RESEARCH
Why guess what people think of you when it’s easy enough to ask them? For that matter, why guess what they think of your competitors? Or of the mission you’re trying to address? And although it is getting more difficult to engage people in traditional quantitative research efforts (surveys, for example), the efficacy of qualitative research modalities is becoming more widely acknowledged.
Both dimensions of research have merit, of course: quantitative appraisals can suggest how many people feel the way they do, but qualitative assessments can explain why they feel the way they do. And therefore, what you can do about it.
One of Livingston Consulting’s most important attributes is that it approaches nearly all of its assignments from the perspective of the client, customer, or other end user, rather than from that of management. You already know how you feel. Isn’t it time to learn how those whom you intend to influence in some way feel, too?
SALES STRATEGY
To begin with, please don’t ever apologize for selling something. It is a noble calling, and everyone in business – for profit or not-for-profit – is selling something all the time: themselves, a concept, a product or service. Targets include customers, of course, but also donors and other supporters of philanthropic initiatives; a variety of clients, including some inside one’s own organization; and various elements of the larger public. Sometimes the consideration you’re after is simple: cash, check or charge. Often it is less obvious: buy-in or support for an idea or principle.
A cornerstone of effective selling is to ensure that there is congruence between buyer and seller, that the buyer (a) has a need for what is being sold, sometimes whether they realize it or not; (b) that the seller has an understanding of the buyer’s needs, wants and priorities and has matched what he has to offer to those realities.
We can’t do your selling for you. And there are better coaches to help a professional sales force hone their skills. But what we do well is help ensure that buyers and sellers are able to communicate effectively with one another and together satisfy their mutual need for one another.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
The process of strategic planning has often been compared to that of using a road map – it helps you get where you’re going, but only if you already know where you’re starting from.
Most people don’t.
In order to really understand your point of departure, you need to collect lots of intelligence and insight from lots of different sources and interested parties. You need to know whether there are any barriers – real or imagined – to your being able to accomplish what you think you want to do. You also need to know whether anyone but you is interested in seeing your aspirations come to fruition, too.
Then, of course, once you’ve validated your expectations (or revised them to suit a set of realities you might not have anticipated), there are usually lots of ways to proceed. You need to lay out a path that is consistent with your own corporate culture, the personality of your business or organization, as well as with the expectations of the people and entities with whom you will interact. Effective strategic planning is not usually a process of starting from absolute scratch, but rather involves choosing from among a number of options, and options to the options.
We help people develop publishable business plans – the sort of thing your accountant and bankers will like – too, but those don’t always involve the sort of deliberate assessments that will really empower you to pursue your genuine, long-term goals and objectives, while also meeting the exigencies of daily commerce.
TESTIMONY
Those of you operating in a regulated environment will quickly grasp the value of having professionally prepared testimony available to you when you need to interface with regulators. The rest of you, maybe not so quickly.
A friend once said “anyone in business who is not engaged in politics should not be in business.”
Politics, in other words, is everyone’s business, too.
And whether or not you agree with your legislators’ own politics or opinions all the time, chances are there are issues you’d like to engage them with. And good, bad, or indifferent, most legislators are among the busiest people you’ll ever encounter.
Your job, here, is not to become a lobbyist. It is to capture someone’s attention and convey a cogent message in an easily digestible form, a message that you hope will enlist the support of, perhaps, elected officials, their staffs, the professional legions in government, maybe certain segments of the public which might be influential in their own right.
We have a history of interpreting some pretty arcane or technical information into language easily understood by elected officials and others who don’t necessarily have a thorough background in or understanding of the issue to begin with. Odds are, we can do that with your issues, too.