How to HIRE the Right Consultant (and how to spot a FAKE)

Looking to hire a consultant to build your business and explode your sales, but you're not sure about who to hire? Stick around, I'm going to help you guys figure this out. Welcome back guys, I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca. I'm here to help you guys learn how to create, engage, and inspire your audience to boost your sales. Now, I wanna thank you guys. We had an amazing weekend on the channel. My hours watched have shot up. We're moving closer and closer to that partnership mark. So if you're new to the channel, click that subscribe button. I do videos Monday through Saturday that are business, entrepreneur, sales, marketing oriented. So if that's content that you're kind of looking for and you're hoping to see on YouTube, click that bell over there and that subscribe button and you'll be able to get the notifications when I put my next video up. But today what we're looking at is consultancy. How do you hire the right consultant? How do you make sure you're not getting scammed? It's a tough, tough thing to figure out, especially these days. It seems like more and more there are tons of consultants out there, and it can be difficult for a company, especially a smaller company or an entrepreneur company, um, to figure out who it is that you want to use. Now, that being said, I've worked as a digital marketing consultant for close to 10 years now, and before that I was a business consultant. So, I understand some of the issues that companies have when it comes to finding a reliable consultant. In fact, most of the clients that I pick up, I pick up off the backs of a consultant that has scammed them. So, how do you pick the right consultant for the right job and save yourself, protect yourself from being scammed? Stick around, let's see how we do this. First up, consultancy. What is it? Essentially what it is, is you see an opportunity for your company that doesn't require or doesn't elicit a position, role, or team within your organization. What does that mean? You've got something you want done and there's nobody in your company to do it. Consultancies come in and say, okay, well, here's the opportunity, here's what we can provide to you, you don't need to hire us on, we do this for multiple companies, this is the rate, off you go. You pay the rate, you get the job done. Now, consultancies range from anything from digital marketing, which is what I do, all the way up to complete business structures and financials. And you can, you can get people to do your video marketing specifically. It gets big, it gets small. There are amazing teams out there and there are shysters out there. So the first thing that you want to look for in a digital marketing— well, not digital marketing, in a consultancy— is this: make sure you are specific, okay? Make sure you know exactly what role you want done, what the project looks like, what the What the scope of the project is and then seek out a consultant, okay? 9 times out of 10, a company will go out there and they're not exactly sure what they want done, but take YouTube for example. They'll hear, oh, you've got a business, you've got to get out onto YouTube. And all they know is, oh, we need somebody for YouTube. And they put that out there and they'll get all kinds of different consultants back. The reality is you have to be very specific. What are your goals? What do you want to achieve? Where do you want to go? How do you want to do it? What's the tone? What's the message? Have those prepared for when you're seeking out a consultant, and it's going to be a lot easier to find one. Next point. So, you know what you're looking for. Now, where do you find them? The reality is, guys, if you are a company or an entrepreneur that is looking to find a consultant, I do not recommend job boards. I don't recommend Freelancer. I don't recommend Upwork. I don't recommend job boards, okay? Even the network I'm going to recommend, I don't recommend using their job board. Why? Okay, what I do recommend you do is hop on to LinkedIn. If you don't know where to find it, linkedin.com. Okay, head there, type in digital marketing consultant if you're looking for a digital marketing consultant. If you're looking for a graphic design consultant, whatever the consultant role is that you have figured out that your company needs, head to LinkedIn, type it in the search bar. What you're gonna see pop up are the most relevant digital mark— or most relevant consultants for your task. And the beauty to using LinkedIn effectively this way is, when you request to a potential consultant, hi there, I'd like to connect, potential work, most consultants will connect with you on LinkedIn right away. Yep, they're interested, they wanna talk, they wanna see what you're about. They'll do the background work if they're decent consultants right from the get-go, okay? But it also gives you access to their profile. And the beauty to LinkedIn for anybody looking to hire a consultant is this. You can see referrals from past clients on their profile. You can see what projects they've worked on, which companies they've been with, and you can see what the fellow entrepreneurs, fellow skilled workers in LinkedIn in their niche have recommended them for. Okay, so I know if you go to my LinkedIn, what