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Seminar Quotes
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How To Build & Maintain
A Profitable Consulting Practice Seminar
A knowledge investment opportunity for consulting careers
& practices
Purpose of the Seminar
To enable the participants in the seminar to understand what successful
consultants have done to make them successful and how they can adapt their
experiences to building a profitable consulting business and a successful
problem-solving career. The seminar will help you learn and understand how to:
 | INCREASE YOUR CONSULTING INCOME & PROFITS by |
| ATTRACTING & KEEPING MORE & BETTER CLIENTS by |
| CAPITALIZING ON YOUR EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE and |
| IDENTIFYING & DEVELOPING NEW CONSULTING OPPORTUNITIES. |
When and where are the seminars scheduled?
The public seminars are presented on a monthly basis in Irvine and Woodland
Hills. Organizations and groups can contract with the Center to present a
similar seminar customized to the needs and wants of their group. Future
seminars are listed here, so viewers
should return to this page periodically for the up-to-date seminar schedule.
All events are 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM. The
currently scheduled program is as follows:
| Saturday, January 26, 2008, Orange County |
| Saturday, February 23, 2008, Woodland Hills |
| Saturday, March 29, 2008, Cancelled |
| Saturday, May 10, 2008, Orange County |
| Saturday, July 19, 2008, Orange County
(originally scheduled for July 12) |
| Saturday, August 23, 2008, Woodland Hills |
| Saturday, September 20, 2008, Orange County |
| Saturday, November 1, 2008, Orange County |
Registration information
Courtyard by Marriott
2701 Main Street
Irvine, CA (I-405 at Jamboree, east one
block to Main, hotel phone 949.757.1200)
Holiday Inn
21101 Ventura Blvd.
Woodland Hills, CA (101 at DeSoto, south to Ventura Blvd., and west about
three blocks, hotel phone 818.883.6110)
Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County
1601 Carmen Drive, #215
Camarillo, Ventura County (take 101 north to Carmen Drive, exit on Carmen Drive
North and proceed about 2 miles to Las Posas - southwest quadrant of this
intersection)
Who should attend?
Based on our experience in presenting this seminar since 1988, anyone who
fits one of these profiles will find value in attending one of our consulting
practice seminar sections.
| Wants to start a part-time or full-time consulting business?
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| Wants to grow an established consulting business?
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| Wants to increase the income and profitability of an established
consulting business?
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| Wants to launch new consulting products for their contemporary consulting
business?
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| Wants to investigate consulting as a full-time career or as a part-time
career to go along with retirement, part-time employment, or other
professional pursuits? |
Benefits and added value of the seminar
At the end of this program you will be able to develop action plans that you
can implement the very next day because you will know how to . . . . .
| Identify your expertise and experience
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| Position Your Consulting Business
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| Select your most promising prospects
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| Cause clients to seek you out first
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| Promote your consulting business
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| Build a substantial referral & retainer business
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| Develop successful proposals & contracts
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| Close a sale for a consulting engagement
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| Identify & develop consulting opportunities
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| Set, disclose, and collect your fees
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| Determine and increase the real profitability of the business
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| Obtain new & better clients, larger contracts and projects
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| Identify roles consultants play & reasons hired |
What they are saying about the seminar
Representative quotes and comments from seminar attendees about their experience with
the seminar may be found at What they are saying about the seminar.
Seminar Table of Contents
Learn what successful consultants have done to make them successful and how
they can adapt their experiences to building a profitable consulting business
and a successful problem-solving career. Download our
Seminar Table
of Contents.
Consulting businesses represented at the
seminars
Attendees at the seminars have included consulting professionals from
consulting businesses such as those listed at Representative Seminar
Attendees.
Registration information
Registration prior to day of seminar is $129, at the seminar $159. We accept
Visa, MasterCard, personal & corporate checks, money orders, and cash.
To register in advance, complete the following form and return to Bill Mooney
as noted:
________________________________
Please register the following person in the consulting seminar on (dates
listed above)
Date: ___________________ Check Location: Irvine
____ Woodland Hills _____ Camarillo _____
Name: ________________________________________________________
Name of business: ______________________________________________
Address: ______________________________________________________
City, State, Zip _________________________________________________
Phone: _________________________ Fax: ________________________
E-mail: ________________________________________________________
Payment of pre-registration seminar fee of $129 by (check one):
___ Check payable to William Mooney Associates
___ Charge to ___ Visa; ___ MasterCard
Credit Card No. _________________________
Expiration date __________ Name on card ________________________
Signature __________________________________________
Return to William Mooney Associates at 310.324.0635 by fax, wmooney@consultantcoach.com
by email or Post Office Box 6159, Torrance, CA 90504 by postal mail or phone
information to 310.324.2386.
