#5: Credibility

At David Mellor Mentoring we have looked in earlier articles at an overall framework for building a successful sole practitioner consultancy practice. We will now begin to look at the different component parts of the framework in a little more detail.

We began by looking at the 3 constituent elements of the framework:

• The Consultant Role
• Selling Consultancy Services
• Delivering Consultancy Services

We then considered the 3 key aspects of the consultancy role:

• Key Challenges
• Business Models
• Success Factors

Drilling down to the next level 3 Key Challenges were identified:

• Credibility
• Behaviour
• Lead Generation

In this article we will consider the first of these – Credibility.

First comes Sector Knowledge – can you establish your credibility around your knowledge of an industry sector, be it in the public, private or third sector e.g. health, education, biotech, insurance?

Second there is Product or Service Knowledge – do you have specialist knowledge around a product, service, topic, process?

Third aspect is Publishing – have you had any research, articles or books published?

Fourthly there is Commentating – are you asked to comment on issues or situations, or do you choose to by way of social media output and interaction?

Finally there is Presenting – are you invited to speak at networking events, trade fairs, seminars and so on? Or perhaps you are invited to sit on panels.

So, how do you score overall, and are there areas here where you could increase your involvement and thereby enhance your “expert” status?

Next time we will look at behaviours. In the meantime work on your credibility! Quite a lot to think about, but do feel free to contact me if you would like to know more.