Our membership is constantly seeking advice, support, training and information from service providers to help further their business practices. If you or someone you know would be interested in participating as a one-time sponsor at a WIC monthly meeting, held the third Thursday of each month, please contact us for more information.

• President's Message
• Feature Articles
• Monthly Meeting Recap
• Next Month's Meeting
• Member News
• News & Announcements
• Welcome New Members

Our efforts this quarter are all about WIC promotion. The Board is continuing to identify ways to promote WIC and our top talent consultants to the Bay Area community.

Our first Advisory Board meeting took place in early May. We met with leaders in the community to enhance our efforts to increase awareness of WIC and its Directory of consultants.

We continue to look for member news to post on the WIC Website. If you are speaking, publishing articles, or being interviewed by the press, please let us know, and we'll announce your news on the site. We are searching for press and speaking opportunities to further promote WIC.

Our new WIC Best Practices Direct newsletter for business professionals has been launched successfully. If you have ideas on how to increase the newsletter's circulation, please contact Avery Horzewski, our corporate communications chair.

If you haven't already heard about our new WIC directory, you soon will. It gives every member their own Web page that can include representative clients, results, a business description, and a photo. We are actively working with the Advisory Board to determine what is needed in the Directory area of our WIC site to make people comfortable with finding a consultant from our Directory.

Getting involved in WIC is one of the best ways for you to network and meet our wonderful members. If you would like to volunteer, please let me know, and I'll connect you to the appropriate chairs.

Sincerely,
Deborah Henken
President, Women in Consulting

Feature Consultant Article — Now that April 15 has come and gone, many of us will put away thoughts of saving for retirement for another day. Women face unique financial challenges. Why should retirement savings stay near the top of the priority list? Read WIC Member Leslie A. Smith's documentation on this important topic. Women and Retirement: What Every Woman Should Know

WIC Best Practices Feature Article — An efficient, responsive supply chain can be a strategic differentiator to any company whose suppliers are an important part of the product they deliver. Cost reductions, improvements in customer satisfaction, promotional opportunities, and improvements in overall company flow are all results of supply chain best practices, and consultants can advocate for these advancements. WIC Members Jane Dillner and Gillian Verga provide supply chain improvement scenarios. Supply Chain Management: Best Practices and Its Potential for Consultants

WIC Top Consultant Tip Article — If you are like many consultants, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, you have a Website and want to assure that it receives a high level of traffic. Although there are many ways to drive visitors to your site, "free" traffic from searches is something you can take advantage of now with this timely advice by Patrina Mack and Bob Donnelly. Search Engine Optimization Tips.

WIC March 2004 Meeting
Speed Networking — Members-only Meeting
The members' dynamic, encouraging, and enthusiastic participation proliferated throughout the night. WIC members were true to their reputation, providing enthusiastic, professional support and feedback to their peers. We all came away with a better sense of what other WIC consultants are offering, and our upgraded elevator pitches are now incorporated into our daily professional images.

WIC April 2004 Meeting
BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It
Peggy Klaus, Cow-moo-nications expert, provided a highly interactive workshop directing the WIC attendees on how to sincerely and passionately promote themselves with experience and comfort. First we were shown, and then we practiced, how to enthusiastically tell our story, using tidbits, nuggets, and credibility to keep the listeners interested and assure the message was thorough, compelling, and understandable.

Selling Skills Seminar — A Sold-Out Success
Even in today's competitive environment, successful selling is not about price, Lisa Contini, founder of Synergy Sales, told participants at her recent WIC-sponsored "Selling Skills for Consultants" seminar. Contini taught the participants the 'leadership-selling' principles that have allowed her own company to thrive and increase its revenue, even while other training companies lost business due to the sagging economy of the last years.

Like all WIC-sponsored seminars, "Selling Skills for Consultants" focused on skills that vitally impact a consultant's ability to build her consulting practice and improve her business results.

In a highly effective mixture of presentation and role-playing, Contini showed how consultants can uncover the prospect's business pain, even in the prospecting phase, and how they can demonstrate to potential clients that their services will advance the client's business. "It's not about price," Contini says. "The highest value wins."

Like previous WIC-sponsored seminars, "Selling Skills for Consultants" was a resounding success for its participants. "I loved the workshop. Lisa was great. Just the information I needed," one of them emailed WIC the day after and asked if WIC would sponsor another session with Lisa Contini.

Editor's note — Lisa Contini will be speaking at a WIC monthly meeting this fall.

