In the commercial process of selling your services to a customer there comes a point when you communicate your fees for the services you will be offering.

If you managed your sales process properly and have created a strong value proposition, the price should not be an issue.

But sometimes, customers do like to negotiate the fee. What do you do? Read the rest of this entry »

One of the essential activities of your solo consultancy practice is getting new business in.

In terms of sales approach there are different ways of going about this. You can focus on developing business with existing customers and you can also work on getting new deals with new customers.

An interesting way to look at it is the hunter versus the farmer analogy. Read the rest of this entry »

As solo professional you do not have a big budget to play with for promoting your single person business. Nevertheless, you do want to look professional and give your prospects and clients a good impression.

Having a business logo adds this je-ne-sais-quoi to the look and feel of your brand and adds to the feeling of dealing with a serious business. It is a good thing to have.

Is it possible to have a professional logo designed with a small budget?

I was very curious when I discovered Logonerds who claim they can design a business logo for 27$ for a web version and 47$ for a web and print version.

Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? That was my first reaction too so I Googled them and read some mixed reactions.

I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and test their service. Since my company Belvido didn’t have a logo yet, I asked them to design one for me. Read the rest of this entry »

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jan Vermeiren, founder of Networking Coach and author of the best-selling books Let’s Connect! and  How to REALLY use LinkedIn.

Jan talks about how he became a business networking expert and shares some basic and advanced tips for solo professionals who want to use LinkedIn to grow their business.

The total interview lasts about 27 minutes and has therefore been divided in 3 parts.

• Part 1: How Jan became a networking (and LinkedIn) expert + tips and advice for new LinkedIn users [10:38]
• Part 2: Tips and advice for advanced LinkedIn users [06:34]
• Part 3: Jan shares his experience and advice as an entrepreneur who started his business as a solo professional [09:51] Read the rest of this entry »

Last week a fellow trainer asked me where she could get her hands on John Cleese training videos. Nearly ten years ago we had both used John Cleese videos for management training and it’s true the Cleese videos were very good.
Since I didn’t really have an answer for this trainer, I did a Google search to see where you could buy or rent these videos nowadays.

First results : rent or buy physical tapes or DVD’s

I found quite a few websites where you can rent or buy the John Cleese video’s in either VHS or DVD format but in the iTunes and YouTube era of digital content distribution I was hoping to find a service that wasn’t just selling or renting physical tapes and discs.

Back to the original – Video Arts

By going back to the original creators of the Cleese videos I found something very special.

In 1972 (coincidentally my birth year) a small group of British television professionals, including John Cleese founded Video Arts. Their goal was to create and distribute high quality learning content.
Thirty years later, Video Arts is still growing strong with a catalog of more than 1000 training videos and a state-of-the-art digital distribution model.

At Video Arts you can still buy or rent physical training DVD’s but the innovation lies in their digital video content distribution model. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I participated in an interesting workshop.

I was invited by a small consultancy firm for whom I have done work in the past to participate in a series of three workshops where they will be rethinking their sales process for their consulting services.

The exercise was facilitated by a business development consultant and I was invited to participate to give a fresh outsiders view from someone who is also a consultant.

The idea is brilliant.

These guys are really experienced consultants who have been applying the same sales methodology for more than 10 years but they have the maturity and sense to take a time-out to re-evaluate what works and what doesn’t.

Instead of doing this internally with the same people who have been applying the same method for years they chose to invite external participants to have fresh and unbiased input .

They asked people like me whose opinion as an external party they value. They also spent some money on an external business development consultant, which shows how important the subject is to them.

In this first workshop we brainstormed and discussed the following topics: Read the rest of this entry »

When attending an event where you plan to make new business contacts, it is good to be prepared and psyched up.
I don’t particularly consider myself to be a “natural” networker (though friends and colleagues disagree with me) and the following tips have always worked for me.

Hopefully they will be useful to you too.

1 – Go alone. If you go with a colleague or friend you will be in your comfort zone and will not feel compelled to walk up to total strangers. Going alone forces you to go out there and “work the room”.

2 – Try to get the list of participants in advance. This is not always possible to obtain but always worth asking. Use that list to prepare a short list of people you would definitely like to meet during the event. It will help you stay focused during the event. It will also remind you why it is worth going.

3 – Give yourself a target. Using a measurable target and focusing on it will help you move on if you stay in your comfort zone.
A target could be:

• “tonight I will collect the business cards of 10 people who work in my target industry”
• “tonight I’m going to make three follow up appointments with potential prospects”
• “tonight I’m going to give my elevator pitch 20 times.”

This will help if you get in the situation where you meet an interesting person at the beginning of the event. You might be tempted to spend more time with that person but before you know it the event is over and you have only made one contact.

If you focus on your target of meeting more people you will set up a follow-up meeting with that interesting person and then move on to your next encounter.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my days as a performance improvement consultant, one of the themes we would always address to help teams improve their business performance was the development and implementation of a performance management system.

A set of metrics or KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that would be used to set measurable goals and measure actual results in order to define corrective actions during performance review meetings.

The main business philosophy behind the approach was Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. And it worked.

Why not apply the same principle to your solo business? It’s not because you have a single-person business that you shouldn’t be measuring your performance.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Peter Drucker

It will take discipline though because unlike a manager for a larger corporation, nobody will be breathing down your neck to receive the latest performance figures. Read the rest of this entry »

I am upset. I just came back from a very uncomfortable meeting where someone was trying to sell himself in an annoying and awkward way.
The only positive outcome is that I am now using this negative emotion to share some thoughts with you on what NOT to do when networking to sell your services as an independent consultant, trainer or coach.

The context

Last week my wife and I met a guy who had set up a small shop with his wife and was asking for ideas on how to get more customers. Since my wife is a customer of these types of shops she accepted to come over for a coffee to see the shop and brainstorm on ideas. My wife asked me to come along to combine with a lunch together just the two of us.

So here we are, my wife and I in this shop talking to this guy. I’m being vague about the shop and the name of this person because I respect his privacy. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have read my article on running your solo business from a browser, you have guessed by now that I love working with online software.

Here’s a list of applications that have become an important part of my solo business.

This is just a quick overview and I will probably write in more details about these (and other) applications in future articles.

Gmail. Since Google mail I have said goodbye to Outlook. Granted, Outlook offers more possibilities but how many of us use those?
Gmail offers some great features that are hard to beat.

• It is free. Anyone can create an account on gmail.com
• You can add your existing POP accounts to your Gmail account to view and manage all your emails from one place. So you also easily send your customers emails with yourname@yourdomain.com right from your Gmail! You don’t need to worry about your client seeing a Gmail address, you can use your own domain name. By the way, if you want to know more about getting your own domain name check out my article on how to create your own website.
• You can set up your iPhone (or any mobile device that support Microsoft Exchange) to receive (almost) push email from your Gmail account. No need for a Blackberry setup.
• Should you happen to be offline, you can install Google Gears to read and answer to your emails offline. Once you are online again, your data will automatically sync.

With your free Gmail account you also get other very useful applications: Read the rest of this entry »