What do you do?  Well there are two ways to handle this.  The easiest way is to bow out gracefully from the client.  Simply state to them how you can understand why they don’t trust you and that in order for them to get the project done in a manner they would like it might be a good idea for you to leave once a replacement can be obtained.  If you work for a consulting firm, see if they will back-fill the position at the client.  This shows that you have the client’s best interest at heart and it might make them reconsider their opinion of you.  If not, ensuring the client has someone they enjoy working with is major part of client satisfaction.

The other, more difficult option is to stick it out at the client.  Prove to them daily that their initial impression of you was a false one.  You can also converse with your client to find out where the problem is.  If you continue to deliver high quality work, your previous infractions will begin to fade from their minds.  The key her is to hyper-communicate, deliver quality work (both regularly and on time), and to ensure the client is aware of any issues as early as possible.  You might have given them a wrong impression, the thing to do now is to show them that their impression was wrong.  Taking the following precautions can really help:

• When you turn in work, ensure it’s your highest quality.  If you need extra time to deliver the best work you can, communicate this to the client.
• Turn in any work on time.  When working to fix a perception issue, turning in work early can really help.  But again, make sure it’s quality work.  Do not rush to get something in ahead of schedule if it means cutting corners on quality.  This will do more harm than good in the long run.
• Hyper-communicate any issues, potential issues, or project stalls.  Keeping the client informed helps them to see progress or lack of it (ie you’re waiting on someone else to finish a piece you need before moving on).  Make sure the client is always aware of where you are at on a project.
• Keep non-client related work and web browsing to a minimum or do it during a lunch break, ensuring that the client knows you’re not on their time.  Reasonable clients know that you occasionally have to check a personal email account, or do something that’s not related to them, but do not bill to the client for these things if they end up taking considerable time.  Stay late if you have to.
• Ensure the client is aware of any time you might be taking off as early as possible. 

The trick here is to find ways to make it to keep things fresh and interesting.  The best way to do this is to focus on something that falls outside of your normal realm of interest.  If you are a programmer, try learning database design.  If you are a database person you might want to consider looking at learning a programming language.  You might notice that both of those examples mingle in real world work situations.  As a programmer you will generally connect to a database at some point for some reason and a database person might have to design databases for applications.  This gets those kinds of people used to thinking about things in relation to what they already do.  This is a great way to maintain interest while staying relevant to what you already do.

The other approach is to take something completely foreign and dive into the deep in.  If your primarily a programmer, jumping to project management is something that is (usually) completely different.  There are many styles and techniques to project management so there is a lot to learn there.  This generally requires the purchase of books and the attending of classes specific to the subject you’re trying to learn.  The deeper you go and the more you learn about the new topic, the faster you can get onto projects where you can use the new skills.  In the long term, this allows you to move onto different kinds of projects more frequently.

Also, finding other ways to occupy your time that are beneficial are good as well.  Partaking in social networks related to your field, writing a blog, or conversing with others in your field can occupy your mind while keeping it in a relative mindset.  The goal here is to not become bored for too long if you do.  Staying bored is a good way to drain yourself and the longer you stay in that mindset, the longer it will take for you to get out of it.

We first took a look at blogs and how they can be used to quickly build your own personal brand and what you should but into a blog to help build that brand.  It is important to note that your blog should be about what you want to be known for (my blog is a bad example since it’s topics vary).  It can be one of the best pieces in an online resume.  You’ll want to put time and effort into it if you want to see payoff and you’ll want to make sure your content is of the highest quality.  Remember, this blog is in some cases the first thing people are going to see.

We looked at utilizing social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  These can get your name out there, allowing people to find and interact with you.  This is a huge part of personal branding because people being able to see you in some way allows them to get to know you and what you do.

We also looked at how attending and participating in public events is important to building your brand.  People really like to be able to put a face with the name.  Especially when they might what that face/name to work on something with/for them.  Getting out and meeting people can also help expand your physical personal network which gives to the chance to sell more work.

All of this stuff can also help you build your internal personal branding if you work for a consulting firm (like me).  Each of these will help people within your organization better understand who you are, what you do, and what they can come to you for.

Building your personal brand is important for a lot of reasons, but whatever the reasons you need to ensure that you that you do reputation control.  Your reputation is a large part of your personal brand so no matter where or for whom you work you need to also put your best work and face forward.  Reputation control is almost another way to say personal brand so make sure you have a handle on both.  Googling your own name every once and a while can really help you understand what people might thing when they first hear or see your name.

I hope that you have found this series helpful.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Consulting Consultants – Personal Branding Article List:

Introduction

Blogging

Social Networks

Public Events

Branding Within

So, as a consultant who works for a consulting firm, you might think that the idea of personal branding is done away with in favor of company branding.  You couldn’t be more wrong.  In fact, personal branding is just as (if not more) important inside a consulting firm as it is if you were an independent consultant.  Your personal brand builds your own reputation within the company and this can be both a blessing and curse depending on what kind of reputation you’re building.

How do you build your personal brand internally?  One of the best ways is old fashioned client satisfaction.  Since this is essentially what your company makes its bread and butter off of, this is probably the most important.  You want to ensure client satisfaction and you can look at previous (as well as future) Consulting Consultants posts for more information on that.  But how do you build your personal brand beyond that?  Sure, it’s nice for your sales folk to know that by sending you out to a client you’re going to deliver quality, but how do you become one of their first choices?  How do you get those hire ups to notice you in a 100+ employee consultancy?  The key here is presence.

A sure fire way to make yourself known is to give training sessions internally.  If your company isn’t offering this service to its consultants, then you should help them get started.  Internal training is key to improving the knowledge of a consulting firm’s knowledgebase.   Leading one or several internal trainings is a good way to become known for a particular topic.  If you’re know for something, it can help make you the “go to guy” for that skill.  Also, giving internal training gets you in front of other consultants which puts a face with a name.

