How to NOT market

Some will smile knowingly and some will grit their teeth at this.

Many of the companies that I work with are high growth. Or potentially high growth. If you've been around the traps for a while, you may have met or know someone in charge of such a co. And after an initial meeting its clear that they have been burned by a previous experience or two with a consultant of some kind that didn't quite deliver the results that they were expecting.

Sometimes, this is put forward as one of several reasons why they haven't quite got to where they were planning to be.
t to the point where it seems appropriate to start talking about what they could do. Sometimes its clear what they need to do after 10 minutes but you have to wait a few hours and meetings to get to the right point in the conversation when its your turn to talk...but then, 'the story' comes out. And anyone who has been in the consulting world will recognise this after the first 4 words....

"My business is different so that won't work for me and nobody understands it the way I do anyhow so when the time is right I certainly do plan on trying that but I'm not so sure it will work anyhow because we already tried it once and maybe there's something nobody is telling me that I need to know. And money is tight right now, we would need to see the value. We've definitely got our strategy worked out...we have a huge pipeline of (potential) buyers....its just the [substitute what you like here] product development / sales guy / marketing messages / slow conversion rate / length of sales cycle / lack of buyers / recession / cash flow issues that are holding us back...so we should probably wait (unless you want to take some skin in the game)...[err, no thanks] and by the way can you sign this NDA because I don't want anyone stealing my ideas. Maybe I can get a student in. A junior tech guy wouldn't cost much. They would like the experience of selling for us in the US. [err, to senior VPs?] Hmm. How much is your fee again.. expensive eh?..I'm not sure that I will be any better off if I do go for it but I'm definitely going to do that... someday."

Does this sound familiar? ...unfortunately, it can be. And if left unchecked it makes it very hard to help someone create a profitable business. Its so important to build trust and a relationship so that it is possible to point out, in the kindest way possible, that there may be good reason why some things ' just haven't worked out'. I believe that is what consulting is all about. That's part of the value added. Being honest, kind, fair, professional, a source of useful advice and expertise, a sounding board, an objective mentor or coach, and at times, someone who has to tell a few uncomfortable truths. The upside of helping someone through that kind of process, and seeing them experience an 'aha' moment and a surge of energy as they see a way forward, is well worth the ups and downs of the challenge involved in getting them there.