date is for the particular task.

So that's how you engage them. Like, remember the first thing that you do with the team members is you, whilst you're doing the business plan, the first thing you do is to build a business vision for the business. And they've all got an input in that, so it's their business plan. It's not just the owners or the businesses, so that's how you engage them.

 If they're good employees and if they're good team members, then you should have no problem doing this at all. Julius. 

Julius: David, I would also add to that, typically people would like to own their ideas. And so if someone's coming up with an idea or something that you're going to implement in the business plan, often, not always, but often the other person that you would get to carry out their particular task and they've got more buy-in to it.

So they're more likely actually to follow through and do this without you having to push them quite as much. Sometimes you still need to motivate people and check up on them and that sort of stuff. But if you can get the person, the ideas person, or sometimes you get a situation where someone comes up with an idea and then the person who might be the natural person to do that task jumps on board. And says, that's a fantastic idea then, you know that person's already got buy-in to do that task. 

David: That's correct. And what you'll find in most businesses that you start working with, you'll find that the roles and responsibilities will be loose and sloppy. You'll find that the management of them, the delegation of tasks, even the delegation and even their own roles and responsibilities, everything will be slack, slack, slack, all the way through and this'll be the first time that they've ever been involved with something that involves so much precision because if this job wasn't done, the next job can't be done and the next job can't be done and we're working on a time continuum towards achieving milestones and goals. 

So, so yeah, it'll be pretty obvious in these meetings that the people on the team are going to have to pull their socks up and start contributing more.

Julius: Can we look at the second half of that question, and that is what's the best way to get these team members to complete the questions or tasks rather than.

David: Well by, delegating it to them and getting their commitment to achieving that particular task by a certain date. This is what I was meaning is they're not used to this. The owner would rockin in his Rolls Royce in the morning and leave at about two o'clock and the place will be running itself. But if a company runs itself without any strong management, then you going to end up with a mediocre company and that's not what the owner wants. So, so yeah. So it's your job, you're the taskmaster, so to speak. And it's your job to make sure these tasks get done.

Julius: Fantastic, now, the next question we have is how can you set milestones where you can deliver on your client expectations? And the purpose for that is to keep the client for the long term, past 12 to 18 months.

David: Quite simple, Julius, the way we do that is it, once you set a five-year plan and you put your milestones in place, and then you've done your initial set of tasks, right at the very start and you start the process going, when you get to the end of the first year, what you do is you forecast out another year.

So you're always between four and five years in advance. And if you do a good job and build a good relationship with the owner of the business and the team to a certain extent, but mainly the owner of the business. If you do a good job there, then it will just continue on forever, really until something happens that causes the relationship to end.

It might be selling the business, it might be a whole variety of things. Some tragedies that can go on every now and then, do and stuff like that, so yeah. So always push it out a year when you get to the end of year one, push it out another year. So it's always between four and five years in length. 

Julius: We did quite a good podcast on goal-setting David, and I think quite a good way to think about this is, once you've got this plan, business plan, where you are aiming for the vision, which is five years in the future like you've talked about it. Then you basically want to set your milestones, these are big accomplishments, that you probably want to have that sort of in there the six to 12-month range.

David: Yeah. 

Julius: So you're kind of breaking down the vision into smaller chunks and then that's where you pick the tasks out of. So you've got these small steps, which are the tasks to these more larger accomplishments, these milestones, that you've broken down from the ultimate vision. And you see it if you just keep extending that out a little bit, basically you just keep chasing the carrot as you're climbing the mountain.

David: Yep, that's right, yep. Carrot and stick. But the owners, see as soon as you get to probably six months in, and you have your one-on-one meeting with the owners, you'll be able to show them what you as a group have accomplished in those first six months. And he'll be blown away. He or she will be blown away because he won't have expected that.

He's giving you all this trust at the start and taking you on, and now you're starting to repay him. And that's why we have that monthly one-on-one meeting with the owners to be able to review what we've accomplished on a monthly basis. 

Julius: But that's a really good point, David, definitely take the time to kind of remind and indulge the business owner in what you've been able to achieve because, before you came along, they weren't really getting anywhere or they probably weren't getting anywhere fast. And now that you've got a lot more focus and you've got a plan and all this sort of stuff that you're there to do, you actually get to make some serious headway. 