One of the best ways to increase your personal branding in a consulting firm is to bring in projects.  Consulting firms drive their figures on how many people they have billing on various projects.  If you help to increase that number you in turn directly affect the firm’s bottom line.  Directly helping the bottom line gets you noticed in a hurry even if you affect it negatively (though I wouldn’t recommend affecting it negatively, that’s how one becomes unemployed).  The key here is to assist in making the firm money.  Making people money is a great way to help them remember you.

A lot of what we’ve talked about so far in this “personal branding” series still applies when building your brand within the consulting firm environment.  Next week, we’ll finish up this series with a small recap of what we’ve talked about over the past few weeks.

Elevator Pitch

If you haven’t heard of the “elevator pitch” here’s the basics.  You have the time it takes to travel one or two floors in an elevator to tell someone who you are and what you do.  No more no less.  The idea is to:

1. Introduce yourself and what you do
2. Leave them in a way that they are comfortable with know who you are and what you do, but also in a manner that will leave them with some form of desire to call you should they need your particular skill set.

A helpful tool during the elevator pitch is your business card.  If you don’t have any made, get some (you can pick up some free ones at VistaPrint).

It is important to understand that the “elevator pitch” isn’t just for elevators.  This is what you tell someone when they ask you who you are or what you do.  The idea is to keep it short, answer the key questions quickly and effectively, and to make them fully understand it all.

Presentations

Giving presentations on your what it is your good at is a sure fire way to meet a lot of people and help them understand what it is you do.  It can also have the adverse effect and make those same people never want to have anything to do with you again.  So you have to walk a fine line.  When you decide to give a presentation, you’ll want to make sure that you are up on your knowledge.  You don’t have to know everything but knowing a lot about what you are talking about is most helpful.  Being knowledgeable helps build your reputation, showing that you are knowledgeable builds your credibility.  Occasionally saying “I’m not sure, give me your card so I can get back to you on that” is a good way to show that even though you don’t know, you’re willing to find out and follow up.  This is both professional and educational. 

I’ve gone more in-depth on giving quality presentations before.  But I’ll review the high points here real quick.

• Write down what you plan to say, and plan it well.  Make sure it flows and conveys the message you want to send
• Don’t just stand there, move.  Give people something to following rather than just stare at you standing there for more than an hour.
• Speak clearly and audibly.  It’s pointless to give a presentation if the people in the back can’t hear you.
• Finally, practice your presentation.  Give your presentation a few dry runs in the days leading up to it, you’ll be very glad you did.

Answer Questions

When people ask questions, they expect answers (generally speaking).  So if you’re at a round table, group discussion, or some other group activity and someone asks a question you know the answer to, speak up.  You do more harm by staying quiet out fear of being wrong than you do by giving your answer.  If you are wrong, most people will offer other suggestions and you will in turn learn something.  You can prefix with things like “in my experience” or “the way I’ve done it in the past” to make your answer slightly less authoritative and thus less about ego.  You don’t need to have an ego but you shouldn’t hide out of fear either.  Again, speaking up increases credibility.  It can also lead to knowledge.

Plan Events

If you truly have no problem speaking to people and getting out there, a really good way to build your personal brand and get your name out there is to plan events for others to attend.  Yes, it takes some work, but the end result can be well worth it.  Plus “event planning” can help nicely on a resume (*wink*).  The idea is to bring people together under a certain theme.  So make sure you’ve got interest.  This can also help you get to know other people outside your local circle that share your interests.  You might arrange to have some of the more well known folks to come and speak at your event and this could start relationship with those people.

Reminder

Remember that building your personal brand is pretty much all about self promotion.  The idea is for people about who you are and what it is that you are good at.  The reason for this is so they can remember you when they might need you.  The idea of getting out in public and in front of people is to help more people know about you.  This can increase your personal network, which can lead to more work as a consultant (more sales opportunities if you work in a consulting firm) and it can also lead to other opportunities in general both professional and personal.

Next week I’ll look at some things one can do when they work specifically for a consulting firm to improve their personal brand inside their company.  It’ll probably be a little shorter than the last few posts in this series, but the information should be just as helpful.

There are several social networks out there that can help you build your personal brand and bring you more networking opportunities.  The networks I’m specifically going to focus on are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

LinkedIn

When it comes to social networks, there are several spread out across the internet to help you become social in some way.  There are music social networks (Last.FM), there are movie social networks (Flixster), and there are ones for just general networking (Facebook).  The social network LinkedIn, is being marketed as “the social network for professionals.”  On LinkedIn, you can put up a pseudo-resume, give a little background information on your past jobs, and even talk about your interests as they relate to your career.  You can also connect to your co-workers both previous and current.  LinkedIn also offers a forum called Answers in which you can answer other peoples questions.  Answering questions can earn you points, and is a nice way to become known for something.  Think of this as an extension of your blog.  You can also use the questions as jumping points for your blog.

Some things you want to do to your profile page.  You want to be concise but you want to give people a good understanding of your past work.  This is similar to a resume so make sure it shines.  You’ll want to put up a photo (try to keep it as professional as possible).  You will also want to connect to as many people that you know as possible this will in turn bring others to you.  Finally shoot for 100% profile completeness, this will help give a nice overall view of yourself to those on the service.

How does this build your personal brand?  Well, this is a site for professionals to connect. and find each other.  If you make sure to list your skill sets accordingly people can find you when they need someone that does what you do.  It is also a place to brag about your accomplishments.  Have an MVP, a certification, or something else?  Make sure you say that on your LinkedIn profile.  Also, should you get laid off during this current economic crisis, you have a network of people you can ask to keep their eyes and ears open.

