Frenetic business activity. The world of work is increasingly characterized by uncertainty. It’s like being thrown into a rough sea amid pounding waves. Rapid and continual waves of change, a less stable workforce, diversity in different guises, fast technological development, more and more legislation requiring compliance, social and environmental concerns, less depth in our personal and working relationships, greater complexity. Globalisation, regionalization and the internet mean that information, ideas, perspectives and products cross disappearing boundaries, faster and faster. We live in a work-world of frenetic activity. How can we stay afloat?

Management consultants are asking themselves a tough question: What is the most effective way to develop new business? Referrals and networks still work well, but they take up valuable fee-earning time and cannot easily be scaled. Attention inevitably turns to marketing—but can mar-keting really help to grow such an intangible, people-oriented business? There is evidence that it can indeed.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get inside the minds of your audience and know what they are thinking about you and your presentation? Actually, you can—by reading their body language. Once you know what they’re thinking, you can respond and have a successful presentation. Learning a few simple body language signals can help you discover the answers to the fol¬lowing questions.

Many of us have had clients who were unreason¬able, unrealistic, and sometimes reluctant to pay on time (or at all). Are such clients worth our investment of time and energy? If we fail to consider this question, we—experts in common sense and the guiding lights for client profitability—have committed the most basic of sins: not practicing what we preach. To be fair, clients have had their share of disappoint-ments after working with consultants. One of my clients, for example, once hired a large con¬sulting company to build a corpo¬ratewide cost-reduction program. Their goal was to reduce expendi¬tures by a certain percentage, and they were intent on meeting their objectives across the board. The good news was that they met their targets and reduced overall costs. The bad news was that they also witnessed a major drop in customer loyalty, because the consulting firm had not assessed the impact that cost reduction would have on customers.

In 1982 Dennis Bakke and Roger Sant, coworkers at the Mellon Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Formed Applied Energy Services (later AES) with a $60,000 bank loan and some private investment. Their idea was to create an enterprise that valued people in all contexts—as employees, customers, suppliers, and society in general.