Читать книгу Value-Based Fees - Alan Weiss - Страница 17

The second book in this Ultimate Consultant Series is dedicated to branding for consultants. One of the key reasons for effective branding is to enhance fees.

Fees are (or should be) based on value. That value is always in the eye of the beholder—in our case, the economic buyer. Hence the more value conveyed to that buyer by the most powerful means, the less downward pressure on fees. Effective branding actually creates a fee “buoyancy.”

There is actually one thing better than a buyer impressed by you and respecting you on sight, and that is the buyer impressed by you and respecting you before ever laying eyes on you.

No CEO ever said, “Get McKinsey in here,” when strategy work was needed, then followed up by saying, “I think they're too expensive.” As they say in the Ferrari showroom when someone asks about gas mileage or insurance costs, “If that's your concern, you really shouldn't be here.”

Ferrari is a brand that evokes certain immediate understandings on the part of the potential individual buyer:

 High cost

 Top status

 High maintenance

 High insurance

 High repair costs

 Unique image

 Personal ego needs met⁵

You know those things going in, and they are not points for discussion when dealing with a salesperson.

Similarly, McKinsey is a brand that evokes certain immediate understandings on the part of the potential corporate buyer:

 High cost (fees will not be negotiable)

 Top status (no one can say we're giving this short shrift)

 High maintenance (a lot of junior partners will appear)

 High insurance (the board can't complain about quality of the help)

 High repair costs (they will recommend tough interventions)

 Unique image (the cachet alone will raise expectations)

 Personal ego needs met (only the best for the best)

You get my point. The mere power of a brand is sufficient to overcome any resistance to fees and, in fact, often elevates fees merely by dint of association with such brand images as quality, reputation, client history, and media attention.

There is no brand as powerful as your name, although strong company brands can also serve quite well. When a potential client says, “Get me Jane Jones” or “Get me the Teambuilder,” that client is articulating a clear imperative: Don't go shopping, don't compare prices, and don't issue a request for proposals; just get me that person I've heard so much about. (That is far superior to the buyer saying, “Get me a great leadership consultant” and your name is one of several in the hat.)

Brands create an upward expectation of both quality and commensurate fees. No one expects an outstanding person to come cheap. You usually have to convince the buyer of that quality through careful relationship building. But a strong brand shortcuts that process considerably. The relationship building still needs to be done (for reasons of commitment, as noted earlier), but the time required is significantly reduced. The buyer wants to be a partner, wants to follow your suggestions, and wants to participate because your credibility has preceded you.

Brands are accelerators of credibility and therefore of relationships. They immediately justify higher fees in the mind of the buyer, and that is the only mind that counts on that matter. Brands are expressions of uniform quality. The ultimate brand for most solo consultants is their name, as in: “Get me Joan James.”

It's not the intent of this book to explore how to create a brand.⁶ However, it is vital to understand brand importance in the fee-setting process. Like bank loans being hard to acquire when you need them and easy to obtain when you no longer need them, high fees are most difficult when no one has ever heard of you and you desperately need the income and easiest when you're well known and business is rolling in.

Alanism: A brand is how people think of you when you’re not around.

The crime here is that many successful consultants either don't bother to use their past success to create effective brands or have created brands that they don't properly leverage for higher fees. Tom Clancy had never written a book nearly as good as his original, The Hunt for Red October, but he's certainly been paid far more for every subsequent work than for that first effort (and the writers now supporting his brand long after his death). He had been a smart marketer and a hugely successful “brand” (as James Patterson, who's sold a trillion books, seldom writes his own anymore but uses a “co-author”).

Brands create higher fees. And higher fees enable you to solidify the credibility of your brand. That's a great cycle.