So just make sure he doesn't forget that. And he remembers the value that you're providing. And if you can continually be aiming for the future and showing them where you're getting, then there's no reason why he's not going to continue the engagement past 12 to 18 months. What's the longest in the network now? 

David: Up to 11 years now.

Julius: 11 years. So, you know, that just shows the power that if you do everything right, you can keep business owners and keep clients on for the absolute long-term.

Our next question David, is what ideas are other consultants using for their 60 second BNI scripts? 

David: Well, I'm going to hand that back to you because you've been using those and reviewing those over the last few days. So it's probably best for you to answer. 

Julius: Yep, fantastic, David. There is quite a bit of information in the ConsultX resources about BNI, the 60-second scripts, and also the 10 minutes sort of scripts, and there's a few presentations in there. 

 What we're going to do in the near future is we're going to work on that a little bit, and we're going to do a full presentation, over the course of about an hour, for all of the people in our network with really specific and in-depth information, but I just want to cover a few quick key points from the research that David has said I have been doing. 

And my personal favorite, when you've only got a short timeframe, or even when you're doing a larger sort of keynote speech type thing is to use it technique called engage, explain and challenge. So this is basically a format where you want to do something to get the attention of whoever it is you're talking to, you could do something like you could shock them, to begin with, you could ask them a rhetorical question to get them thinking, something about, are you making the profit that you want to be making out of your business? And everyone's looking around the room going, not really. And, immediately they're engaged, and then you want to use probably 40-seconds of your 60-second time slot to explain what it is you do.

You work with business owners over the long term to improve profit, growth, and business value. And expand on that a little bit and then end with a challenge. So you've given them something to chew on at the start, either something that's going to shock them or I guess lay the foundation by getting them to think about it and then set a challenge at the end where you ask them to either come talk to you, or engage with you in some way, or to challenge them to have a look at their profit, whatever it is you're sort of set as the foundation of the speech.

 So they basically take action upon it, and that's just going to sort of set the foundation and the relationship. That's what I would do for that. Now, I have got a little list here in front of me, of five different ideas that other people have used from the network before. So in the resources as well, you'll find we've got a whole lot of DL flyers, and these are basically all based on that.

So this particular consultant who did a lot of BNI networking has used flyers, to great avail, I guess. And he gives everyone a flyer at the end of the meeting or during the meeting, but he makes his 60-second pitch based on what he's talking about. So the first one he's done is cash flow problems, so he's obviously talked about cash flow problems for a minute.

And then in the next BNI meeting, he's talked about, are you working blind? Do you not know what you're working towards? Do you not have a vision? All of that kind of stuff. The third one was is your business headed for the rocks? This is obviously when someone's in a slightly challenging situation.

The fourth is, are you happy with how your business is progressing? And the fifth is, are you thinking about retiring? So that's kind of coming from every single different angle. He's done them all on different weeks. He's given everyone a flyer about it so they can take it away and keep thinking about it.

And that's just a great example of using different media in different ways of communicating with different people and constantly being in their face. So, that's a fantastic, I think, thing to do so the BNI scripts, there was a lot out there already in ConsultX, but I'm just waiting for a little bit of feedback from a few consultants who are going to give me their scripts.

And then we're going to do a very specific, a BNI presentation for you all to be able to use that in your day-to-day consulting. David, our next question is how can I locate and get in front of higher net worth businesses that can afford significant fees? Now, before you start, I will just remind you that this is a two-part question where I actually asked the consultant for a little bit more information, but for now, we'll just answer this. How do I locate and get in front of high net worth businesses that can afford significant fees? 

David: Thank you, Julius. Well, that's completely up to the consultant because they're outthere, and you can tell, and you'll hear them on the radio and TV and you'll know about them. And, most people who have lived in their local area for all of their lives, will know who the bigger companies are and those sorts of things.

And we have people around the world who only want to work with big businesses and they find them, as I said though, they're generally marketing heavily or advertising heavily and, you see their trucks and cars and vans around, and you might see them in the supermarket or petrol stations and things like that.

And they're just out there and you can tell. So, those are the ones that, I can tell you they take longer to get because big, big companies, like a hundred million-plus, you need to go to the board of directors and there's probably a chairman and you've probably got to sort of fight your way through various levels to get to the decision-maker.

