Sean D'Souza: Getting the payoff from consultancy

Sean D'Souza.

How do you avoid "unpaid consulting"?

First, let's examine paid consulting.

What is paid consulting? You consult. You get paid. That's simple, eh? So when do you do consulting and not get paid?

The answer is usually "never". But let me qualify that before everyone jumps on my head. When you start out in your career, meetings are a given. You go to meetings, you spend time on the phone and all of that time you're giving ideas and concepts - and often you never see the prospect again.

It's unpaid consulting.

And that lack of payment cometh directly from the fact that you're not seen as the expert. You're seen as someone who possibly knows stuff. Someone who possibly is intelligent, blah, blah, but not the expert.

We know this to be true. You can't go to a specialist to have your heart/brain/kidney or any body part examined without forking out the specialist's fees. You can't get tennis lessons from Ms Three-Times-Wimbledon-US Open-winner without paying a substantial sum.

And substantial sums are nice, but that's not the point. The point is, you don't get paid either the substantial or the piddly sums. You do your part in answering questions and get nothing.

Nothing is a harsh word, of course. You get a lot. I remember being a rookie at cartoons. I remember being a rookie in my first job in advertising. I remember being a rookie in marketing. I remember being a rookie at everything.

I made a lot of mistakes and they didn't add to my balance sheet at the end of the financial year.

But one of the things I learned - and quickly - was to look at non-rookies. Non-rookies had something I didn't.

They worked hard and long at becoming the top stars in their field.

"Oh, so that's it," I thought to myself. You had to do something great and wonderful to be considered the expert. So you could win Wimbledon a few times (or come close).

Or you could coach the person who won Wimbledon (or came close). Or you could start to gain a reputation for doing amazing open-heart surgeries.

You have options.

You could work hard and long to gain a reputation. Or could create a system.

That sorts out the paid consulting bit.

Because once you're la prima donna, you get what you ask for, and customers see value in paying what you ask.

The expertise is what is drawing customers. The expertise factor is what you need to create, and there's not much you can do about it. You just have to be seen as the expert.

But what about customer support?

Customer support is what you promise as part of a system. If you start up a course and promise you'll look at their assignments every 13 seconds, then that's part of the promise.

It's not paid consulting.

It's been pre-paid and is part of whatever you've sold. If you're a fruitcake like me, you'll respond 700 times a day to such requests. If you're not, you can and should lay down separate rules.

For example: You'll have four assignments. You have to submit them by (date/time). If you do, you'll get a response by (date/time). Lay down conditions and you won't have to keep going back to answer questions. Leave it open and you could get yourself into trouble if you're not as enthusiastic as me.

So why am I so enthusiastic?

Ah, it's time for the full circle talk. See those products or systems you created? Well, some of them must be leveraged. This means that they require "no customer support".

They're do-it-yourself stuff. Customers buy it, they read it/listen/watch it and then they buy some more if required.

You don't need to be there. So you can be elsewhere.

The so-called "gurus" are usually at the beach surfing till they're 93 years old. I just choose to work with my clients all the time (except when I'm on my three-month holiday each year).

So you choose whether to give almost endless support, or support with some sort of boundaries.

And there you have it.

You get paid for consulting (a lot too).

You get paid for your products/system.

You do as much support as you've agreed to - and you're still good to go.

Cool, eh?

Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer. He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't)

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