On Being Resourceful

There's a common trait that I see in every consultant that thrives in business development: Resourcefulness.

Being resourceful means using your specific knowledge, experience, and creativity to solve a difficult problem. You need it during the entire sales process:

• You have to be resourceful to connect and secure a meeting with your dream client. People are busy, so you need to offer value and create curiosity. Show them that meeting you won't be a waste of their time.
• Once you make contact and begin to do your discovery, you may realize that it won’t be easy to solve their problems. This is obvious: if it was easy to deliver what your dream clients want, someone else would already have handled it. You need to come up with better solutions to these problems, which means being resourceful.
• The bigger the prospect, the more people will get involved. Some may like your solution while others do not. You may need to come up with new solutions that are acceptable to everyone so that a consensus can be reached.

But resourcefulness is not only important to win new clients. It's also key to retain the ones you have.

If you want to keep serving your current clients, delivering on your marketing promises is not enough. You need to prove to them that you put them first. That you have their best interests in mind.

Your clients are continually hit with new challenges and opportunities. Are you meeting with them to propose new solutions or some change to your consulting services that will lead to better results? That requires resourcefulness.

Tomorrow, I'll share some ways for you to be more resourceful.