Facebook

Ahh Facebook, the “professional” Myspace.  Well maybe not really, but it does look more uniformed and is easier to look at than MySpace.  Facebook can arguably be interchanged with LinkedIn depending on where most of your network already connects.  If it’s on Facebook than you’re halfway there.  If it’s not, then Facebook is a good place to show the more personal side of yourself.  Facebook does allow you to have the best of both worlds in that you can create a really nice profile with little fluff and connect to your (former) co-workers.

When you fill out the information to show on your profile, you’ll want to be concise but also somewhat through.  This is because not just employers are going to be looking at this profile.  Chances are high that this profile will easily show up in a Google search for your name.  Fill in as much information as possible.  Avoid overly personal details but you can put things like phone numbers, relationship status, and some photos up.  Keep the photos neat and clean if you want to maintain the more professional profile.

Facebook gives a lot of options when it comes to securing your profile.  Make sure that if you do plan on putting stuff up that is professionally questionable that you lock your profile down so that anyone searching can not get into the “meat” of your profile and will only see a small portion.

Twitter

The most misunderstood application on the social bandwagon.  Twitter is alike a giant chat room where you can tell people what you’re doing, ask for help, offer help, tell people about a cool website/project, and just catch up.  As you become more known for something, people will tend to follow you because they think you’ll talk about that so keep things like that in mind as you begin to twitter.  Twitter is more conversational than blogging, and more interactive than Facebook or LinkedIn.  It requires that you participate.  You have to both listen and speak.  If you don’t speak, no one ever hears you.  If you don’t listen then no one speaks to you.

When using Twitter for the sake of personal branding you’ll want to make sure your tweets focus on whatever it is you are attempting to brand yourself for.  This means keeping the personal tweets (what you’re eating, where you are at, what you’re doing) to a minimum.  This also means “re-tweeting” other posts that have to do with the area you’re trying to brand yourself with.  Once again, I’m a bad example of this, but even I still get questions from friends about how to do things on occasion.

Conclusion

Personal branding is one part focus and several parts putting yourself out there for the world to find you.  You can be well known and respected in your field but if people can’t find you, there is very little point.  Putting yourself out there apart from your blog makes it easier to directly communicate with those you know and those you will meet.

Next week, we’re going to take a look at public events as a way to help build your personal brand.

You have probably at the very least have heard of blogs if not actively reading several on a daily basis.  Microsoft has whole set of blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com.  Other companies blog about what they are doing/working on.  So blogging can be a really big part of your personal branding strategy.

Starting a Blog

There are two ways to go about starting a blog.  You can use a free blog hosting service like WordPress or Blogger both of which come with some standard themes and can get you up and running without too much time or effort.  Or if you want to really help your personal brand you can purchase a domain name (I recommend mydomain.com) and host your own blog.

If you choose to go the “purchase your own domain" route, you’ll want to tie the domain name to you in some way.  The best option here is obviously your name so start there.  This will give you a presence on the web with ease and also with some proper SEO you can ensure you’re name shows up at (or at least near) the top of the Google search results for your name.  Talk about branding.

When you go the "host your own” route you have some decisions to make.  There are several popular blog engines out there: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are just a few options available for PHP/MySQL based systems.  There are ASP.NET driven blog engines, but I’m not as familiar with those.  The only one I am somewhat familiar with is dasBlog.  Which system you use will largely depend on where you host your blog at and what kind of systems they use for hosting.  If you’re on a Linux hosting provider (like Site5), then you’ll need to use something like WordPress.  Also keep in mind that some hosting providers, Site5 included, have one click installs for some of the more popular blogging engines.  This helps with ease of maintenance.

What About Content

Now that you have a blog and it’s up and running, you need to figure out some content to put there.  If you are looking to really be known for something then that is what you need to blog about.  You’re blog should show people what kind of work you want to do.  My blog is a horrible example of this because I have a wide range of interests that are not all related to technology.

Since we are specifically focusing on the idea of personal branding, you want your blog to represent you and what it is you do.  So you will need to ensure that the content of your blog reflects both of these.  Try to keep the funny posts and the LolCats stuff to a minimum on this blog.  This blog is the more professional representation of who you are and what you are about.

A good blog starts off with around 10-20 quality posts of content.  You want your first set of posts to be your best foot out the door because this is the stuff that Google is going to index first.  You want those first pages associated with you in Google to be some of your best content.

Also, quality content gets linked to by other bloggers and aggregator sites like Digg and DotNetKicks.  This can lead to what’s referred to as “Google Juice” in that you’re page rank will go up and help get your name at the top of search results on the topic you write about.

The Payoff

It takes a solid year or so of writing quality content to really see an impact from your work. That might seem like a long time but you want keep at it even if you’re seeing very few links at first.  It might feel like no one is reading what you say, but trust me people are.

It’s a good feeling to type your name into Google and be the first result.  It is also a good feeling when someone searches for something and lands on your blog because of it.  This is how good blogs grow organically.  The more quality stuff you write that can help people, the more of them that will link to you, bookmark you, and subscribe to your RSS feed.

So take your time, be thoughtful in what you write about, and in time you’ll be known for what you do just simply by your blog.  This is why blogs can really help build your personal brand both quickly and organically.

What is Personal Branding

Personal branding is sort of like your own personal advertisement .  It is name recognition on some level.  It is people knowing who you are and what you do just by the very mention of your name.  It is someone saying they want you because they know about you.  Personal branding is also an extension of your reputation.  If you have a reputation for doing quality work and delivery products/solutions to your client on time then you will most likely have a good reputation.  When you are a consultant (either solo contractor or working for a firm) your personal brand can make you or break you in many ways.

