Who We Are
We are experts in business development for consulting, professional services firms and technology companies.

For the past 20+ years the SAGE team has worked with industry leading firms - including Accenture, IBM Global Services, KPMG and PriceWaterhouse Coopers.

     SAGE Principals

For the past 20 years, Michael Cummings, Allan Boress, and Barry Schneider and have worked with industry leading professional firms as trainers, coaches and business development consultants. They have built the entrepreneurial skills of thousands of professionals at hundreds of firms including personal marketing, building a network of allies and cultivating relationships with clients. They are award-winning instructors, best selling authors and world class public speakers for both associations and in-house meetings.

Although our prime business is to conduct in-house training for leading firms, we do a lot of personal training and coaching in the areas of personal marketing, selling professional services and managing client relationships.

 

For more information, contact
Mike Cummings at
630-572-4798 or
by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.



Personal Coaching from SAGE

For an example of the kind of help we offer
see below for tips on Improving Selling or Closing
Success (from our November 2004 Newsletter)

We all need a little help sometimes.

Even those who have long been experts in their profession, can feel unprepared for the continuing demands of contact making, client acquisition, and personal marketing.

Building a professional business is fundamentally an individual effort. At SAGE, we recognize you may not always have the resources, mentoring and support you need — whether you are with a large firm or a small one.

That's why so many professionals come to us for personal coaching.


Two ways to proceed...

You can decide now to pursue the complete marketing and sales coaching program, 10 hours of personal support toward a directed, individualized business development program. Click here to see how this works and what you accomplish.

OR

You can select the specific type of help you need most immediately to get going on your personal business success. Click here to view your options and what you can achieve.

Trying to decide?

Please feel free to contact us at by phone at 630-572-4798 or by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.

SPECIFIC OPTIONS IN PERSONAL MARKETING
& SELLING COACHING PROGRAMS

We offer three options you can choose for the immediate help you need to build your practice and grow your business. You benefit from direct, individualized support from one of our expert principals to make the breakthroughs you want in business development.

Each coaching program requires a relatively modest commitment of your time to resolve what to do and how to move forward to make a major improvement in your business development this year.

Program #1: Developing Your Personal Marketing Strategy and Growing Client Relationships [more...]
You build a tailored marketing strategy and action plan to achieve breakthroughs in revenue growth, identify your value proposition or “focus.” You further specify the steps that will bring your client relationships and business opportunities to the next level, plus learn the best ways to implement them.

Program #2: Building Your Network and Cultivating Professional Alliances [more...]
You apply the network building methods of top business generators to identify specific ways to turn your clients into your sales force for more business. Then, determine the steps to take for purposeful networking with high value allies. Plus we coach you on how best to implement these steps, how to take action for maximum results.

Program #3: Building Your Personal Brand and Professional Reputation [more...]
You “package” what you have to offer your prospects (the expertise which you will promote) and focus on a set of marketing actions in a program that will efficiently enhance your reputation, while driving prospects to you. You develop a marketing engine of action, follow-through, and direct contact that generates a steady stream of “pre-sold” leads.

You can read more about each of these three options below. Sessions are conducted by phone conference and encompass the same programs we conduct for industry-leading professional firms.

Each program consists of 3 hours of individualized coaching, over two sessions. Each program option costs only $350.

Choose the one you need to make a breakthrough in your business development.

Call us to discuss your situation and how SAGE Personal Coaching might help you or someone you know.
Contact Michael Cummings by phone at 630-572-4798 or by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.

Coaching Session Option #1:
Developing Your Personal Marketing Strategy and
Growing Client Relationships
(2 sessions, 90 minutes each. Only $350)

What Does It Cover?

Set your business development goals, see your profession through the eyes of your clients, understand how rainmakers build the relationships they need to succeed, focus on your ideal clients, and see how you can achieve business advisor with your clients.

