David A. Fields Consulting Group The right tools can multiply the effectiveness of your efforts, enabling you to grow your consulting firm’s revenue and profit faster. Since I’m frequently asked what tools I’ve used to build my practice, I’ve compiled a short list of business tools that my team employs day in and day out to bring in more clients, more projects and larger engagements.
Join.me or GoToMeeting
If you target clients around the country (or world), in-person meetings are often infeasible or impractical. We conduct extremely effective, virtual meetings that engage prospects using join.me (we used to use GoToMeeting; both are good). These tools allow us to work with a whiteboard, sketching out ideas and responding to the prospect with frameworks and “instagraphics” on the fly. Virtually everything I do involves a team that isn’t on site, and join.me is perfect for hammering out a project plan, reviewing an idea and perfecting a presentation.
Pipedrive.com
Want to consistently improve at anything? Then you must track your efforts and progress. Hulking giants at the gym note every rep and every pound hefted. Internet marketers analyze every promotion and mouse click. Consultants like you and me need to track our outreach efforts and prospects’ movement through the pipeline. There are plenty of great CRM applications including the giants like Salesforce.com. Personally, I use Pipedrive.com. It’s simple, intuitive and, while most CRM software is really built for the sales manager, Pipedrive caters to the person drumming up business.
ScheduleOnce.com
I detest the calendar dance. It sounds like, “You can’t do Wednesday at [4:00]? Okay, can you talk Thursday at [9:00] or [10:00]? No, well, uh… what about next Monday afternoon?” Talk about an energy-suck! For the past couple of years, any client or prospect that wants to meet with me is directed to my online calendar, powered by ScheduleOnce. It sidesteps the calendar dance and integrates seamlessly into my team’s workflow. Instead of missing prospect meetings because the frustration of finding a common time derails the process, prospects immediately see me as being flexible and easy to work with.
Mindjet.com
Everyone thinks, plans, and organizes differently. For me, mindmaps are the go-to format. They corral my thinking about projects, articles (including this blog), processes and more. Even my daily to-do list sits in a mindmap. Again, there are plenty of fine mindmapping applications and I highly recommend you use one like Mindjet that is resident on your desktop as well as online. Mindjet is not without flaws, but overall it’s robust and team-friendly. (One downside to Mindjet is that the Mac version of the desktop application doesn’t play nicely with the rest of the team.)
Upwork.com
The best tool, of course, is another person who is better than you at whatever task you’re undertaking. Tapping others’ talents to multiply your effectiveness is the epitome of leverage. For every task on your to-do list, ask, “Could someone else do this faster and either well-enough or better than me?” If the answer is yes, then seek out that someone else. I’ve spent almost $100k in the past couple of years on contractors found through Upwork. Online marketplaces abound: oDesk, Freelancer.com, and Guru.com are a few respected alternatives. For editing work, I’m a fan of scribendi.com. Regardless of the platform, to enjoy outstanding results always write a good project description, review portfolios and feedback on candidates, and, for big projects, hire a few folks to work on a pilot or sample.
These five, online tools have proven to be invaluable for my firm’s growth. What are YOU using to fuel your firm’s success? My readers and I want to learn from you. Please post your favorite online resource below.
Text and images are © 2026 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
David – Have you tried ZOOM.us as a meeting tool? I have had great meetings and results with it.
Jennifer, I haven’t tried Zoom.us as a meeting tool. I’ll definitely look into it, though. Thanks for the suggestion.
Canva.com or snappa.io to create graphics for ads, blog headers, LinkedIn headers for posts, anything visual. They have pre-formatted sizes for each social media activity so you don’t have to guess at the size and you don’t have to settle for one-size-really doesn’t fit all. They also have templates and clip art and photos to get you started (some free, some $1).
Cool, Dan. I’ve heard of Canva and people on my team have used that service, but snappa.io is new to me. I’ll definitely check it out. Pre-formatted is a good thing! Thank you for telling everyone about another great resource.
Hi David,
Love reading your blogs and reading the suggestions from the comments! I wanted to know if anyone has any suggestions for software to use for drafting contracts or business plans for clients?
Interesting question, Margery. Can you give more specifics around what you’re trying to do? From what I can tell, most consultants (including me) have a template or two they follow for contracts and plans. What are you envisioning the software would do?
I’m thinking of a software that would allow me to create templates for forms or contracts that I can send to my clients & allow them to sign it or fill it out.
I want to be able to send clients a form/contract & allow them to complete it & be able to submit it or send it back to me in the same format they received it.
I know Adobe has fillable forms but I have not had any experience with it so I wanted to see if anyone else had personal experience using it or something else.
Margery, it’s possible you’re overcomplicating this. (Or, as one of my early mentors told me, “you’re over-egging the omelet.”) When you send a proposal for a client, all they need to do is indicate which alternative and/or options they’re taking and provide a signature.
In fact, they can even just email your proposal back with a note that says, “This email serves as my electronic agreement to proceed with the project as outlined in the attached proposal. We have chosen to go ahead with Alternative #3 and are selecting the success-fee structure.” That and a check are all you need.
Any suggestions for overall time / project management?
I run into difficulty in keeping balance between activities to stay focused. I could use a service to keep track of what I intend to do on different areas of business, like client projects, Sales&Marketing, Edu, Networking, etc. Each area may have several projects, each project has milestones, tasks and deadlines. It’s a handful altogether.
Anatoli, there are myriad approaches, systems and tools for keeping track of activities, managing projects, setting priorities, etc. Everything from a to-do list on a piece of paper tucked in your pocket, to complex Agile software packages.
My sense is the multitude of tools exists because: 1) no one has it completely figured out; 2) thinking and information organizing styles vary widely from person to person; 3) limited cognitive capacity makes any/every system fail.
All of that said, my team started using a product called Redbooth a couple of months ago and we are having a lot of success with it. It’s more sophisticated and powerful than Trello, but not insanely complex or overbuilt. Give it a try and let me know whether it’s helpfulf for you.
Thank you, David. Will check it.
I’m always trying new apps. I have a folder on my browser called “Cool Apps” and when I see an interesting app, I bookmark it and research later. To find really cool, new apps, get the Zapier newsletter. I think they integrate with over 1,000 apps now. Heavy use of computer robots allows me to leverage my time and staff.
Here’s my current and ever-evolving toolbox:
TimeDoctor – great management tool for remote workers
Outgrowing Quickbooks and converting to Zoho Books
Leaving Sales Force and converting to Zoho CRM
Leaving Mailchimp and moving to Zoho Campaign
Smartsheet and Zoho Projects
Zapier
Leaving Bill.com and moving to Zoho/Forte
Leaving SpringAhead Time & Expense and moving to Zoho Time & Expense
Zenefits for HR – looking at Zoho People
Gusto for payroll
Right Inbox
Schedule Once
Ring Central
Zoom
GoToMeeting
Zoho Assist
Upwork (formerly Elance)
Indeed for recruiting
Gsuite
Square Appointments
Zoho Subscriptions
Zoho Desk
Memberspace
Privy
Digioh
Wow, Mark, that’s quite a list! Thank you for all the contributions and suggestions. It looks like you’re a heavy user of Zoho’s platform. I, personally, have not been a user, but it looks like they have a broad suite of useful offerings.