Why is Your Personal Brand Important

Building your personal brand requires work but the benefits will almost always pay for themselves during the long tail.  Building up your brand can bring you recognition, promotions/bonuses, and most importantly, more work.  It gets you known so people know what you can do which can make you first choice when it comes time for new projects and jobs.  Being on the forefront of peoples minds is important when you want to get new projects at old clients.  It can even assist and acquiring new ones through some of the methods we will be discussing more thoroughly in this series.

Building Your Personal Brand

Who are you?  What do you do?  How do you contribute?  These are all questions you should ask yourself.  If you can’t answer them yourself, how can you expect someone else to answer them for you.  Over the next few weeks on Consulting Consultants, I will look at various ways that you can help build your personal brand.  We will look at ways to this both from an individual contracting perspective as well as for when you work inside a consulting firm.  Many of the methods I will discuss will help you regardless of the context you’re in.

Next Week

Next week I’ll kick this series off into full swing with a look at how blogging can help you build a personal brand with a quickness.

For many consultants this can pose a huge problem because consultants, especially programmers are generally geeks.  Geeks/nerds by their definition are pretty much introverts.  They like the shadows.  They are much happier sitting in a dark closet with nothing but the glow of the screen to sooth them.  So asking them to get up in front of a crowd can usually have mixed results.  You’ll find some that are actually good at giving presentations while others stumble and mumble their way through.

The key here is communication.  Usually these kinds of people have to convey very complex ideas in a way that is simple to understand and sometimes, that is just hard to do.  But it’s not impossible.  Below are some tips to giving effective presentations.

1) Write down what you want to say.  So many first time presenters don’t do this.  Not writing down what you want to say in some form is pretty much the equivalent of turning in your first draft paper in your college English Composition class.  It’s just a bad idea.  Writing down your ideas, even in an outline form can really help you piece together an effective presentation.  This is the biggest help in find the flow of what you want to say.  I usually write up an outline before I create a single slide in Powerpoint.  This helps me finalize my points and helps me find the flow i want to have in my presentation.

2) Don’t just stand behind your computer and talk through your Powerpoint slides.  This is probably one of the quickest ways to put your audience to sleep.  Standing still gives your audience a single point to focus on and can be incredibly boring.  Move around a little, put a little presence into your presentation.  You don’t have to make huge grand gestures, but just standing there can become dull to the audience.  Combine this with tip 3 and you can really engage your audience.  Exception, if you are doing demonstrations, you’re kind of tied to your  computer.  For help in this area, see tip 3.

3) Speak audibly and clearly.  Don’t mumble.  Seriously, don’t mumble.  It really detracts.  Even if you’re somewhat unsure about what you are saying make sure people can hear you in the back of the room.  You don’t have to yell, but you need to use a public speaking voice.  If you are tied to your computer for demonstrations and can’t move around too much, your voice will be how you engage your audience.  If you mumble, it doesn’t help engage your audience and encourage them to participate and ask questions.

4) Be passionate about what you are speaking on.  If you are passionate and really into what you are talking about it will get your audience fired up.  Also, when your audience can see your excitement it helps them to get excited.  If the audience is excited, chances are they aren’t going to be bored.  If you are speaking on something you just can’t get into and there is no one else to do it, find an aspect of the subject you find interesting and focus on that.  Build up to that.  Being passionate about your subject will help you be more engaging to your audience.  They’ll get into it because you’re into it.

5) Practice your presentation.  It’s really that simple.  Once you have your outline and your slides made, run through them.  Do it once a day for a week before your actual presentation.  This will help you really nail down what you want to say, how you want to phrase it, and set your pacing.  You’ll need to practice less as you give more presentations so as you get better you won’t need days of practice runs.

Giving effective presentations can help you in a lot of ways as you progress through your consulting career.  It is extremely hard to give an effective presentation and not everyone is going to give beautiful presentations.  However, with a little practice you can begin to give effective presentations.  The more of them you do, the better you’ll get at them (just like anything else).

The Story

Back in January of this year, I sent an email to my client boss requesting January 23rd off for my birthday.  Since I make it person practice to never work on my birthday (if I can help it), this is something I’ve done for years when I was working at my previous employer.  I received a response to that email telling me that it was “okay” for me to take the off.  Little did I know that 2 days before my birthday something extremely personal would happen in my home.  Since this event was personal, but I also wanted to keep my client informed, in case other events took place regarding that situation, I gave the client boss a quick (skimpy on the details) run down of what was going on.  He asked if I had told my employer about it, I told him I hadn’t but that I planned to.

The next day I took my birthday off (as planned, requested, and approved) and had not had a chance to talk to my employer about the personal matter.  I had figured I had told the client and that was the most important thing.  However, while I was out of the office the vice president of my office and the account executive in charge of the client came in to check on things.  When the account executive didn’t see me, he asked the client where I was.  The client not wanting to divulge personal information that I might not have told them yet said “I’m not sure what he’s told you, but I don’t know exactly where he is” (the fact that the client boss did not discuss the personal issue is strong testament to his character and is much appreciated).

You can see how this is bad.  The client boss had forgotten about it being my birthday and my having asked for it off in light of personal item I had entrusted him with.  Combine that with the fact that I had also made the mistake of not telling the other on-site consultants from my firm that I was taking the day off.  No one knew (or remembered) where I was.

The Lesson

Ouch.  Talk about learning the hard way, right?  Well since I was able to produce the email that showed I had asked the client for the day off and had the “okay” to do so, the issue was quickly aleviated.  But it could have been avoided entirely had I told more people about my whereabouts and schedule.

