Why No One Is Listening To Your Advice (Local Consulting)

About this time last year, I wrote that clients were not paying me for my advice. 

I have a point of view that as a consultant within certain bill rate spectrums, clients are paying you to "do" and not to "advise." 

It's the difference between what you pay a guy to put up sheet rock versus what you pay the person doing your interior decorating. 

One relationship is very commoditized and transactional in nature. The other relationship is specialized and somewhat personal. 

In the local consulting market, companies are offering commoditized service offerings.

There are very few cities out there that have enough demand by a specific industry where you can hang up a shingle and make big firm money. 

Therefore, you have to provide a series of offerings, generic in nature, that apply ubiquitously across multiple companies and multiple industries. 

Unfortunately, because you are now a commodity, whatever expertise you may have is now an afterthought. Compound that with the fact that your bill rate is over half of what you may have used to bill with a big firm. 

End result: You are getting paid to do -- not to advise.

Good consultants do both. 

As an experienced consultant, when you lean towards the 'do' end of the spectrum, it can be frustrating. This is okay for junior consultants and others that have no other aspirations in life but to make overtime pay.  But at some point, it would be nice to provide a certain level of expertise to clients and become a trusted advisor. 

For those of you entering into the local consulting markets, bear in mind that the majority of these 'consulting' companies value the skills that you have that can be commoditized and not the true art of building trusted relationships and providing advisory services. 

Once you can accept that, the fight to make something that it's not becomes less of a fight and more of a resigned acceptance.