How to create killer consulting pre-reads

Is your session pre-work tantalizing—or is it yawn-inducing?

You’ve got an important client engagement coming up, with a room full of attendees. You want to maximize your face time with them so they derive the optimum results. This means you want them to arrive prepared and, well, psyched.

The age-old tool for this challenge is the session pre-read/pre-work assignment (call it what you like). It’s a written piece that gets distributed to participants in advance, so they needn’t spend time, in session, on basics.

That’s the ostensible purpose of a pre-read. In actuality, it’s more multifaceted and nuanced. It can make or break an assignment. It can and will set client expectations of you and the upcoming session. It will be shown to senior stakeholders for sign-off before it’s distributed. It will determine how prepared (or unprepared) your participants are—and thus how much time you will (or won’t) need to spend (or waste) covering basic tenets in your session.

In short, there’s a heck of a lot riding on it. Before you sit down to craft your next pre-read/pre-work assignment, consider these best-practice pointers:

Sell the value. Succinctly describe what the upcoming session is about, and what participants will gain from it. Play to their wants and desires (also the reason you were engaged in the first place), e.g., to increase productivity, to maximize customer engagement, to discover new market segments, whatever. Remember, you’re selling the value directly to the end-reader/participant, and indirectly to your sponsor/senior stakeholder. This is the No-Fluff Zone. What will participants be able to do when they finish your session that they couldn’t accomplish before? How will this impact their job, their team, their department, their function? Hit these answers, hard, and you’re well on your way.

Sell yourself. Briefly sell your credibility. Sum up your selling points in just a few sentences that highlight the most impressive points, e.g., years you’ve been doing this, prior experience, big-name brands you’ve consulted to, big-ticket initiatives you’ve worked on, impressive degrees, awards, etc.

Assume that not everyone receiving this pre-read will know about you. Were you invited in by senior leadership? Were you invited back due to a previous success? Were you referred by another client/connection? Make that clear, so no one will question your authority.

Keep it brief. We can’t stress this point enough. Think of your audience. It’s safe to assume that they’re pretty darned busy already. So how much time, realistically, will they give to your pre-read? For most assignments, figure “15 minutes.” If you make your assignment too long, it simply won’t get completed—or, worse, just a few will complete it, and they’ll resent the others who didn’t when the session starts, or feel duped for having completed a laborious assignment which, in hindsight, will appear superfluous if you need to start at Square One for most of the other participants. 

You can add optional reading/exercises for “highly motivated learners.” That’s fine. But make clear what’s optional vs. what’s required.

Keep it brief-looking. Even a short pre-read, set in dense, small type and devoid of graphics, will look longer than it is. So use white space to your advantage. Add photos and graphics. The page-count isn’t as important as how intimidating the piece looks at first glance. Don’t be afraid to have a page with just one or two sentences and a big image. Make it fun to read. Make the reader feel rewarded for having covered so much ground so quickly (it’s fine for them to think, “Wow, I’m already on Page Nine!”, when, in actuality, they’ve only read four pages of text.).

Lay down some basic precepts. If there are some key concepts upon which you’ll be building your upcoming session, define them here. Keep them simple and accessible (“The five things to remember”/”The three key concepts defined”/”Your four-point checklist,” etc.). You can build upon these basics, in detail, when you actually present. Again, bear in mind that you want to reward the reader. Give them good reason to feel empowered and proud of themselves as they read (“Wow, I already understand the four-point checklist!”).

Set an example. Use a relevant story that sets the stage for your upcoming session. You can pull it from prior client work (disguised/redacted as appropriate), or even a story in the news that’s relevant. Big-drama stories—tales of envy-inducing success or gut-wrenching failure—are reliable grabbers. But make sure your take on these stories, especially if they’re drawn from the news, are your own. Everyone knows that Apple is successful and that social media is huge. If you don’t have a unique take on a well-known story, you don’t have anything to add, so don’t go there. The point is to draw parallels between your parable and the client organization. If you’ve thought it out well, and can highlight some eerily-similar opportunities or challenges (based on your prior research of the client organization), you’ll really get your participants thinking, productively, in advance.

Tell a story. Don’t lecture. Make the pre-read a page-turner, even if it’s relatively light on details. It should be fun to read. Sometimes you just want your participants to think about old problems in a new way. Infuse the story with your unique personality/storytelling perspective. You can be sardonic, humorous, ironic… whatever defines “you.” The net take-away is that your audience should be dying to see you in person when they finish reading. In that regard, think of the pre-read as your “warm-up act,” your emcee intro… your Oscar clip.

Make them think. If you do your job well, they’ll do theirs well, too. Remember, the pre-read is for your benefit as well as theirs. The better prepared they are, the better your session will go. Simple as that.

Tease, tease, tease. Don’t give away the farm. Assure them, via sexy tidbits, that amazing material awaits them at your upcoming session in person. These people are busy and are setting aside time, and tasks, to see you. Make them realize that it’ll be more than worth their while.

Invest in the future. Done properly, a good session pre-read/pre-work assignment not only makes your session go better, but it facilitates follow-on business, too. (How many people in that session may be working at another company next year, and remember you and how great you were? How many will keep that cool pre-read, and show it to their future bosses to help hire you?) So there’s a lot on the line for you and your business.

Consider using a cost-effective outside resource. Following the above best-practice guidelines will maximize your odds of success. But if the prospect seems daunting, consider feeding your thought-leading ideas to an expert writing source, and freeing up more of your time for core activities. Fortunately for you, we have the unique combination of consulting, marketing, and creative skills which have let us help independent consultants and boutique agencies to boost their billing for more than 15 years. Best of all, we’re fast, efficient, and surprisingly affordable, given the value we provide. Contact us right now and let’s talk about growing your business as quickly and productively as possible. 

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