The message here is, make sure as many people know what your schedule is as possible.  When you ask for a day off, do so in advance.  When you have permission from the client, make sure to send them a reminder the day before, just as a heads up.  Also inform any other on-site consultants and client employees as possible.  Definitely inform those that you are working with directly.  If you work for consulting firm, make sure you shoot off an email to the account exectutive (aka “sales guys”) so they know too.

Hyper-communication doesn’t just revolve around taking days off.  You want to be in constant communication with everyone about what’s going on.  You want the people from your company to know what’s going on at your client.  Especially anything that has a direct affect on you.

The idea here is to actually over communicate.  Don’t do just enough to get by.  And definitely don’t stop when you think you’ve done all you can.  Think and make sure that you are talking to everyone you need to talk to.  Make sure everyone knows where you are at and what (proverbial) page you are on.  The more people that know, the better it is for you in the long term.

A person in my company (someone with very high bill rate) once told me that if you want to be successful in the consulting business, then one of the best things to do is to never do the same thing twice.  There’s truth in this.  Granted I doubt most people can move between different kinds of projects with such ease.  Especially if you are lacking the skills required for that next project.  But if we look at this as a way of saying, “Always look to do something different” and use that to mean learn something new so you can do something different then it doesn’t look as hard as it initially seems.

To do new things and not do the same thing twice, you’ll have to be learning one thing while actively working at something else.  So for example, reading up and taking classes on project management while you are working as a developer writing code.  Once you have enough knowledge about a new subject, you have to dive in.  But how do you get that knowledge?

Books

Books are a fantastic way to learn about something new.  Many people have probably written on the subject you want to learn about so there is probably a good resource to start with if you want to learn something new.  But with so many books out there, how do you find the ones that are going to best help you get from knowing nothing to knowing a lot?  The first place to try, would be Amazon.  Amazon’s search (especially for books) works a lot like Google.  You can search on the subject you want to read up on.  Once the list of books comes back, you can then sort that list on many different things including ratings.  The rating system on Amazon is consumer driven.  This has it’s pluses and minuses.  If no one has read the book, then there is going to be no rating.  However if a large number of people have read the book, there there are lots of opinions to sift through and figure out what books will work best for you.

When I look at ratings, I try to look at reviews that praise the book as well as those that berate it.  You definitely want to know what someone did not like about the book as it might be something you know from experience that you don’t like.  So you never want to look at just the good reviews when looking for some material to read.

Training Classes

Often times there are training classes on the subject you want to learn.  There are entire institutions devoted to teaching.  Some are universities while others are trade specific.  If you are looking to learn something and you learn best in a classroom environment, you will definitely want to look into taking classes.  Especially if your company allows you to expense them.  If you are self-employed, these can usually be written off on your taxes, but you’ll want to consult an accountant or tax person to be sure.

Classes though can be a difficult thing so you’ll want to research as much as possible before signing on the dotted line.  One reason for this is because you might get a teacher you don’t like.  If this happens (and I speak from experience) you won’t learn very much.  You want a teacher that you like because it will make the class enjoyable and allow you to get as much as you can from it.  Also you’ll want to research the facilities where the classes are held as you’ll want something that helps you learn rather than just gives a lecture (where applicable).

If you work for a consulting firm, then they might give after hours training classes.  These classes will usually be taught by someone with experience on the subject they are teaching which can mean you’ll get real life lessons from the teacher.  Plus, these kinds of training classes are usually free and cost nothing more than your time.

Blogs

Blogs can work in the same vein as books.  Where books lay the ground work, blogs can generally give you another person’s hands on lessons.  Bloggers are usually people too.  Someone who has been through what you are going through.  Someone who has been in that same trench.

Blogs are a good resource for finding real world solutions to a problem.  They can also be a great place to ask questions.  If you search google for an answer to a problem and a blogger wrote an article about it, you’ll probably want to subscribe to that person’s RSS feed as they could help you solve another problem futher down the road.

Conclusion

Your skillset is your most important asset in consulting.  You want to keep it honed and you want to be constantly expanding it.  If one area of your skillset becomes unmarketable, you want to have other things that can get you hired and/or keep you billing.  Expanding your skillset is one of the best investments you can make in yourself and in your future.

While we have talked about specialization in the past, it is not exactly related to your skill set (but most often is).  Having a skill set is not neccesarily a specialization.  Understanding your skillset can really help you land clients and keep you billing.  If you are working for a consultant firm, it can help its sales follk sell you to their clients.

What is a Skillset

A skillset is like you own personal toolbox.  In construction you have guys that specialize in concrete, sawing, and even high buildings work.  Each has their own set of tools for their specific task.  You as a consultant will have your own toolset that you developed overtime.  If you are a business anyalist, you might have some BPM tools you use.  If you work in data warehousing, you might understand Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server and all tools associated with those platforms.  If you are a developer, you probably undestand C#, Java, and even Python.

Every job you encounter will require something from your toolbox (skillset).  Everyone utilizes different skills throughout their career.  For example, I do C# development but I also have a lot of experience in data management/mapping in SQL Server.  So as a result I’m a developer who also has a large amount of database experience.  Those are my current skillsets.

What is Your Skillset

What I ecourage you to do, if you haven’t already is write down every tool, platform, language, operating system, and technology you have every used, played with, developed in/on, and even studied.  Take that list and order it in descending order where your experience is.  For example if developing in C# is where you have the most experience put it at the top.  Once you have this list in order of experience the top 3-5 (depending on your experience in them) is your skillset.  This is what you should be telling people your skillset is when they ask you.

This is important because that list of 3-5 items will tell you how to market yourself or determine how others can market you to get you billing on project (ie get you paid).  I encourage you do review this list once a year.  If it changes, be sure to let those that need to know, know about the change in skillset.  The more up to date those people are, the better your work experience will be.