 The CEO, sometimes the CEO is the guy that founded the business and he's still running the business and everything. So it takes longer, but they're better because they pay more things like that. So that's how you get in front of them. We can't do anything from our end for you, except to tell you that you'll automatically know who the bigger ones are when you look at their premises when you look at where they are in the market and things like that. Julius. 

Julius: Okay, David, we'll move on to the next part of the question. And I really wanted to dig down with this consultant because I thought there was a little bit more going on than just the first question.

And this is what I got as I guess a response in another question. So I think the main issue is, the conversation with the owner of this size of business, I'm looking at, it probably stems from a lack of confidence and knowledge. Do I possess the needed skillset to render the value of what I'm looking to charge?

Now, before you answer that, I'd just like to say, I appreciate the honesty in this because for us to be able to help, we need people to be honest and tell us actually what's going on. 

David: Yeah. 

Julius: David. 

David: Thanks. Well, the thing is the only asset that we cannot give you is, we can give you knowledge, but we can't give you confidence. We can't give you motivation. We can't give you enthusiasm. We can make you aware of it, that you need to have it, but these are things that you need to possess yourself. Now from a confidence point of view, I wouldn't even worry about that. Well, you have the best system in the world. And if you follow it, as we teach it and train it, then you will blow away the client, no matter what size business he or she has, you'll absolutely impress them and blow them away.

If you're a younger person, you still will because you're younger and they'll go, boy, how does this person know about all this kind of stuff, but you do because you've learned it through us. So if you honestly feel that you lack the confidence, passion, motivation, and enthusiasm, then you need to do some other form of training.

Julius can tell you in a minute about Toastmasters, which he still goes to, and that is very good for building up your speaking confidence and, annual performance and all those sorts of things in front of groups. I remember a long, long time ago I went to Toastmasters. The Lions Club had their international conference in New Zealand and they had 5,000 Lion's Members from all over the world.

 They're kind of a charity club around the world, and I and another guy had to do a 30-minute speech each. And so I went to Toastmasters for about two months before, I said I'd never spoken to that many people before, and it helped me absolute heaps. And Julius can talk about that. So that'll help you.

But there's plenty of books out there. You just could have gone to Amazon and just type in a confidence, type in enthusiasm, type in those sorts of words, and start learning. There might be some programs there, some recorded programs. There might be a podcast that's on confidence, that's on passion and motivation and enthusiasm.

So much stuff out there which will cost you almost nothing. But as I said, we can't give it to you. We can't give you an injection for it, or a tablet, it's something that comes from you. All we can give you is the best system in the world, that we have worked on for as you know, 16 years now. So, that's where we come in. Do you want to talk about Toastmasters for a minute?

Julius: Before I do that, I'll just add to what you've said. So the way that I would like to think about this is, the question here is, do I possess the needed skillset? Well, I can't exactly answer that, but I can say that if you're using the ConsultX system, you have the system that you need. And then there's a sort of question around knowledge and as a consult, you don't have to know absolutely everything. You just need to know where to look, and we've got so much information in ConsultX that you can either look there, you can ask us in these weekly Q and A's. And the other thing to remember is that, in this day and age, information is so cheap, and in so many instances it's actually free.

So you don't have a lack of a system, you don't have a lack or an inability to get the information that you need. So this really just comes down to you being able to take action and being confident. Now talking about Toastmasters, it's kind of specifically about public speaking, but there are so many other facets to it that you learn about.

One of the main things that people kind of find after doing Toastmasters for even a month or two, is that their confidence and being able to converse and talk to other people just goes through the roof. So I would highly highly recommend that. Now I know a lot of places around the world are in certain types of lockdown at the moment or people aren't meeting face to face.

Most local Toastmasters clubs are now meeting online. And if they're not, I actually have access to an online specific Toastmasters who meet once a week and they meet for an hour. And the specific purpose of that club is to get people really good at meeting people online.

So there are a lot of things that you learn from them that they can teach you that online specific. So if, I'll put that in the notes underneath this presentation, but this let me know and reach out to me if you're going to join that and I'll make I jump on at the same time as you, because I've found that really to be transformational and something that is kind of, took my consulting and my ability to talk with confidence to business owners, to the next level, so I would highly, highly recommend that. 

Our next question is, do clients mind paying comparable fees for online as opposed to in-person?

David: Thanks, Julius, it's a good question. It's really, it's all about the results. It's not whether it's online or offline. It's all about achieving results for the client.

