For my recent birthday I decided to buy myself an iPod (80gb) to replace my ancient 256mb mp3 player, and to (try to) keep up with my daughter Lizzy and the rest of her generation.
One of the reason for doing this was to allow me to transfer many of the 100's of hours of audio training material that we have in the office so I can access it in my car (or "university on wheels" as my colleague Steve Mills calls it) using a neat cassette adapter.
I dutifully installed iTunes on my laptop to allow me to transfer the CDs and I started looking at the podcasts that are available to subscribe to. These cover just about every conceivable subject and all seem to be free of charge.
It was only after seeing this wealth of information that I realised what people mean when they talk about the information age. Perhaps even more significantly, it occurred to me that it should be called the FREE information age. It is now possible to access high quality, accurate advice and information free of charge, with minimal effort using incredibly intuitive search engines in fractions of a second.
So where does this leave those of us that make a living from selling our knowledge? What is it that our clients really value? I suppose it is having a relationship with someone who understands them well enough to distill all this information down into a non-technical form that they can understand and have the confidence to take action on. It seems to me that it is now more important than ever that we "professionals" remember this when communicating with customers, current and potential.
Any other answers or thoughts that anyone else has on this are welcome!
Anyway, here are some of my favourite (business related) podcasts so far are:
- Harvard Business Review (not as grand as it sounds) Ideacasts
- David Maister various podcasts on professional service firms
- Wake up to Money- BBC 5Live
- MBA Podcasts- Times Online
- and a slightly more obscure on called "lonelyentrepreneur" with an intering interview with an accountant turned entrepreneur (inspired by the E-Myth)
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You are very right. A lot of people would question why they should pay for advice when there is so much available for free. I believe as you say we have to offer much more than just advice. Deliver it in an understandable way so the client sees the real value.
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