Expanding Your Skillset

Next week, we will look at ways to expand your skillset because going over it here will cause this post to become extremely long.  But a good start would be books.  Reading up on a new skill is a great start in acquiring that skill.  But we will look into this more next week.

In consulting your commitment is important.  Your commitment to your job, your client, and even yourself are all extremely important.  Without commitment, a client would not know if you can be trusted to complete the job.  Future clients will look at your commitment on other jobs to determine if you are worth both their time and their money.  So to remain commited is important.

But being commited to a project is not everything.  There is a commitment to a certain level of work.  Since you are in effect, selling yourself (or your firm) you need to consider that when you turn in work.  The higher quality work that you turn into your client, the better it looks for all those involved.  Your client will appreciate the high quality of work, and this can lead to future engagements.

Commitment is something that can be difficult to physically show.  Since everyone works differently, some people can still turn in a higher quality work but look like they are slacking.  Some people can deliver the highest quality 8 hours a day, while others need a break every now and then.  This does not mean that someone who looks like they are not working is not delivering high quality work.  So you have to consider this when you’re working.  However, perceptions are powerful things.  If you look like you aren’t working then most people will assume you are not.  So perceptions are something to keep in check when you want to display proper commitment.

How can you as a consultant display commitment to your project(s)?  First and foremost, you want to turn in your deliverables on time or ahead of schedule.  You also want to turn in quality work.  Your work is a reflection of you.  If you are not turning in your highest quality work then you are doing a diservice to everyone (including yourself).  Turning in work ahead of schedule is a great way to demonstrate commitment, but turning in an inferior product in hopes of beating the schedule will only cause you more work in the long run and if you do it enough it will give your client a bad perception of you (and/or your firm).  Most clients would rather you deliver a higher quality product a little behind schedule then the would an inferior one ahead of schedule.

Another thing you can do is to occasionally check in with your client boss.  Ask them how they feel you are doing or if there is something you could do better.  Be careful not to ask too often, as this could give them the impression that you are only worried about “looking” good rather than actually being good.  Checking in every couple of weeks (or between deliverables) is a good way to keep a gauge on how you’re doing.

You can combine the occasional check-in with random checks on your work.  Show the client what you have and where you’re going.  Give them a chace to know what’s going on as well as make important decisions about the direction of your deliverable.  This ensures that the client is aware of where you are within the schedule and can even make changes to that schedule if he feels that he can get something better if you work a little longer on it.  Most Aglie development methodologies do something like this, so if you are in an evironment that is utilizing agile you will probably already be doing this.

Another thing to consider when discussing commitment is the fact that sometimes the client will ask you, the consultant, how long something is going to take.  When this happens you have a couple of options.  The first is to defer an answer until you have a better understanding of the project or deliverable.  Don’t delay too long though, as it can look like you are stalling.  The other option is based on your past experience, if you know you can do the work in a set amout of time then let them know how long it will take.  If something comes up that is going to delay your orginal estimate make sure you tell the client the moment you are made aware of the impact.  Unless your client is just completely unreasonable, this shouldn’t cause a problem.  You can not predict every single thing that could happen in the course of a project and you should not be expected to be able to.  But you are expected to communicate effectively.

As you work on a project make sure you are giving that client your highest commitment.  Some days can be hard but always try to get something accomplished.  Your goal is to deliver the highest quality work to your client(s) and to do so you must be commited to them and your work.

In the article I linked above I touch on something.  That something was the idea of specializing in a programming language.  Because learning one can help you easily learn many and it can keep you billable and relevant as a consultant.  There is more to specializing in a programming language than learning more than one.  There is the logic that comes with learning how to develop and program applications that can be transferred to other areas and other platforms, services, and architectures.

You see there is a theory (or theories) and practice behind application development that will pretty much never change on a grand scale.  The idea of “Object Oriented Programming” and the theories and “best practices” behind it have not really changed over 20-25 years.  The concept of requirements building, architect-ing an application, and coding have pretty much stayed the same over the last few decades.  Sure there are new theories and ideas but the general rules stay the same.  There are different methodologies, concepts, and paths one can take in doing development.  Many of these are transferable across languages and remain extremely similar regardless if it is C++, C#, Java, or even Python.

This is why specializing in a language and and application development can give you that specialization “credit” but keep you transferable between technologies.  Programming is an incredibly logical process and that process can be applied to anything that requires problem solving abilities.  Then on top of that if you understand, lets pick Java, if you need to learn C#, the overall concepts behind application development do not change, just the syntax for developing the logic and algorithms.

I am definitely still of the opinion that you should not specialize too much on one technology and platform because that causes you to (in many cases) want to use that technology/platform to solve all the problems you encounter.  I think that a good consultant understands several tools (even if they are not experts on those tools) and can determine the best solution for the problem at hand.

However, I do think there is some value in specializing in a particular programming language (with the intent to learn others) and understanding development concepts, theories, and methodologies.  You start with one a single language and then move through the others as you need to.  The .Net platform is not always the best solution (neither is Java, Python, or C) but a solid understand of a single language can help you move across others with ease.

When it comes to doing an interview or talking to a client, you want to be as honest as possible.  The main reason for this is because if you set an expectation, it is your responsibility to follow thru on that expectation and deliver upon it.  You want to give your client the impression that you can fix their problems but you want to do it in a way that lets them know what you can and can not do.  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.  If you are honest with your weakness upfront it sets a resonable expectation and in some cases can let them know they might need to look for someone else that can do the things you can’t do.  If you have a realistic client, this shouldn’t be a problem.

