How can you take your skills and expertise and package and present it to become a successful consultant? There are proven time-tested principles, strategies, tactics and best-practices the most successful consultants use to start, run and grow their consulting business. Consulting Success teaches you what they are. In this book you'll learn: - How to position yourself as a leading expert and authority in your marketplace - Effective marketing and branding materials that get the attention of your ideal clients - Strategies to increase your fees and earn more with every project - The proposal template that has generated millions of dollars in consulting engagements - How to develop a pipeline of business and attract ideal clients - Productivity secrets for consultants including how to get more done in one week than most people do in a month - And much, much more
Consultants are playing an increasingly important role in the challenging world of nonprofits. Yet despite the demand for consulting services, nonprofit professionals often lack the necessary insight into how best to choose and work with a consultant. Nonprofit Consulting Essentials is a vital resource both for nonprofit leaders selecting and working with a consultant to guarantee the best use of their agency’s resources, as well as consultants seeking a clear understanding of the more subtle dynamics that define a successful consulting practice working with social sector organizations. Drawing on Penelope Cagney’s years of experience as a top-level nonprofit consultant, Nonprofit Consulting Essentials is filled with keen insights and in-depth interviews with the founders and leaders of influential consulting firms. Throughout the book, Cagney outlines a number of concrete consulting strategies that can serve as additional tools for managers seeking to resolve complex organizational development issues. Nonprofit Consulting Essentials also offers recommendations to nonprofit leaders and consultants to make their relationship the best it can be. Once a solid alliance is formed, they can tackle complex organizational challenges together, such as fundraising and marketing, governance and management, and organizational development. Cagney explores what it takes to make the consulting experience a success and covers vital topics such as: the key differences between consulting with nonprofits versus for-profit organizations, the primary areas of nonprofit consultation, making the consulting relationship work, the special ethical considerations of consulting in the sector, and understanding emerging trends in consulting. Nonprofit Consulting Essentials reviews the best practices and thinking in the nonprofit consulting practice, providing leaders and consultants a way to ensure a robust organization in the future.
The volume is based on the presentations and discussions from the Fifth European Conference on Management Consulting sponsored by the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management, which took place June, 2011 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference theme – Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants – attempted to capture the highly ambiguous social status of this young and emerging profession. Management consulting does not have professional standards or accreditation criteria like those found in medicine or law, there are low barriers to entry, and a broad range of tasks are undertaken in the name of consulting. As a result, a crucial aspect of what constitutes such a loosely defined profession is the identity of its members. The professional identity of management consultants is continuously developing through the interplay of how consultants are seen and valued by clients as well as in the larger society, and how consultancy firms and consultants identify and position themselves. This theme includes a variety of topics, ranging from the interaction between consultants and their clients, consultant rhetoric and self-presentation, and the plethora of books, media and public discourse on consulting, to human resource policies and practices, knowledge development activities of consultancy firms, career and life stories of consultants and consultancies, and consulting associations, accreditation bodies, and education programs. All of these factors contribute, either directly or indirectly, to identity construction in the field of management consulting.
Fundraising Consultants Lowering net costs, realizing more money, and securing larger donations are just a few of the advantages to hiring a professional fundraising consultant. But how can you know you're picking the right consultant for your organization? Filled with invaluable information to help you identify, select, retain, and work with development/fundraising consultants, Fundraising Consultants includes practical advice, tips, guidelines, possible outcomes of consulting, exemplary stories, and other useful information for nonprofit organizations of any size considering the use of development/fundraising consultants. Author Eugene Scanlan a leading fundraising consultant offers step-by-step guidance and resources to help you in your decision to use consultants, and then shows you how to go about getting the right one for the job. Its numerous case studies and practical tools including sample invitation letters to consultants, sample requests for proposal, sample consulting budgets, samples of reports, and recommendations equip you to implement the concepts introduced in the book. Part of the AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series, this guide covers everything you need to know to make critical decisions for selecting and working with fundraising consultants and explores: The request for proposal Where to find the best consultant Using the Internet and other sources in your search The proposal for services Pre- and post-proposal interviews Selecting the right consultant Drawing up a contract Working with your consultant Brimming with ideas, concepts, and information that will help you and your organization through the consultant selection and working process, Fund-raising Consultants reveals what your nonprofit should look for when considering hiring a consultant or firm. Intended as a guide for any nonprofit organization considering hiring a consultant to help the organization see if it is ready to raise money, to assist it in raising money, and/or accomplish the goals a good fundraising consultant can help the organization achieve Fundraising Consultants is your insider guide to using fundraising consultants effectively.