- How clients buy professional services
- Lessons from the Best Business Generators in your profession
- The 7 essential components of personal marketing plan
- The blueprint for your personal marketing plan based on proven best practices
- How to quit wasting time on personal marketing methods that don't work
- Setting goals for both activity & results
- Defining your ideal target clients
- Developing your personal value proposition
- The Client Relationship Pyramid
- How to achieve business advisor status
- Marketing to your current clients

  

What You Accomplish

1) A customized personal marketing strategy and tailored action plan to achieve breakthroughs in revenue growth

2) A compelling and high impact personal “brand” and persuasive 30 second commercial that you can use in all forms of personal marketing and networking

3) A complete understanding of what it takes to become a trusted business advisor and reach world class levels of client relationships.

4) A client marketing plan that will take your client relationships to the next level

Coaching Session Option #2:
Building Your Network and Cultivating Professional Alliances
(2 sessions, 90 minutes each. Only $350)

What Does It Cover?

Learn how the best business developers cultivate the professional relationship they need to thrive in your profession. By investing in this coaching session, you learn how to turn your clients into your sales force, create mutually beneficial business partner relationships with professional allies and how to network with a purpose.

- What is network building, really
- What is alliance building
- Taking inventory of your relationship assets
- Rating and ranking your contacts
- Developing your daily, weekly and monthly action plan
- The difference between a referral and an introduction
- How to ask for introductions and referrals
- How to ask clients for introductions
- How to go to market with professional allies
- How to market yourself inside your own firm
- Developing your network building plan

  

What You Accomplish

1) Apply the same relationship building methods that drive the success of the best business generators in the professions

2) Use a step by step process to turn your clients into your sales force

3) Identify a set of high value professional allies and execute a committed, joint co-marketing plan based on best practices

4) Learn how to network with a purpose, get introductions and eliminate wasted time and effort

5) Stimulate the word of mouth advertising that builds your personal reputation

Coaching Session Option #3:
Building Your Personal Brand and Professional Reputation
(2 sessions, 90 minutes each. Only $350)

What Does It Cover?

Use the best practices in personal marketing to build your personal reputation. Build an integrated marketing system that communicates your service capability continually and creates “pre-sold” opportunities. Cultivate a steady stream of the type of work that you desire.

- YOU are the message
- Why are you unique and valuable?
- How to package your services
- Speaking engagements that sell
- Writing articles that get potential clients to contact you
- Building your personal turbo-charged direct marketing engine
- Selecting and working the right organizations
- How to conduct a seminar that sells
- How to become a luminary

  

What You Accomplish

1) Generate a steady stream of “pre-sold” leads and a dependable pipeline of new work

2) Package your offerings in a compelling, differentiated manner that drives prospects to contact you and move the selling cycle forward

3) Focus on a set of marketing actions that make money and stop wasting time on sub-par marketing methods

4) Implement a direct marketing engine that produces high quality leads while you are busy serving current client

5) Become a celebrated expert in your field

To purchase one or more specific coaching modules:

[You can use a Credit Card or PayPal account
with our agent Intertexts Multimedia, Inc. through PayPal's technology.
If you have any difficulty or questions, please contact us at 630-572-4798] 

Return to the top of the page.

THE COMPLETE PERSONAL MARKETING & SELLING COACHING PROGRAM

This gives you the complete program comprising the benefits and achievements of all three coaching sessions. For the same investment as you would pay for an open group training session, we invite you to take the next step with a customized program to meet your business building goals.

Just $ 895.00

To purchase the complete personal coaching program:

[You can use a Credit Card or PayPal account
with our agent Intertexts Multimedia, Inc. through PayPal's technology.
If you have any difficulty or questions, please contact us at 630-572-4798]

Or call us to discuss your situation and how SAGE Personal Coaching might help you or someone you know.

Contact Michael Cummings by phone at 630-572-4798 or
by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.

How Does It Work?

We work one on one with individuals for 10 hours of personal training and coaching to achieve breakthroughs in their personal marketing and professional selling performance.

• You meet, usually by phone conference, with one of our principals for four 1.5 hour coaching sessions that fit your schedule

• You do additional preparation and follow-up for each session, to include recording what we've decided and supplementary readings

• We review your marketing materials, firm support, etc.