What I can say is that online is more profitable for you because you're not traveling when you're in a face-to-face meeting, there's coffee and tea, and how's the weather and how's your, how's your, how's Jimmy who's playing rugby for his school and all these sorts of things. And although that's good, I'm not, although a bit of that still goes on when you're online.

 It does very much cut out the cost of traveling and the time of traveling. And you can cut to the chase a lot quicker and you can get a lot more done. And they appreciate that as well because, with the clients that I had, I do remember with about half of them, there was always a concern when we had the team meeting because the cost of it.

Do you imagine three, four people at a team meeting plus the owner, times that by one or two hours and some owners get a bit techy, bit annoyed, that it's costing every time I have a meeting, it's costing me $500, or whatever their hourly rates work out to be. So, yeah it's accepted today.

 Unfortunately, the COVID has changed the way we do business around the world. And we have to keep up with the play really and keep up with the trend that's going on. And, so yes, they, and to my knowledge, they don't mind paying comparable fees for online as opposed to being in person. They actually benefit from it as much as we do, Julius. 

Julius: Yeah, I believe that people are paying for the value that you're giving them and you're not giving them any less value if it's online. You need to make sure that they're aware of that they're getting fantastic value in the exact same way you would with a normal client that you're meeting with in person, you want to be reminding them of the success and the value that they're getting out of your relationship.

So it basically works in the exact same way as a normal relationship. I did have another thought on that and it's escaping my mind right now. So I'll come back to that if I do remember that, but I'll move on to the next question for now. Now our next question, this is a bit of a big question, but basically, it boils down to if I'm in a social situation and I'm talking about what I do, can I use something more than just the standard elevator pitch? I don't want to, I guess this person doesn't want to be sort of left with a very short answer when someone asks, what do you do? So David, if I was meeting you in a social situation, how would you explain what you did? 

David: Well, firstly, I would start with the elevator pitch because you don't know what to say next until they say something to you after you've told them the elevator pitch. So there could be, it could be a hundred different responses to, I work with business owners to improve their profit, growth, and business value.

And they'll say, come back and say maybe how do you exactly do that? Or I've been running this business for 10 years and I thought I was running it pretty well. And any question you can possibly imagine, they'll come back with, so you need to be ready for that, but you can go into a bit more detail. You could start finding out whether they've got a business plan? How they put the business plan together? Do they have a monthly team meeting? Are they producing regular monthly key performance indicators and financial results? And on and on and on, there's just a hundred different ways you can do it. But the critical thing is what they come back to you, what their answer is or their question is after you give them the elevator pitch because that'll tell you where to go next. And then they're saying, can you go in a bit more detail other than your elevator pitch really? 

Julius: And would it change at all if this person wasn't a business owner, or if you were talking to an employee? 

David: Yes, in some cases it would be, it might be dumbed down a little bit because it might be an employee, who's a general manager and he wants to get somebody in to help the business.

So you've got to sell him and to be able to get to the CEO or the owner of the business to be able to then take the benefits forward. So, it will be slightly differed, yes, of course. 

Julius: And what would you say to someone who's just working in the business? 

David: Okay, not the owner? 

Julius: Not the owner, because we do know this can be a really good source of referrals.

David: You'd say, you talk about what firstly, the elevator pitch. And then you'd say we work with businesses, and the most important thing we do is we use things like a SWOT analysis and the key people in the management team to work together to really analyze the business and find out where it is today and find out where it wants to go in the future.

And then, so you've got to start and you've got to finish or a start and a destination. And then we work with the owner and his team to be able to draw a map or a business plan between where we are now and where they want to be in five years time. And you'll find that with the owner and his team, all the answers are in the room and we're able to build a pretty significant business plan for them to work towards, and then we work with businesses to make sure all of the tasks that make up the business plan, that move the business from where it is today, to where it wants to be, we work on all of those over the coming years. 

Julius: I find that normally in like a barbecue kind of, or a social chit-chat type situation, people who are employees, they're all too willing to start to divulge things that they don't like about where they work.

So if you're talking to them about what they, what you do then, and it's a very easy time to put in a question to them and say something like, is there anything going on where you work that you don't like, or are there any opportunities you can see for improvement in, something like that. And normally that leads you off down a long conversation when you find out that the business they're working in would be a really a good place, would be a very good prospect for you. Just through some simple chit-chat.

