Samantha Hartley: Hey, it’s Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting Podcast. Today, as you can see, I’m with a few of my clients, and we’re having a great, profitable, joyful time. So the theme of this season has been performance. For this episode, I wanted to turn to some of my clients and hear from them. What have they implemented in the area of performance and what have they learned from me about profitable, joyful consulting or from each other?
We are a wonderful community here of consultants. So I’m going to ask each of them to share with you one of their favorite tips, or something that has worked for them to improve their performance, or the performance of a client that they work with. Let’s just see what they have to say. So I’m going to ask each one to introduce themselves and to share their performance tips.
Patty Lawrence: Hi, I’m Patty Lawrence with TurboExecs, I want to share three performance tips that I have learned from Samantha over the 10 years we’ve been working together. In order to really perform at your highest and best level, as well as your clients for that matter, I would say, first of all, you want to lean in to whatever’s being asked of you. The second thing you want to do is to be authentic. Only you can be you and it’s you that everybody wants. The third thing is to trust the process.
Samantha knows what she’s doing. She’s been teaching it for a very long time and to get the most out of it and to get the highest results for not only for yourself, your company, and also for your clients, you really just need to trust the process. That way, success will come your way.
Nancy Settle-Murphy: Hi, I’m Nancy Settle-Murphy from Guided Insights. I’ve been working with Samantha for just about seven months now. In that short amount of time, I’ve learned to simplify and streamline my sales cycle. I have learned how to accelerate my sales cycle, so it’s a lot more efficient. I’ve created the confidence to double my prices from what I used to charge. Finally and most importantly, I’ve greatly increased the probability of winning business. The number one thing I think I’ve learned is to help the client quantify the problems, and the value in solving those problems. That’s what allowed me to propose a solution that generates double the revenue than I would have.
Melissa Dinwiddie: I’m Melissa Dinwiddie of Creative Sandbox Solutions. I’ve been working with Samantha for about a year now and working with her has given me a ton more confidence. One little tip that’s been really helpful when I’ve been on sales calls with clients, is simply to always make sure to share a price range before getting off a sales call.
When the client has an idea of what my price is, they don’t have a massive price freak out when I talk to them next. I know that the next time I talk to them and we actually talk about pricing, I’ve already qualified them. Either they are aligned with me on pricing or they’re not. I don’t have to waste time talking to that client again in the future if we’re not aligned on pricing. So that’s a really small tip that hopefully will be helpful to you.
Kate Lyda: I’m Kate Lyda with Staro Insights. I would say the number one tip I’ve learned from Samantha about performance and productivity is to be a nice and kind boss to myself. I can dump the hustle and grind, and working 100,000 hours doesn’t mean that I’ll be the most productive. Instead I understand what the most effective schedule is for myself and when I have the best energy. How I work best is how I can make sure that I’m the most productive and have the highest performance with my clients.
Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner: I’m Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner, President of Turner Change Management. I think the biggest performance reinforcement, as well as tip that I’ve gotten working with Samantha is to develop standard operating procedures consistently. We had been playing with them within the organization, and with Samantha’s help we really streamlined them. We have them for almost all of our key areas of work, and that means that we can offer more consistency. I can delegate a little bit more and I’ve taken some things off my plate, which has allowed me to do other things for our clients and for the business.
Michael Randel: I’m Michael Randel, and I lead the team at Randel Consulting Associates. I’ve been working with Samantha for just four months now, and I’m learning some baby steps that are already making a big difference in my productivity. Two things stand out for me. The first one is the importance of being clear about who your ideal client is. This has allowed me to not worry about chasing everything that comes along, or thinking about how something very small might grow into something bigger. I’m getting clearer now about being able to say yes right away to a potential call, but also know right away who really is not a good fit. So that’s been really important. Being clear about the ideal client.
The second area of learning and I’m still in process here is about how to manage my calendar. If I want to make time to work on clarifying my ideal clients and the services that I have for them, I need to block time on my calendar and be clear about what I’m going to do. This has made a huge difference in my productivity, and it’s helping me be better prepared and ready to engage with my ideal clients.
Samantha Hartley: Hey, it’s Samantha again. I am gathered here with my clients in beautiful Manitou Springs, Colorado, outside of Colorado Springs in a historic hotel. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, the Cliff House. I love to gather in beautiful places because it helps us bring our best selves and our best ideas together while in community. It’s so nice to meet in person after so long.
One of the things that has really become clear to me is that by being in community, my clients, who are all management consultants, can compare notes and really make progress in an expedited way. In our mastermind, there have been hotseats where people bring their issues or they ask their questions. It’s really a safe place in which they can ask anything that they need to. It’s also a place where you can ask someone who has been there and has heard this question themselves and can really speak to it from their own personal experience and expertise. So that has been incredibly gratifying for me.
I think one of the best things has been having them hear from each other about the components of their transformational engagements. This is how they achieve results for their clients. That was a wonderful way for them to share what they do and how they get results. It also moves their business forward in terms of performance and getting better results for their clients.
We’ve got lots of ideas about, “Oh, that’s a way that I can help the client do even better.” If the client wants to go with something cheaper or smaller or less, then we’re hearing ways we can use language to push back against that resistance. I think that’s so powerful to hear them share with each other.
When we talk about performance, one of the things that I think that we’ve heard over the course of this season is about metrics. When you’re trying to improve your performance, you need to track things. We all know there’s this expression of ‘What you don’t measure, you can’t manage,’ and also ‘What you focus on grows.’ So I want you to invite in ways of tracking things so that you’ll know for yourself your own progress measures.
The last thing that I think is really important is that the people in this room are representative of those who invest in what they want to improve, or change. They’re investing in their own growth. I’m humbled that they’ve chosen to invest with me in that development, bringing their time, expertise and contribution. As well as their finances forward, and making sure that they’re changing what they want to improve in their businesses. It’s a thing that I’ve done in my own business. I really put my money into the places where I want to grow, improve, change, evolve, whatever that is.
I’m truly committed to doing that in my business, and I think I attract those who are as well. So if you might be interested in improving your performance in your business and just evolving into the next better version of yourself, then I invite you to get in touch with me and we’ll get you on your own Path to $2 Million. That’s the name of the group that they’re in. With that, I’m wishing you a Profitable and Joyful Consulting Business.