__________________________________
Seminar Leader
Your Seminar Leader is William T. (Bill) Mooney,
Jr., CPMC, Consultant
Coach & Director of the Center for Consulting & Professional Practices.
Since 1988, he has presented this seminar to thousands of consultants and
want-to-be consultants. He has updated the original seminar, developed by the
late Howard Shenson, with information from an on-going research program that
studies what successful consultants do to develop profitable practices. He has
also helped hundreds of consultants solve the problems of their practices
related to understanding the business environment of their consulting business,
positioning the business, promoting the business, procuring the business,
producing the work, compensation for consulting engagements and products, and
improving the profitability of the practice as well as other more specialized
topics.
Topical
Organization of Seminar
Orientation. The "How To Build & Maintain A Profitable Consulting
Practice" seminar is like a converging lens because it focuses other
people's experiences on your consulting business. It provides you with a
skeleton structure for your practice. As you apply the "keys to success in
consulting" presented in the seminar you will flesh your business into a
profitable practice.
| The first phase in the Keys model introduced in the seminar is researching
the PLAYING FIELD. Information necessary to good planning is
identified. It involves studying consulting trends, understanding the
consulting process, setting goals and compensation for projects and products,
the role of change in consulting, understanding different approaches to
consulting, knowing what start-up requires, developing resource conservation
plans, learning from successful consultants, and using codes of ethics and
standards and practices.
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| The second phase is POSITIONING or how to locate your business in
the multi-dimensional business environment in which it will operate in such a
way that referrers and clients will think of your practice when they think
about what you do. Additionally, such positioning will help prospects find
you. Here we look at the roles consultants fulfill in engagements, the reasons
clients hire consultants, the knowledge and techniques of the consultant, the
experience or problem solving record of the consultant, identifying and
developing opportunities, developing client profiles, being professional,
moving from a generalist to specialist to expert to authority, the SWOT
analysis and vision, and the portfolio of consulting products. A more detailed
consideration of positioning is found in part two.
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| The third phase is PROMOTION of the business or communicating what
you do to help clients add value to their organization. In this section we
present a model for strategic planning your marketing that includes a
consideration of the goals of marketing, marketing strategies and marketing
tactics. These are viewed in terms of in building your reputation and image as
well as creating mental and personal intersections with prospects. Overall,
this phase helps you macro-position your business with respect to your niche.
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| The fourth phase, the PROSPECT INTERSECTIONS, discusses the
characteristics of intersections created by prospects because of your
promotional activities as well as those created by the consultant through
networking. We emphasize the use of questions, listening, and classification
of prospects to move smoothly into the next phase of procuring the business
after the contact.
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| Once intersections with prospects have been created, the consultant enters
the fifth phase, PROCURING THE BUSINESS. Here we discuss strategies and
tactics that enable you to successfully move from contact to contract. This
phase requires micro-positioning the consulting business with respect to the
needs and wants of the prospect. Its major steps include building
relationships and trust, obtaining information about the needs and wants of
the client, making presentations, negotiating and contracting. We also
discuss how to mix personal meetings, telephone conversations, and directed
mailings in a flow-chart strategy. This section is concluded with a
presentation of a four-D model for consulting engagements and the
development of proposal, negotiating, and contracting skills.
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| The sixth phase, or PRODUCING THE WORK, emphasizes the professional
approach to conducting engagements and stresses the importance of continuous
reporting and change orders.
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| The seventh phase, THE PAYOFF, looks at the strategies and tactics for
setting a value on a consultant's work; setting fees; determining daily
billing rate; disclosing fees; determining the best compensation for each
consulting product, adjusting your fees, and the mix of your consulting
products.
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| The eighth phase, PROFITABILITY, helps the consultant understand the
maximum income possible on a time-based feeing system and the real world
decrease from this maximum because of time spent on the business, which is
not billable. It also considers the relationship between chargeable and
billable time as well as markups, markdowns, receivables, and uncollectables.
All of this gives rise to a formula for profitability that allows one to
identify areas for decreasing both money and time expenses and increasing
proceeds.
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| This first part of the seminar concludes with the introduction of the
BUSINESS PLAN, the ninth phase. The importance of a business plan in
focusing a consulting business contrasts with the usual use of a business
plan by small businesses to obtain financing. Suggested components are also
noted. |
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