David: Yeah, yeah it would be. Careful, you don't go too personal though, because remember you need this guy or girl, they become your link to the owner of the business. So, so you'd just be a little bit careful there. 

Julius: You don't want to get too negative. 

David: No, no, you don't. 

Julius: Very good. Now the next question that we have is I am keen to start a YouTube channel and podcast from my consulting business as I would like to be considered as a thought leader in the industry, any thoughts? 

David: I would say, stay away from that until you've been going for a couple of years, and, until you feel really, really confident. I'm always in favor for focus. F O C U S . Follow one course until success. And I would say that a podcast is no, there's no substitute for talking to business owners and for going to networking meetings and things like that. And you'll be able to get 10 or 12 or 15 clients very easy by our traditional methods as opposed to doing a podcast.

So in the early days, I would see that as, not a good, not a good investment of your time. I would leave that for a couple of years down the track. 

Julius: Yeah, I absolutely agree, David, if you're focused, if you're starting out as a consultant and you want to pick up some clients quickly, it's not a quick or easy method to pick up clients through YouTube or podcasting. It's much easier to start talking to people in your local area. So I absolutely agree with that. 

Now, the next question we have, this was quite a good one. Is, would ConsultX consider offering ConsultXers with a certificate or certification of some kind? 

David: Absolutely, and we're working on that now. We're actually, providing you've been through the training and everything. And, we think that's, once you've been through that whole thing, you're worthy of having a certificate of completion. So we'll be doing that in the next two or three months. 

Julius: Fantastic. Now the next question is I have been approached by a charitable trust, her wanting to become a social enterprise and need to put a business plan to get funding. How can I do this or, sorry, can I do this with ConsultX? 

David: Yes you can, and don't forget that a charitable trust is exactly the same as every other business that we deal with. The only difference is it doesn't make a profit and it tries not to make a loss. That's the only real difference like a normal company attempts tries targets to make a profit, as they're trading along, but a charitable trust its target is zero. Cause I imagine if it made too much of a profit, the IRD that's the tax department in New Zealand would be interested in finding out what's going on. So, so yes. And just going back onto that funding, it depends where the funding's coming from, because if the funding came from a bank or a finance company, for example, it depends whether they want to be paid back because if they do want to be paid back, then you'd need to factor in a form of surplus or profit that will go towards paying it back.

Julius: If you look at the business triangle that we always go on about basically every element, or a charitable trust or a social enterprise has every element of the business triangle. So it's absolutely no different. And I actually use the business triangle use it, use the ConsultX system within a business association that I became the acting president of.

So I basically, that's how I got in there is I presented it and said, I think that you're lacking a little bit of organization. I think we should put this in there, and we basically went through it and came up with a business plan and started implementing it. So it works for all different kinds of organizations and it will work really, really well on the social enterprise like this.

And a second part of this question is when I'm doing the business plan for this charitable trust, do I start with the personal vision as there is a board of trustees or do I go straight to the business vision? 

David: You go straight to the business vision because the personal visions of the trustees is no matter in this situation. So it's a business vision for the organization, whether it makes profit or not. 

Julius: Just want to add to that a little bit. I think there could be a the opportunity if it's a charitable trust that is operating a social enterprise, you might want to have the vision of the charitable trust above the, I guess, the business vision, so that you make sure you're always, always looking up to whatever the vision is of the charitable trust, but it really depends how it's all structured and what the individual members of that one to be.

David: Yep. I agree, Julius. 

Julius: So David, I think that is all of our questions from the network today. 

David: Yep. 

Julius: Pretty much all done. Do you have any parting words? 

David: No, no. Just to say good consulting and now is the best time of the year to get clients because they're all thinking about 2020 and hoping that 2021 is better, so get out there and see as many people as you possibly can and have a good week. 

Julius: I hope you enjoyed that question and answer session, it was something a little bit different to normal. I would like to know what you thought of that, should we do more of this kind of stuff in the future? We don't know how long this lockdown is going to go here, hopefully not too much longer, but we don't know when COVID is going to show its head again. And we might get kept away from each other. 

So I would love to hear your feedback. Please reach out on all of those major social platforms, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube, and let us know what you thought of this episode.

David: Everything Business Consulting is brought to you by ConsultX. It's a global business consulting company that has everything that you require to become a successful business consultant or to offer consulting services in your existing professional firm. 

If you'd like to find out more, come visit us at consultx.com.