High income consulting : how to build and market your professional practice (2nd ed)

This revised edition features an added chapter on how to guarantee client satisfaction, first time every time, and business-like information on what the top earners do to build and sustain profitable professional practices.

Fads, fallacies and futilities in consultancy come and go, but sustained success in consultancy comes from reputation and status made concrete through invariable client satisfaction. The book should also give readers, through a series of "soap boxes", key information and ideas to get them accepted and respected at the highest level in the client company.

Another innovation is a comprehensive action-glossary of business ideas, terms and sources of further information which should serve as a detailed, useful resource for managers and consultants. Those who already are consultants should learn: new opportunities to capitalize on information and skills; how to make networking equitable, profitable and genuinely client-centred; how to write business-winning proposals; how to set fees to maximize value to the client and profit to the consultant; why the contract is an essential marketing tool; nine low-cost ways of gaining professional exposure; how to ensure up to 80 per cent repeat and referral business; how to sell abstract, high-value services; ethical, professional and client-centred sales skills; key intervention strategies; and problem identification and avoidance. In addition, newcomers to the profession should find chapters to meet their special needs, for example: assessing their potential for success in a helping profession; setting and building a professional practice; and getting the money in quickly. Finally, Lambert shares his concept of the ideal consultancy, an ideal which he and other professionals are already turning into a reality.

Tom Lambert is the author of "The Power of Influence" and "Key Management Solutions".