So what about the exaggeration part?  Surely we should do a little bit of overselling, right?  Well, not always.  This depends on what you intend to oversell.  It would not be a good idea to tell the client that you can work on a technology you have never touched before.  This puts you into a place where you have to go deep into a technology in order to learn enough to be able to deliver on the promise.  As a consultant, your output is your biggest selling point.  If you can’t deliver your best work, it will show, and it could cause the client to look elsewhere for new projects.  However, lets say that you are a C# developer but you have no experience with LINQ (a new 3.5 feature) but your client is looking for someone with LINQ skills.  What should you do?  Well, if you have sufficient C# skills, LINQ is probably nothing more than a day’s worth of learning.  You can either a) tell the client you are familar with the technology or b) tell them you have not done any real work with the specific technology but since you already have the other C# skills, learning LINQ would be no big deal.  The idea would be to not tell a client looking for BizTalk skills that you have that skillset when you in fact do not. Lying will really get you no where, and it usually doesn’t take long for someone to discover a fraud.  If you don’t have that skillset and the client asks, it is almost always better to tell them that you don’t have it.  Bold face lying will only end in your reputation being destroyed and having no one hire you.  The idea is balance.

One of those two responses is a flat out lie, while the other does two things.  The second answer gives the client honesty while telling them you are willing to do what you need to ensure you are able to get the job done.  Some clients might turn you down, reasonable one’s will probably take you on knowing you’ll learn what you need to get the job done.  The basic point here is to try to be as honest as possible but sell the client on yourself.  Honesty with a client lets them know that you are not in this to just make money but to ensure they get the best consultant for their money.  It also shows them that you are an honest guy which can go a long way with some people.

People generally equate honesty with a strong character.  Someone who will own up to their mistakes.  Someone who will tell them the truth when asked a question.  You can be both honest and tactful, very possible.  A little exaggeration can’t hurt when you do it at the right times and to the right questions.  But do not let an exaggeration equate to a lie.  Ruining your credibility (or that of your firm if you work for a consulting firm) will do no one any good.

Sure, specializing looks like a great road to go down especially on a technology that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon.  However, for the sake of this argument lets consider the Microsoft .Net product stack.  How many .Net developers do you know?  How many really good ones do you know?  If I was to venture a guess, I’d say you know a lot of .Net developers.  This makes the .Net developer a commodity of sorts.  The more people that can do what you do, the worse off you are.  Especially if those other folks can do it better than you.

This can be extremely harmful if that single technology or technology stack is all you know.  You are so deep in it that it’s crazy.  But if you are are asked to look at something else you couldn’t do it with confidence and value.  However, specializing can make you easily billable on a technology (stack) that is in high demand but once that technology becomes outdated or something better comes along you are stuck being non-billable until you can learn something else.

Another reason that specialization hurts is that it makes it really easy to fall into the “one solution for all problems” trap.  You start to think about ways to make your current specialization fix a problem it has no business fixing.  You end up trying to fit the square peg into the round hole.  It just doesn’t work and it really doesn’t actually solve the problem.

So how do we avoid specialization?  Well, it can be hard to and I’m not saying that you should never specialize in anything.  I actually thing specializing on a programming language is a sound idea.  Especially if it’s object oriented based and compiles in some way.  Doing so makes it easy to learn other languages when you need to in a pinch making it easy for you to jump around.  But I think that getting your hands on whatever technology you can is only going to benefit you long term.  If you can play around and get to understand different technologies at least at a surface level, it helps you to understand different ways to solve problems and gives you a better understanding of what tools work best for what kinds of jobs.

Surface knowledge helps a lot.  It can help you to understand how different technologies can connect together to create a solution.  It can help you understand a lot more technologies overall because you understand so many, at least a little bit.  So keep this in mind as you sit down to learn new things.  Think about something you don’t understand and attempt to understand it.  The more technologies that you have a surface understanding of, the easier it will be for you to dive deeper if you need to, because you’ll already have the ground work laid.

So what are some ways to become a better communicator through the written word?  The two best ways that I know of personally are to:

1. Read
2. Write

These are two sure fire methods to becoming a better communicator through writing.  Now here is the catch, when I say to “read” I mean to read a newspaper, book, or something that’s printed.  Yes, you can read blogs and other online content, but there is something about reading online that does not seem to have the same mental translation to better writing then if you read a book or newspaper.  For some reason when you read, words on a page the brain seems to store the method of writing in your brain so that you might use it later.  It could be the phrasing, use of punctuation, or even just simple adjectives to describe something.  It sticks with you better.

The other (more obvious) way to get better at writing is to actually write.  It’s true, since I have started blogging (coming up on two years in May) my writing has drastically improved.  I get compliments on it all the time.  It is nice to be told “well written email” or “your edits made the proposal better” and you’ll get used to hearing it that you’ll strive to become an even better writer.  If you do not have a blog, write haikus, short stories, anything to put your words on paper.  The more you write, the better you’ll start to get.

Remember that when writing you want to make your point, but you want to be as concise as possible.  You want to use as few words as possible but still display a sense of eloquence about your self.  Not in a, “I’m above everyone else and so much smarter too” kind of way but rather a demonstration that you have harnessed this skill.  If you can show you are an effective writer, it might lead to other opportunities that you might not have thought about at first.  So keep that in mind as you write emails, proposals, and anything else for that matter.

If you are a newcomer to the consultant market, you probably have figured out quite quickly that knowledge is power.  Not power as in the ability to boss others around but rather it power in the sense that the more you know, the further you will go.  So the general idea is to learn as much as you can.

