High Income Consulting

How to Build and Market Your Professional Practice

Tom Lambert

Publisher: Nicholas Brealey, 1995, 316 pages

ISBN: 1-85788-035-8

Keywords: Consulting

Last modified: Aug. 7, 2007, 10:07 a.m.

This book will enable you to learn the professional way to:

  • Set up and build a professional practice
  • Make networking equitable, profitable and genuinely client-centred
  • Write business-winning proposals which avoid giving services for free
  • Set fees to maximize value to the client and profit to the onsultant
  • Write and use simple contracts and make the contract an essential marketing tool
  • Use the nine low-cost/no-cost ways of winning professional exposure
  • Ensure up to 80% repeat and referral business
  • Sell abstract, high-value services
  • Use the key intervention strategies
  • Learn the 'common body of knowledge' - the basis of accreditation
  • Part One: Building Your Practice
    • Chapter 1: To Be or Not to Be
      • Income
      • Other considerations
      • Will you or won't you?
      • Specialist or generalist?
      • Operational or advisory?
      • Personality traits and successes
      • Subordinate raits
      • Professionalism
      • The undesirable client
      • Summary and action plan
    • Chapter 2: Beginners Only
      • Forms of business
      • Sources of capital
      • Value Added Tax
      • Licenses
      • Liability
      • Business cards and letterheads
      • Working from home
      • Getting your business off the ground
      • The 21-day 'up and running' formula
    • Chapter 3: Consultancy at work
      • Stages of consultancy
      • Development of a specific proposal
      • What consultants ought to do
      • Teams within teams
      • Undertaking self-assessment
      • Undertaking peer assessment
    • Chapter 4: Networking for Synergy
      • Equitable networking
      • Rules for effective networking
    • Chapter 5: Business-winning Proposals
      • Writing the proposal
      • What this form of proposal says about you
      • Retainer agreements
      • Needs analysis: a cautionary tale
      • A little diversionary tactic
    • Chapter 6: Setting and Divulging Your Fees
      • Unveiling your fee
      • Fixed fee including expenses
      • Daily fee rate
      • Performance contract
      • If the client complains about your fee
      • Business terms and conditions
      • Establishing your fee level
    • Chapter 7: The Contract
      • Uses of the contract
      • Writing a contract
      • Drafting a 'proper contract'
      • When you cannot provide the contract
      • Collecting your cash
      • Summary
  • Part Two: Makreting Your Practice
    • Chapter 8: Tactical Marketing
      • Objectives
      • Image building and reputation
      • Time management
    • Chapter 9: Making Your Brochure Work for You
      • Writing your brochure
      • Using your brochure
    • Chapter 10: Advertising for Professionals
      • How not to waste your money
      • Eigthfold path to enlighted advertising
      • Advance trouble-shooting
      • The media
      • Understanding the media
      • Advantages and disadvantages
      • Pulling it together
    • Chapter 11: Referral Business is Great Business
      • Sources
      • Immediately strategy
    • Chapter 12: Selling Your Skills
      • First impressions
      • Professional selling
      • Selling your services
      • The SARAH technique
      • Price
      • Habit
      • Competition
      • The Shenson Survey
      • Summary
  • Part Thre: Advanced Consulting Skills
    • Chapter 13: Consultancy Roles
      • More directive roles
      • Less directive roles
      • Internal manager and extrnal consultant
    • Chapter 14: Outline Strateges for Each Stage of the Assignment
      • Introduction
      • Planning guide
      • Measuring the results
    • Chapter 15: What Every Consultant Must Know
      • Accreditation
      • The organization as organism
      • Crystal ball gazing
      • Macro-world of the total business environment
      • Marketing concept
      • Management accounting
      • Total quality management
      • Systems and information theory
      • Organizational behaviour
      • Job enrichment
    • Chapter 16: Avoiding Problems
      • Insolvent clients
      • Conflict of interest
      • Ineffective marketing
      • Bad business
      • Mistakes we all make
      • Conclusion
  • Part Four: The Consultant's Toolkit
    • Appendix 1: Building your Practice
    • Appendix 2: Consultant Models
    • Appendix 3: Simple Newsletter
    • Appendix 4: Bibliography
    • Appendix 5: Useful Addresses and Informatio
    • Appendix 6: Seminars and Courses

Reviews

High Income Consulting

Reviewed by Roland Buresund

Bad ** (2 out of 10)

Last modified: July 22, 2007, 8:45 p.m.

The best way to reach a high income seems to be publishing bad books without any substantial content.

This book is nowhere close to fullfiling the promises it makes on the back-cover (see synopsis). In fact, it is even from time to time incoherent and the so called "sage" advice is so superficial that a nine-year old could have come up with it. Granted, some of the short anecdotes are worth remembering, but they don't justify buying the book.

Buy something else, as this wont help you in any way.

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