The financial industry has ALWAYS employed TONS of consultants, advisors, part-time project-based freelancers, and experts.

You may be a part-time CFO, digital transformation guru, software tool developer, risk or regulatory advisor, product development or sales coach… What differentiates the successful few from the vast majority is that the lucky ones can charge premium pricing, have a long waitlist of clients, and don’t ever need to offer discounts to win a project. But WHY?

What are those few lucky consultants and advisors figured out that keeps them ahead and above their competition?

There are so many great experts out there who prefer to work independently and have a lot of expertise and knowledge to offer. Those professionals have impeccable resumes and an impressive track record of being able to get results for other clients… but they still often struggle to generate predictable recurring revenues. Sometimes they are forced to accept difficult clients who don’t listen to good advice and never implement suggestions they actually paid for…

If you serve Financial Institutions but struggle to generate predictable recurring revenues, see if you can relate to any of the following:

·     “I wish I could just do my work and skip all the networking…”

·     “I’m great at what I do, but I’m not good at social media…”

·     “Why do I need to prove the same thing over and over again? Why can’t clients see and recognize my expertise from my track record?”

·    “There are too many CEOs who are inexperienced and don’t listen to experts, it’s so tiring trying to convince people who don’t know what they need…”

·     “I can only be effective at selling when I can connect with clients face-to-face, spend time with them, and make it personal, all these virtual connections are not efficient.”

·     “It’s hard to balance my time between developing quality work and focusing on existing clients versus looking for new projects and following up with leads…”

·     “I need additional qualifications and certifications before I allow myself to be more visible and active in selling my services to strangers or online…”

·     “Clients in the financial sector take forever to decide, the sales cycle is too long…”

·     “I recognize I need to reach more people, widen my network, and be more strategic and intentional about new opportunities, but I don’t want to look salesy or desperate…”

·     “LinkedIn and all other online platforms are dominated by companies with big pockets, it’s too noisy, there is no place for individual consultants to be discovered…”

·     “In the past, my network and past clients generated enough referrals and leads, but recently more and more companies are founded by younger generation entrepreneurs and newcomers, and I have no inside track there.”

If you’re still reading this then chances are, you resonate with one or more of the points listed above. If that’s the case, I’m happy to share with you here in this article, what many successful consultants and advisors may have in common (and no – their success does not seem to correlate with big brands, large audiences, unique skills, or aggressive selling techniques).

There is so much noise out there about the advantages of the flexible gig economy and all the buzz about the growing shift from employment to freelancing for higher-skilled experts, and how beneficial this is supposed to be for everyone, however, there is not nearly enough information about what does it take to build a lasting success as a high skilled premium paid individual consultant or advisor and how many very talented people try it for a while and then either go back to regular boring jobs or continue, but just barely manage to get by. 

In my 4+ years of working as a consultant in the FinTech industry, and having my company’s revenues, on average, doubling every year, I came to realize that lasting success in consulting is closely correlated with being very selective, saying “no” to the majority of prospects and creating a highly specialized premium experience for a few lucky ones you say “yes” to.

No, I don’t discount all other professional attributes – it is true that you need to know your craft and execute well, and you will need to manage surprises and have great interpersonal skills, but think about it – none of that matters, if your client doesn’t follow your advice, has a dysfunctional organization or bad management. If they cannot be successful, your revenues will end sooner or later, plus – you are wasting your time and will never have an impressive track record of success stories.

Let me give you an example of someone who is a wedding photographer.

When she was just starting out, she was frustrated every time when meeting new clients. Those clients were nervous – it was the first time they were getting married, so they did not know what to expect. They already saw that their wedding was going to cost a lot more than they anticipated, which is why the first question they asked their photographer candidate was about the price and the number of pictures.

Being young inexperienced, she felt she had not even been given an opportunity to demonstrate the full scope of what she had to offer and how her approach was different from others. She saw stressed and overwhelmed couples asking her for large discounts and more pictures, and not caring about anything else.

It took her a while to learn how to re-define the conversation and move away from pricing to the overall experience she was able to offer, which included coordination with stylists and florists and musicians and decorators and light experts and chefs… in other words, the overall VIP experience during the wedding and after the wedding, which was going to be captured and memorized through her photography service. She was essentially educating her couples about how to organize their guest arrivals, seating arrangements, colors, and flowers, timing, silverware, use of drones… simply because she has seen a lot of weddings. Slowly but surely, clients began to respect her opinion and were happy to pay premium pricing. She built a long waitlist of clients and for a long time never had to offer any discounts.

How much nicer life gets when clients chase after you, right?

The number one differentiating factor that causes success in consulting as in almost any personalized service experience is your ability to gain trust and respect so that your clients don’t see you as a commodity. If your prospects don’t see you as a unique opportunity to work with, they will likely postpone the decision or keep asking for lower prices, assuming you are not going anywhere.

At this point in time, you may be thinking: “Yes, this is a dream scenario, it would be nice to position your services as something unique, but it’s not possible for everyone… my space is very competitive, clients have options, I don’t have a brand name, it’s Covid times…”

Well, let’s first address the elephant in the room – if you want more clients or different clients or clients with bigger budgets, what are you not doing or doing not enough, that prevents you from seeing better results?

Here’s a list of misconceptions or unproductive tactics that I see in the consulting space:

• People hope that the times will go back to normal and they could again rely on referrals from their old network and existing clients. At least one problem with that is that your network and client base gets older and eventually retire, and new businesses and opportunities are created outside of your immediate circle. If you rely on the existing network only, you risk becoming irrelevant for many emerging segments.
• Some consultants invest too much time and money into building a “perfect” website, which lists their resume and past projects and has a “contact us” section, but this website has almost no traffic and generates zero contacts. Your potential clients are not searching for your name most of the time, they are searching for “how to…” information to solve their immediate problem and if your website does not offer an immediate answer and simply suggests to “contact us”, they will keep googling elsewhere.
• Many consultants are afraid of placing clients on the waiting list, they would rather squeeze in a project and “lock” the client immediately and offer them a discount (while overstretching themselves) rather than risking to lose the client and never see them again.
• Most consultants continuously complain about spending too much time on idle networking and unproductive 1:1 calls, but keep doing this regardless.

Creating your digital authority and credibility by sharing content around your expertise and signature service is probably the most enjoyable and sustainable way to reach more people for experts who love what they do. And this is also the easiest way to generate enough leads and prospects you can choose from later and decide who is worth your time and efforts.

Word of mouth, referrals, and networking is no longer working, because they are not predictable, not viral, too time-consuming, and have diminishing returns. It’s not enough when people hear or read once about you and what you do, because selling consulting or anything to financial institutions or FinTech startups takes time. If you cannot be present in your prospects’ information horizon long enough, you are going to be gone and forgotten. 

If B2B Consultancy and Sales conversations are something of interest for you and you’d like to learn more about the topic, you are welcome to watch this FREE video training on how you can generate more leads and sales as a consultant or advisor for the financial sector. This free training is accompanied by the downloadable workbook with a summary of various tools that can be used to manage your email list or share content, as well as the basic principles of how to think about your email list and the pros and cons of various digital products (such as groups coaching, online courses, memberships, e-books, etc).