Tap into the potential of strategic partnerships with industry associations in this groundbreaking new book Reimagining Industry Growth offers readers a blueprint to harnessing the power of leading industry associations as strategic partners. By utilizing those partnerships, business leaders will become able to leverage the collective strength of the supply chain to overcome challenges, address uncertainty, mitigate risks, and position their industries for growth. The book provides an overview of strategic partnerships, how they work, and how they can be applied to industry relationships with trade associations. It includes: Illuminating and factual case studies outlining strategic partnerships in five different industry segments Roadmaps for executives to apply the lessons learned from industry success stories on leveraging relationships with trade associations Advice on how to move the needle for entire industries via effective strategic partnerships and achieve unprecedented growth Ideal for executives, managers, business leaders of all kinds, business students and professors, and association executives. Reimagining Industry Growth is required reading for anyone who hopes to tap into the potential strength and value of effective strategic partnerships.
"The consultant's big book of organization development toolsof Organization Development Tools provides consultants with tools, interventions, and activities they can use to solve individual, team, and organizational performance problems. This book offers incredible value for the consultant looking to use structured interventions as a vital part of the consultation approach. Many of the tools consist of a simulation or other structured activity consultants can use with leaders in the client organization to address the soft issues in a nonthreatening way. And most include downloadable, customizable handouts that they can freely reproduce and use with clients."--Editor.
"This book presents a rich discussion of the opportunities organizational consultants have to impact the development of technical leaders, teams, and organizations. The expansion of the tech sector has revolutionized how processes are conducted in almost every realm of industry. The role of technical leaders has evolved from supporting organizational functions to creating and leading corporations, many with worldwide impact. This boom in the technology industry has brought along unique challenges and opportunities for organizational consultants"--
The expert guide to effective internal consulting This book guides internal consultants through the steps necessary to bolster their credibility, build relationships within the organization, develop internal marketing abilities, and apply proper methodologies to their work. Alan Weiss, an experienced consultant, provides practical techniques the internal consultant, internal human resources practitioner, and any other internal change agent can use to excel at work, advance their careers, and become valued assets to their organizations. Some of the major subjects covered include setting up the proper environment for success and establishing peer-level interactions. Alan Weiss, PhD (East Greenwich, CT), has consulted with hundreds of organizations around the world, including Mercedes-Benz, Hewlett-Packard, Merck, and Chase. He lectures widely and appears regularly on radio and television to discuss productivity and performance. He is the author of twelve books, including Getting Started in Consulting (Wiley: 0-471-38455-0), The Ultimate Consultant (Jossey-Bass: 0-7879-5508-6), How to Acquire Clients (Jossey-Bass: 0-7879-5514-0), and Process Consulting (Jossey-Bass: 0-7879-5512-4).
Since it was first published in 1995, Practicing Organization Development has become a classic in change management. Now completely revised and updated, editors Rothwell and Sullivan, leaders in the field of OD, and numerous expert practitioners, walk you through each episode of change facilitation. You?ll find exhibits, activities, instruments, and case studies. You'll get help applying each phase of a popular emerging change making model. And you?ll find include applied research and insights from a wide variety of well-known OD practitioners and academicians. Included in this comprehensive resource are an instructor's guide, ever expanding materials on the Web, and a companion CD-ROM with PowerPoint slides and supplemental materials. Practicing Organization Development is packed with useful, current, proven direction on applying OD principles in the real world -- order your copy today!
Organization Development and Society: Theory and Practice of Organization Development Consulting offers a new approach for the practice of organization development (OD). The new approach, a habitus oriented OD (HOOD), sees consultees' thinking and behavior a result of habitus, a cognitive structure developed historically in endless interactions between human behavior and social structures. HOOD has two goals: The first goal is to redefine the objectives of individually oriented OD. The focus on habitus and social structure allows individually oriented OD scholars and practitioners to keep their subjective approach, which searches for consultees' inner world. However, this subjectivity searches not only for consultees' psychological but their social dispositions. It views the individual level, the habitus, as a site of social dispositions that from within the individual consultees generate thoughts and behaviors in a way that closely corresponds with the organization's social structure; with power relations and social positions and with accepted metaphors and common language. The HOOD links the concept of habitus to the field of OD and in so doing provides an alternative way to incorporate the individual and the social in OD. HOOD's second goal is to re/position OD between organizations and society and thus to produce a consulting practice that is both pragmatic and human. It is pragmatic since incorporation of habitus enables the consultant to liberate consultees' perspectives and behavior from the organization's social and structural hoops and to use these perspectives in processes of change and development. Considering the habitus as central to consulting projects is human since it enables consultants (and consultees) to identify the responsibility for organizational problems (and other phenomena) not only at the level of the individual but also at the level of the organization and the environment outside the organization.
