Welcome back!

March has whizzed by. I've been coaching some challenging and fun executives over-burdened with ideas and experience (what a problem to have!) trying to do what we're all trying to do - live a good life!

Went to an NLP seminar last week at Darling Harbour to refresh my sense of amazement at the inventiveness of the human spirit. It was very hypey, but an excellent example of what multi-media can do for live training to make a learning event an "experience". And an amazing marketing machine in action.

If you're Sydney based, by the way, go see Art Express - the best of the HSC art students' work. It's free to get in, and you will be impressed by the cleverness and depth of work from kids of no more than 18.

Oh, and we're running another Ludic Creative Life is not a rehearsal on April 14th 07 in North Sydney. Come play with us! Special deal for ezine readers - enrol yourself at $150, and you can bring a colleague or a friend along for nothing.

Cindy

In this month's ezine we have:

• Improving your consultancy: Marketing as conversation, Invoicing from anywhere, Plateauing - redefining success, the cost of a bad customer, generating leads and copyrighting your web site
• Managing better: Keeping up to date on management thinking and taking responsibility for problems
• Fascinating: The Emotional Scale, Ban the bag
• Fun: Cracker Comedy and Scared Scriptless

Your Consulting
business

Tap class Tweed Heads NSW

Marketing as conversation

Check out David Maister's angle on marketing as conversation - includes suggestions such as these:

Chloe, Tap Class, Tweed Heads NSW

Queen Victoria Building Sydney

Sydney Hilton

Invoicing from anywhere

If you travel a lot, or want to invoice in multiple currencies, check out invoiceplace.com. Looks professional, and you can export the invoices to pdf format or whatever you need. Good solution if you're travelling without a PC (does anyone except me not own a laptop any more?).

But if you're happy with what you have and just need a nice looking invoice, try Microsoft's templates for Word and Excel.

Plateauing - success on your terms

The second chapter of my Australian Consultant's Guide asks would-be consultants to write down why they want to be a consultant - what they want out of it (I call it a personal business plan). A few years ago I coached a newby who said this chapter was the biggest AHA!! for him after a lifetime as an employee. He realised he could decide what he wanted to do, who he wanted to work with, and choose to do or not do it as he saw fit.

Wharton School of Business have caught up to my client. They call it plateauing - redefining success, going for different things as the next "achievement", which may not include long hours. People are putting higher priorities on activities outside their jobs, from family to volunteer work to hobbies. So 67% of leaders said it wasn't that they couldn't do the work, but that the sacrifices they would have to make in their personal lives were too great. You will need to register with Wharton to read the article, but it's worth a look.

What's a bad customer worth?

I had lunch with a friend last week, who told me she had not bought a ticket with a certain cut-price Australian airline because of stories I had told her about my bad experiences with them. Wharton looks at this in Dissatisfied customers. They say 100 bad customer experiences means 32 - 36 lost customers.

The impact is even greater on those of us who sell our services: David Maister emphasised customer surveying in Managing the Professional Services Firm - how do you know if your customers are having a good experience with you?

Generating leads

Rain Today surveyed professional service firms on how they generated leads, how effective this was, what worked and what didn't. You can download the summary. The 4 most interesting insights from the study:

1. brand is important - it's easier if you are known for what you do in your target market
2. the client is important - know the names of the key decision makers in the organizations you are targeting (derr?)
3. Cold calling can work to set a meeting to introduce yourself and to learn about the prospect, (not to do a detailed sales pitch) (n.b. if you still find this scary, it's not the end of the world! Read my Consultant's Guide which covers 13 ways to market without cold calling)
4. ‘warm’ phone calls to existing contacts, speaking at conferences, running the firm’s own events, joining an industry association and gaining PR were the most effective ways to generate leads (again, derr, right?).

Good luck in generating your own leads!

What if they copy my site?

If you want to know if anyone's ripping off your website, go here where you can enter your URL and it will tell you where people have the same information (mine had segments on the National Library and on google books, plus my ISP's secure site, so I'm OK for now). Fingers crossed that no one is stealing your content!

Managing better

Tap class Tweed Heads NSW

Keeping up to date quickly!

Haven't got time to read what you need to keep up with new ideas? Try book summaries. Mino.com (bite size reading for big fish) has, I notice a book, I mentioned in March - All Marketers are Liars for $8.95. Not only is it faster than reading the real book, it's cheaper!

It's my fault!

Jim Collins' Good to Great chronicled the Level 5 leader - one who looked in the mirror when things went wrong (I was not a good enough leader), and outside when things went right (my team did all the work). This is in contrast the leader who looks outside when things go wrong (the team stuffed up) and in the mirror when things go right (I'm an excellent leader and decision maker). The Good Leader was the one who took responsibility for the problems (and not necessarily all the credit for success).

This research shows similar results involving companies who take responsibility for problems when things go wrong. They tend to do better in the stock market.

So the company that says in their annual report "We made a wrong decision to buy into a new company, and we some poor hiring decisions" is showing it knows what it can do to rectify the problem, and that they have some control over it. If instead they say "the market is bad, consumers aren't buying" they are not in control of the issue. An interesting read.

Fascinating

"Dead" traffic signal, Exeter, NSW

How are you feeling

Michael Neill has summarised some interesting thoughts on the scale of emotions. How do you feel takes on a whole new meaning when you have 9 emotions to choose from.

Ban the bag

San Francisco is about to ban plastic supermarket bags. They are apparently already banned in South Africa and Bangladesh and France will ban them from 2010 (that's forward thinking).

So check out the work of American photographic artist Chris Jordan who has created some unbelievably beautiful (and disturbing) images based on waste.

Each image (made up of sometimes many smaller images) portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) 3.6 million SUVs (US sales in one year), 2.3 million prison uniforms (no of Americans in prison), or $12.5 million (spent every hour on the Iraq war).And of course the plastic shopping bag Check it out.

And Fun, fun, fun

An uphill tap

The Cracker

The Cracker Comedy Festival is almost over in Sydney. I managed to catch quite a few shows. My favourite gaffe was Cracker Night which showcased some clever and entertaining comics, but asked audience who'd paid a decent prize for tickets to behave like studio audience and "pretend" to laugh for the camera because Comedy Channel was taping - you got to ask what sort of respect they have for their audiences (and I'd be thinking not much).

Ross Noble (master of semi-improvised stand up comedy), was magnificent, and two new improvised shows are worth a look if you get a chance: Spontaneous Broadway and Blank: The Musical (2 different, and very good, takes on the improvised musical).

Many of the acts in Cracker now go on to Melbourne Comedy Festival, so catch them if you can!

And impro, of course

Scared Scriptless' Theatresports®, famous as the show which I'm actually in most Friday nights, continues at the Clarence Hotel, Petersham (in Sydney). Doors open 7:30, show starts at 8. Drinks at pub prices, food available. There's a second show (The Late Show) at 10:30, so catch them both for an unheard of $5 whenever you're near Petersham in Sydney.

I would be interested to hear from you if any of these ideas spark something good for you and yours!

C

Cindy Tonkin The Consultants’ Consultant
Certified Management Consultant

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This month's images are original photographs ©2007 Cindy Tonkin. See more here.

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