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Six Greatest Ideas for Becoming a Consultant • 35

When you have got your consultancy going you will get repeat bookings. Cus-
tomers will ring and offer you work on such and such a day. This is why it is so
important to put red-letter days when you do not want to be working into your diary
first of all. If you don't, you will find yourself not taking a break. I start each year by
noting the first days of the two home test matches at Lords and the Oval. I then
block out the weekends when I have to be at Murrayfield to watch the Scots humili-
ating various other nations at rugby. Next we put in the holidays. Only then do we
start taking consultancy bookings.

Idea 22 - Don't let people smell fear

As a sales manager you quickly learn that success breeds success. If you have a
salesperson well on target early on in the company year, you find that their selling
and order-taking actually improves. They are exuding confidence and maybe saying
to customers some things that they may have held back from if they were desperate
for sales. It is a kind of controlled arrogance. 'Look do you want the product or not?'

The opposite shows itself when a salesperson is up against it. They are only on
20 per cent of target with only two months to go. They put pressure on their pros-
pects; they surprise their customers with heavy-handed tactics and so on. Custom-
ers can smell fear and they don't like it.

So it is with consultancy. If you are sure that there is a market for your services,
and you did the research (didn'tyou?*), keep your confidence up and act happy. Play
hard to get and do not be too available. Once you show anxiety and start, for exam-
ple, to cut your daily rate, you are in trouble. Courage, mon brave, work hard, work
smart but don't give off even a subtle tinge of fear.