A fundamental question that every Fractional Executive must answer is what type of business do you want to be in? Are you selling your time for money or your brain for value?
Jay Kingley explains why most fractional executives focus on their experience rather than their intellectual property. Watch the video below to understand how your intellectual capital will be one of the largest determinants of the success of your business. It will drive the income you earn, how hard you work, the robustness of your pipeline, and how much fun you have.
It used to be when a senior executive left the corporate world but wasn't ready to retire, they'd hang out a shingle as an independent consultant. Today, it's much more likely that they would call themselves a fractional executive. In this video, Jay Kingley lays out the differences between a fractional executive and consultant and discusses which pathway suits a second-act executive.
The big mistake that too many second-act executives make is positioning themselves as being able to do both the fractional role and consulting. Successful fractional leaders and consultants pick a lane and establish their expertise, insight, and wisdom. Clients don't want the jack of all trades; they want mastery of one. As Jay says, "what you should do is a subset of what you could do."
Let’s have a conversation on whether you should position yourself as a fractional executive or consultant and from there how best to build a business that will allow you to recreate your corporate income without the insane hours.
Jay Kingley, Co-founder and CEO of Maven, is issuing a clarion call to all fractional executives in the bottom 80% in terms of impact on clients: Generative AI is coming for you as it relentlessly commoditizes mediocrity. You’ve heard the classic aphorism of garbage in garbage out. Well these large language models that our generative AI applications run on represent the thinking of the masses in; average if not mediocre content out.
Generative AI should be your go-to source for understanding how most people look at any issue or what the conventional wisdom has to say about any topic. It can be a starting point for a point of view on how many others before you have solved a problem or talked about an issue. The output from a generative AI model can tell you what you need to differentiate from but not what to differentiate to.
The trap you will fall into if you use AI to generate your output is that your clients don’t need you to regurgitate the “wisdom of the masses” or the “insight of the mediocre”.
If you think you’re in the top 16% of fractional executives, let’s have a conversation on how you can play the winning hand in a world obsessed with generative AI.
Focus is driven by your marketing not service delivery.
In today’s world, no one wants to hire the “jack of all trades”. Being the jack of all trades implies that you are the master of none.
When you’re paying top dollar to bring in a fractional executive or consultant, you want someone who understands your specific issue and has the expertise, insight, and wisdom to deliver the outcomes you want. You want someone laser focused on what it is you need, not a broad generalist who isn’t going to crush it for you.
It isn’t about what you can do, it’s about what your prospects believe you can do. The imperative to focus is driven by marketing not service delivery. It doesn’t matter if you can do the work if no one is willing to hire you to do the work.
What you should do is a subset of what you could do. The more talented and capable you are, the bigger the difference between should and could. It doesn’t matter how great you are at what you do if you don’t have prospects lined up around the block begging to work with you.
Let’s have a conversation on how the focus of your fractional or consulting practice aligns with the marketplace.
Jay Kingley discusses the best employee he ever had. This staff member had a high level of consistent performance, enviable work ethic, great attitude and fun to be around, good team player who inspired and elevated those around her, and was accountable, responsible, reliable. Her name is Heisenberg and she’s one of my cats. Her sister is Schrodinger and she’s no one’s idea of the perfect employee.
Heisenberg and I both share a philosophy that the reason we exist on this earth is to make a difference and you measure that by the legacy that you build and ultimately leave behind.
Legacy is the impact you make on the people you touch multiplied by the number of people you touch. The impact can be for good or evil. Some go deep and make a big impact on a small number of people while others go broad make a smaller impact on a larger number of people.
Watch this video to learn what makes Heisenberg a model employee and what Schrodinger does to just get by.
So many consultants, fractional leaders, and coaches tell their prospects the "truth" about where their prospects are and where they need to get to. While that is what delivery is all about, using it during your sales (or buying) process will guarantee that you don't have many clients to deliver to.
Jay Kingley
Ask a consultant how good are they at bringing in new clients and they’ll tell you about how good they are at closing. But closing is just the final step in the buying process and if you do everything else correctly, it is the easiest.
Jay Kingley explains in our latest Provocative Perspectives video that you need to own the process that couples creating empathy with the confidence that you can take your prospect on a positive, if not enjoyable, journey out of the desert and into their promised land. Your prospects will now see you as irresistibly different and the only consultant they will want to work with to achieve the success they desire.
In Jay Kingley's latest video, he talks about how lead generation tactics will kill your consulting business. The implicit assumption behind lead gen is the more clients you need the more marketing you must do. But when you are the product and what you're selling is your expertise, insight, and wisdom, it takes time to convert a lead to a client and time is what you are short of.
Watch to see what you need to focus on instead of lead gen. Tell us in the comments if we've hit a nerve.
Consultants and fractional leaders work so hard to add extraordinary value to their clients ... and then they blow it by having a conversation with their prospects that significantly undervalues their ability to make a difference. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below if I hit a nerve.
There is one huge mistake that so many consultants make when trying to turn prospects to clients and it's costing them so much money!
In this video I talk about how meeting your prospects where they are is the key to turning them into clients. Once they are clients, inspiring them to achieve their full potential is how you retain them as clients for a long, long time.
Contact Jay Kingley to continue the conversation on how you can dramatically increase your conversion rate by meeting your prospects where they are rather than where you think they should be.
Jay Kingley of Maven shares how his daughter, Tea Kingley, taught him a valuable lesson on how essential it is to meet your prospects where they are and to embrace where they want to go. Once they become your client, you can do your best to lead them to where they need to be. But you won't get the opportunity if you don't start by meeting them where they are.
Jay Kingley, CEO of Maven, talks about the mistake many consultants and advisors make by focusing on improving their skills and capabilities to better serve clients. But the gap you really need to focus on is the one between how your target market perceives you and the impact you know you can make for them.
You can understand how you are perceived by paying attention to what your prospects focus on during your sales conversation. Jay provides 4 scenarios, the implications of each, and how you can close the gap by building market recognition for your ability to be a game changer. Reach out to Jay to learn how you can level up how your target market sees you so you can help them transform their business while you get paid full value for the impact you can make.
As a thank you for watching the video, any consultant or fractional executive can message us to get a free one hour consultation on how you can become remarkably referable.
