Infinite Shades of Grey - Advanced Consulting: A Guide to Top Dollar Earnings in IT

Do you wonder why some I.T. consultants can charge $50 an hour for their time and others $250 an hour? What is it that motivates clients to pay a premium rate for a consultant? Infinite Shades of Grey – Advanced Consulting will tell you the answers and help you become the consultant that is always in demand and always commands premium compensation. This book is about consulting excellence and delivering optimum value to your clients. Whether you are an independent consultant, a consultant in a firm or an I.T. Professional, we have proven tips and techniques that will help you become an excellent consultant. We will help you both understand your true value to your clients and learn how to best communicate it. We will help you understand how to quickly make your services more valuable to your clients. We will explore the core elements of the consulting business including; self-marketing, contracting, negotiation, performance reviews and career advancement. We will provide insights into valuable real-world consulting skills in leadership, influencing, problem solving, managing change, facilitation and more. We reference real clients across the globe with over $3 Billion of I.T. projects revealing best practices in IT consulting and also providing a lighthearted look at ones that are not. Infinite Shades of Grey – Advanced Consulting is about showing how we can make the very best solutions for our clients by not just delivering the ordinary, but delivering the extraordinary solution. When you investigate a grey problem, you ask more questions, you dig deeper and you look for not a single but many potential causes of the problem. When you utilize a grey process, you are flexible and adaptable and this allows you to be open to more possibilities and minimize preconceptions. When you target a grey solution, you introduce more possibilities, you test more ideas, you measure more carefully and you custom tailor the solution. In short, you will always get a much better grey solution for your client, than a simple black and white answer. Imagine if you will that you step into an elevator alone with the CEO of the company you are working for. You introduce yourself and the CEO says “You have 60 seconds to explain your value to my company or you are fired.” Could you do it? A consultant being able to express his/her value is the most fundamental of consulting skills and it is one of the most difficult items to do well. This book will enable you to confidently answer the CEO’s question. Your success in communicating your value will make the difference between having the opportunity to be a premium rate consultant or not. The population of consultants easily divides into the two distinct groups: the ordinary and the excellent. Infinite Shades of Grey – Advanced Consulting contains practical advice on how to take your consulting to the next level of excellence with pragmatic tips and techniques you can put to work in your career today.