• You have access to us at any time by e-mail for support during the coaching

• We conduct monthly sessions (45 minutes each) to check-up and adjust your personalized program during the two months following the end of the basic coaching

Training is conducted by phone and encompasses the same training we conduct for industry-leading professional firms.

  

What You Accomplish

1) Sharpen your selling/proposal skills

2) Apply our training to your service specialty, defining the types of work on which you will FOCUS for business development

3) Get counsel on specific client and prospect selling situations

4) Develop a personal marketing plan in detail — not a "thought piece," but the specific activities you (or others) will do, the resources you need, and the measureable results you can achieve.

5) Take corrective action with a detailed review of your marketing materials and sales presentations/proposals

6) Obtain personal sales coaching, clinics and brainstorming

You also receive a copy of our most comprehensive book on Personal Marketing, the 450-page guide to the methods of the Best Business Generators in the professions.

To review the options for specific coaching help, click here.

We work with you in a disciplined and encouraging way to develop your selling skills and create your own personalized marketing program. We guide you to the focus, decisions, and activity that will let you achieve your business building objectives...without anxiety and without wasted effort.


And we do it efficiently too.

For we don't start from scratch...rather we build from your current strengths, your business assets, and your experience. And we follow the path of the best business developers in the profession...the methods we have found consistently work for the top in your field.

 
Together, we find the right direction and the right means to pursue it. That way you can be even more successful at your practice right away.

Call us to discuss your situation and how SAGE Personal Coaching might help you or someone you know.

Contact Michael Cummings by phone at 630-572-4798 or
by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.

SAGE Advice:
What We Have Seen in Personal Coaching
(excerpt from our November 2004 Newsletter)

Improving Your Sales or Closing Success

We work with both entrepreneurs as well as professionals who work for larger firm — all of whom want to improve their ability to generate work.

Here's where we typically see ways for clients to dramatically improve their sales success:
  1. Be clear headed and analytical about opportunities
    It is easy for emotions to get embedded in the selling process. Instead, use a disciplined, fact based and systematic scoring system to qualify every opportunity before you engage in a full scale pursuit. Keep qualifying it over and over throughout the selling cycle. For things change: trauma goes away, decision criteria shift and competing priorities arise. This approach keeps surprises to a minimum and your sanity intact. Rate and rank order each opportunity based on a) chemistry, b) degree and urgency of trauma, c) pace of the decision process and d) degree of commitment.
  2. Recognize "low odds" opportunities and act accordingly
    Wasting time pursuing opportunities that you are not likely to win causes you to miss out on winnable business. You have 3 options in these circumstances: A) Walk away B) Try something dramatically different to win the business and shift the rules C) Invest the appropriate (small) level of energy, effort, emotion and expected value. Then move on.
  3. No mind-reading or speculation
    There is something about the selling process that turns us into swamis. We guess at the prospects true motives, read great meaning into their statements and make assumptions about the selling process. Instead, ask the client to be precise and specific. Have them tell you how to sell them and win the business. This is why sharpening your interviewing skills is vital. Like a doctor, you need the prospect to be forthcoming about their trauma or you can't help them.
  4. Let the prospect convince themselves
    Many professionals believe that selling is convincing somebody to buy your services or products. Instead, find ways for the client to convince themselves. People buy for their own reasons, not ours. Spend most of your sales interview to get the prospect to tell you why they must buy.
  5. Get a commitment for everything you do
    Many professionals think of closing as asking for the business. Instead, you want to be closing for commitments from the client that move the sales process along ALL of the time. If they won't make the little commitments, it is likely that the sale is off track and they won't make the final BIG commitment.
  6. Discuss fees and budget early in the selling process
    After exploring the depth and degree of the client's trauma, discuss the budget. Get this out of the way early using ballpark estimates or fee ranges. Better to face the issue squarely and understand the prospect and client's point of view.

If you want more Best Practices tips and suggestions for Building your Business, please sign up for our free monthly newsletter :

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