Knowledge Routes

There are two distinct routes you can go (3 if you do a combination of the two) when it comes to knowledge: specialization or breadth.  Specialization is exactly what it sounds like in that you pick a technology or subject and you dive in deep.  You become the guru of that topic/technology/whatever.  If you go for breadth, you will now a little about a lot but not have much depth on anyone particular thing.  Some consider this a blessing while others might consider it a hindrance, and which one will largely depend on where or with whom you work.

Specialization

Specialization is great if you really love a specific technology.  If there is one thing that you specifically love doing, reading about, and keeping up with then it is probably a good idea to specialize in that.  Specialization is also great because you become the expert, the guru, the "go to guy" for any and all questions around your specialization.  A specialization is extremely helpful if there are a lot of people using a specific technology or product and need folks that know it well.  The reverse to that is, if you become specialized and that product goes away or becomes less popular, you are left with an a lot of knowledge about a product no one is using and thus you are now difficult to place or you find it hard to locate a contract for that specific product/technology.

The best way to specialize is to grab a book, subscribe to blogs, and simply play with the product/technology until you understand it inside and out.  For an example we’ll use Microsoft’s Sharepoint technology.  There are about a hundred books on the technology and Microsoft has it’s own blogs specifically from those that wrote, developed, and use the technology.  Microsoft also offers a Sharepoint virtual machine that anyone can download for free to try out and train on.  But the main point is, you read and absorb all you can on the specific focus you want to specialize in.

Breadth

Going for breadth leaves you with a similar problem.  You are hard to place because you know a little about a lot.  You might have a little more depth on certain products/technologies, but in general you are not an expert on any particular thing.  But don’t lose heart because know a little about a lot can help you understand why things work the way they do or better yet why one product or technology is better than another in a certain situation.  This can lead to what a colleague of mine refers to as the "Why Factor" (which we’ll discuss in this column at a later date).

When it comes to learning a little about a lot, you have a little more work to do than someone who is specializing.  You have to read, subscribe, and attend trainings as much as possible for as many products/technologies as possible.  So your RSS subscription list is going to get rather large.  However, the more you read and connect on, the more you will understand overall.  Sure you might not be able to dive deep into C++ code but you can probably look at it and understand what it is doing to some degree.  The idea here is to soak up as much as possible about as many things as possible.  This could result in information overload if you are not careful.

Combination

You can get the best of both worlds however.  If you can pick a specific technology that has a good chance of being around for a while (programming language with cross platform capabilities, for example) and learn as much as you can about that while at the same time reading about other products/technologies.  You can be placed on projects easily but still maintain that "why factor" understanding of how things work and why one might be better than the other.

The problem here is picking the product/technology (or multiples) to really dive into and become more specialized in.  That can be determined by seeing what the market needs and figuring out what products/technologies will more than likely stick around for a while.  So pay attention and do your research.

Finding What’s Available

The first thing that should take place when you realize you are finishing up with your current client is to find out what projects are available.  Since I work for a consulting firm, I will focus on this aspect of things.  The general ideas though can be applied to a contract worker who finds their clients and jobs on their own.

Lets begin with the basics.  What does "rolling off" mean? Quite simply it means that your work for the client is complete or they have decided to let you go.  Either way, you will no longer be working for that client and hence will not be billing any hours, thus not earning any money.

Once you know you will be rolling off a project, you need to alert the account mangers in your firm of your availability.  This initially can be done via email, while still on site with your current client.  The email should include the following:

1. Your name, position, and primary skill set.  You might also include basic information about the skill sets used at our most recent client
2. The date of your immediate availability.  This is the first business day after your last day at the current client.
3. Finally, any specific projects you might want to be a part of, specific things you would like to work with/on

This lets your account managers know that you are available and what kind of roles you can fill.  Once you have rolled off your current project you need to follow this email up with in person meetings.

Getting to Know Your Account Managers

The account managers in your firm need to be your best friends in the firm.  They are the ones that find you a project.  They will get you back out in the field and billing for a client thus keeping your overall utilization up (utilization is important when working for a consultant firm it represents how much money you bring in versus how much you don’t).

So your first day off a project should be spent going around and meeting as many account managers as possible.  These guys have their ears to the ground and know what skill sets are popular and most requested.  They can help you figure out what you need to focus reading up on, learning, and general knowledge growth direction.  Some questions to ask the account managers are:

1. What current projects do you have openings on?
2. What skill sets are you seeing a lot of requests for?

You should also reiterate some of the things you sent in your initial email.  Stating who you are what skill sets you have, what you are interested in, and so forth.  Remember, you need to be on these account mangers’ minds.  If you are, when they get something they will remember you and get you on the project quickly.  These folks can not sell who they don’t know, so make sure they know you.

Training

When you roll off a project, you are usually considered to be "on the bench".  This is something I have written about previously (On the Bench).  When you are on the bench, you want to also be working on improving your skill set.  If you work for a consulting firm, chances are they have made training materials available to you or have a very rich library that you can use to help learn new skills or improve existing ones.  Once you have spoken with the account managers to find out what clients are looking for, you can begin researching and learning about the skill sets in question.  If you already have a needed skill, make sure to speak up.  The sooner you can get on a project the happier everyone is.

In Closing

Being off a project is the life of a consultant.  Some times you are on a project other times you are not.  It is a cycle.  The important thing is what you do with your time that you are not on a project that will help you become the best consultant you can be.  Talk to your account managers, refresh and better current skill sets, make sure to work at learning new skill sets.  All of this will help you stay off the bench and billing at a client.

This post is to announce the revival of this series for the purpose of getting some of my weekly series started back up.  We will start with the Consulting Consultant series because I have a page in my notebook of post ideas for the series.  As I work to get this series back on track, I will then look at reviving my "Songs & Such" series.

So starting next Friday, you will begin seeing a new Consulting Consultant’s post every Friday.  Check back for more on the world of consulting.