Imagine what I do with my Ascendant Consortium, but
much bigger. That’s
Zintro. Sort of. They’re a marketplace for connecting clients with consultants. I’m recommending Zintro for two reasons:
First, if you need some “bread and butter” work, listing yourself as an expert on Zintro and applying for gigs is a good idea. Of course, you need to know how to win gigs in that environment, and there are definitely best practices for that.
Second, if you need an expert to help you deliver phenomenal results for your clients, Zintro is a fast and easy resource. That’s how I use them and I’ve hired numerous consultants on a wide variety of projects.
http://www.provenmodels.com and http://www.12manage.com are also very valuable sources for tools and methodologies to apply for consulting projects.
Basecamp for collaboration in Projects is also very good!
I’m familiar with Basecamp and have used it a couple of times. Finding that perfect project management tool is tough–especially for non-process-oriented people (like me). Maybe I’ll gather a panel and get recommendations just on project management software. provenmodels and 12manage were new to me. I’ll definitely look into them. Thanks for the recommendations, Alvaro.
Hey David – thank you so much for including me in this great list. If folks want to “take a quick dip” into the speaking world, they can click that link above and delve into all sorts of free goodies on my site. YOU rock and I appreciate you!
You’re welcome, Mr. Newman. Credit where credit is due, and you are due a lot of credit!
Daylite by Marketcircle is my CRM. It is highly customizable. A fantastic tool, pulls all the pieces together in one place. Extreamly useful for anything to do with relationships. Macs Only.
Thanks for the recommendation, Daniel. As a PC-only household, Daylite hadn’t made my radar, so I appreciate you bringing it up for your fellow Mac users.
This is excellent David. I’ll use these resources. Thank you for sharing!
Just returned from a bank conference in Dallas. Had excellent conversations. Now the follow up.
Each conference I get better and more confident with banks.
The sales cycle seems to take forever though. Do you have recommendations or resources that give tips on shortening notoriously long sales cycles?
The best resource to “shorten” the notoriously long sales cycle is a good coach. One who will help you adopt techniques that keep momentum high and that will also ground your expectations. Unless the prospect is coming to you with high urgency, the sales cycle is going to be long. That’s common in consulting. Therefore, in addition to learning how to create Want and Urgency, they key is to master filling your pipeline enough that timing is less of an issue.
It’s been a while since I was involved in a team that was selling enterprise solutions to big banks, but my guess is that they (banks) still move pretty slowly (like every other big bureaucratic behemoth).
It’s all about timing. If you catch them when they are in their budgeting & planning process for the upcoming fiscal year, then you are well positioned for your project to get its necessary funding (provided that it is written up in such a way that it will pass budgetary approval). And usually they have to get funding approved in order to close the deal with you.
If you are trying to close a deal mid-year, when funds are already being used up by other projects, you are much less likely to be successful (at least when it comes to bigger projects).
Back in the day it took us more than 2 full fiscal years to close a deal with a big bank because in the first fiscal year, the client did not write up the budgetary proposal well enough for it to get approved (even though the bank desperately needed the solution that was proposed). So we had to wait another year, for the next budget cycle, and then it was approved (because we as the vendor ended up writing 90% of the budgetary proposal for the client!).
Now that was one long sales cycle!
Robyn, thanks for providing Scott with some industry-specific insights. Fabulous!
Excellent resources some of which I am using based on your previous recommendations during the coaching services and your outstanding Client Acquisition Program you provided to me.
Thanks for the feedback, Tom. Are there particular items on this list that you have found valuable for your own practice and could call out for other readers?