Cambridge Business Association
How to Acquire Clients
Book

How to Acquire Clients

Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner

Alan Weiss
Wiley, 2002
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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

When it comes to the consulting business, Alan Weiss has been there, done that and probably consulted for the T-shirt company that sold you the T-shirt. So what does a consultant do when he’s mastered the consulting business? Why, he becomes a consultant to consultants of course. Weiss has perfected his craft. His book takes you into the buyer’s office, a rarified atmosphere where being too anxious to please can cost you business fast. Weiss has an instinctive understanding of the relationship between prospect and consultant, and an uncanny ability to communicate it. He makes you feel empowered to strike out and start your own seven-figure consultancy - except you’d be competing against the likes of Alan Weiss. getAbstract.com strongly recommends his book to both veteran consultants and neophytes

Summary

Hit the Road

As a consultant, you will face the day when you have to get out and sell your wares. Often, a new consultant with terrific expertise in his or her own area has never experienced the need to sell. The greatest sales successes happen when these conditions flow together:

  1. Market need - This is the presence of an existing desire for your services.
  2. Consultant competency - No one is master of all fields, but you have built up expertise and are naturally adept at one thing or another. Find the area that you are best suited to and develop your competency in related areas of your practice.
  3. Passion - You grow by finding something you love and committing yourself to doing it - not by trying to love something just because it will make money.

Consultants follow three typical trajectories: 1) Burnout, where a wildly passionate newcomer starts strong but lacks marketing ability or competency or both, and rapidly declines; 2) The Trapped, where the consultant is steadily able to establish a successful practice until he or she realizes that the passion once felt for this pursuit has vanished; or 3) The Renewing...

About the Author

After being fired in 1985, Alan Weiss started Summit Consulting Group, Inc. His clients include Hewlett-Packard, Coldwell Banker, Merrill Lynch and Merck. With a Ph.D. in organizational psychology, he’s served as a visiting faculty member at eight universities. He has published more than 400 articles and 16 books, including Getting Started in Consulting, The Ultimate Consultant and Our Emperors Have No Clothes.

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