you're gonna see is a list of the projects and clients I've worked with over the past 10 years. You're gonna see a bunch of my skill sets recommended from top to bottom with hundreds of different referrals on them saying this guy can do this. Along with text referrals from past clients saying, he's got the skills, he knows what he's doing, he's a hard worker, he achieves the results we want. Those are there for you to see. This provides a certain level of legitimacy to the consultant that you're hiring, right? This gives you the ability to go, oh, okay, I understand that this person is vouched for by this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. I can, I can see all the skills that he says he has. I can go check out the past projects that he's worked on. No problem. That's a great starting point to build with a consultant, okay guys? Last point. Last point is super, super simple, guys. Get on the phone. Don't do a back and forth email tag. The first and only email that you should send to your marketing consultant, any consultant, is, I'd like to get on the phone with you at this time on this day. The reason why I recommend it is this. If you reach out to a consultant and say, this time, this day, be on the phone so I can discuss a project with you. If they say, sure, I'll clear my calendar, I'll be there for you, great. That's the consultant you want. That's somebody that's willing to take the time to meet with you at your convenience. That's a great start. If somebody gets back to you with, oh, we're super busy right now, not sure that we can make it, don't do it. Run, run as fast as you can, okay? But the reality is, find the people that are eager to come and join you and do what you're doing. That's key. That's vital, okay? The next step is you want to get on a Skype call, a Zoom call, or a If you have to, an old-school phone-to-phone conversation, okay? But the reality is, you want to hear the person speak. Do they speak with conviction? When you ask them questions, do you see them humming and hawing? Do you see them losing focus, losing attention? Know the character of the person that you're working with, okay? It's absolutely vital, and this is actually going to be crucial in removing a lot of people that say they know what they're doing, but when you talk to them one-on-one, it seems like they're clueless. Okay, and then chances are if you get on the phone with somebody, if you're having a conversation with somebody and find out that they don't really seem to know what they're talking about, chances are that's a scammer using somebody freelancing, Upwork, telecommute elsewhere in the world to do their work for them, and they're just building a brand around that concept. Okay, so make sure that you know what you're looking for. Make sure that you hit up LinkedIn, know their profile, know who they are, know what they're about, and And then last but not least, get on a real face-to-face conversation. And I mean real face-to-face, that would be even better, but Zoom, Skype, BeLive, any of those tools. If you have to go to the, you know, revert to the phone and do a phone conversation with them. But ultimately guys, those are the must-haves to save you a lot of pain and trouble, okay? Now I'm gonna give you a couple pointers here. These last tips are ways that you can definitely spot a fake and save yourself a lot of time, money, and hassle. Okay, here we go. All of the positives that I gave you have a reverse, they have a negative. Okay, so if you have somebody that when you are being very specific tries to make it general, vague, and broad, okay, so you're saying, nope, I want this KPI for this ROI, and I want it done over this period of time. And they come back with, well, we're not sure that we can— stop, red flag, done, no further conversation, it's over. Okay, if you go onto LinkedIn and you find that the candidates, the consultants that you are looking at have no experience, they've got no referrals, nobody endorses them for their skills, run, run for the hills. The reality is, as a consultant, you will build your business based off of clients and customers that you pick up and work with over a period of time. If you can't find that credibility and authority for that consultant, don't risk it. There are people out there that will, Don't let it be you. You don't have to take that risk. You don't have to take that chance, okay guys? Last, last but not least is, if you get on the phone and something's shady, they don't seem right, they don't seem confident, they don't seem knowledgeable, they can't give you direction, they can't be clear about what they want to do and what they want to achieve, run. Run for it, okay guys? That is it for today, ladies and gentlemen, but I want to be clear, you guys can save yourselves a lot of time, money, and hassle this way. If you are looking for a digital marketing consultant, of course, I'm always happy to talk. You can get my email down there in the comments below. If you like the video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button, give it a little thumbs up, and share it out with your friends and family. Question of the day is, have you been burned by a consultant in the past? Have you been burned? Let me know down in the comments below, and I will catch you tomorrow with another video.