June: Members Only: Annual Rate Survey.
You won't want to miss this meeting — it's the annual rate survey! You'll learn what other consultants in your area of focus are charging, which fields command the highest rates, what factors account for higher annual revenue, and much more invaluable information directly related to your consulting practice's revenue! This is consistently our most popular meeting; it's for members only, so be sure to join WIC and sign up early! Date: June 17, 2004. Location: Dominic's at Poplar Creek, San Mateo. Information on registration will be available soon at: www.womeninconsulting.org

A WIC Benefit That You Create for Yourself!
I want to share two success stories that are directly related to my being a WIC member.

On the benefits of the WIC database — I received a cold call today from a company in San Francisco looking for a copywriter. They saw my listing on the WIC Website database and thought I'd fit the bill. They interviewed several people, and I signed the contract the following week! This is a call I wouldn't have received without my being listed in the database.

On contributing to the WIC newsletter — I received an email from the American Business Institute wanting to reprint an article that I had written for the March WIC Consultants Direct Newsletter. This will provide additional exposure for me.

So that's my "Hooray for WIC" moment for today!
Cheers!
Tara Komar

Editor's note — American Business Institute (AmBusi) is the organization that sponsored the April WIC meeting. They are offering WIC members a discounted price in membership and are interested in obtaining additional WIC-authored articles for their Website. For more information, see the announcement below.

New Member Benefit — Zoomerang Coming Soon!
WIC members (either Premier or Associate) will soon have exclusive access to a new benefit.

Your WIC membership will entitle you to a 25 percent discount off Zoomerang.com's normal annual subscription rate ($450 vs. $599).

Zoomerang's premium online survey software, zPro, allows users to easily create customized, professional-grade surveys and analyze the critical feedback necessary to make important business decisions. Zoomerang is accessible from any browser and is as easy to use as email.

If you are a paid WIC member, look for an upcoming email about how to access this discount. For those of you who are considering joining WIC, this might be the time!

We'll have more benefits coming in the near future — stay tuned.

If you have any questions, contact Deborah Siegle at 650-654-2737 or dsiegle@marketingsolns.com or Jennifer Berkley at 408-358-0700 or jberkley@TheInsightAdvantage.com.

Women In Consulting Special Membership Offer to Join AmBusi
If you attended the April WIC meeting, you learned about American Business Institute (AmBusi), which sponsored our meeting and provided the wine tasting.

AmBusi is a membership organization dedicated to helping small business people manage both their business and their life. Their mission is to help you grow your revenue, reduce your costs, make timely decisions, and increase the amount of free time in your life. How? They offer independent, unbiased research to provide quick answers. Research on health savings accounts, for example. A business directory offers alternative suppliers. Excellent discounts on services, including 17 percent discounts on Office Depot products. Efficient, easy-to-use planning tools and templates. AmBusi offers a private-label wine program for customer gifts. AmBusi also offers you the opportunity to promote your expertise to its members through articles, teleclasses, and Web seminars.

AmBusi is offering WIC members a membership at $200, a 28 percent discount off the usual fee of $279, if they join by June 1, 2004 and a free case of Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon (which those of us at the meeting found quite good). In addition, for $25, members can receive their free case of wine with custom labels with their company name. Usually, customers must purchase a case of wine to get customized labels.

Click to learn more. To sign up, click here and put WIC in the coupon code. AmBusi will follow up with an email regarding your wine choice and your customized labels. We think it is a great way to let an organization do the research about business needs, so you can focus on running your business.

More:
Two recent WIC press releases are now posted on the WIC Website. Take a moment to see for yourself what our PR team has distributed to the media regarding the new WIC Advisory Board and the new WIC/SVASE Alliance.

WIC still has a few volunteer positions available for 2004!
For more information, please contact Deborah Henken.

WIC Consultants Direct articles, news, and announcement submissions: There are still some opportunities available for future bi-monthly newsletters. Now accepting Consultants Best Practices, Feature Articles, Top Tips, and News. Please email Kathryn Smith.

WIC Quote of the Month:
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

We'd like to welcome our new WIC members! Please introduce yourself to these women at the next WIC meeting!

Cara Hale Alter	Speechskills
Kathy Burkle	InterimQue
Mary Carse	Carse Consulting
Julie Cecilio	ON-Target Communications
Jeanne Flatland	Flatland Marketing Management
Ellen Goldstein-Reich	Bullseye Photo Graphics, Inc.
Connie Howard	Envision Technology Marketing Group
Marcia Kaplan	Kaplan & Associates
Susanne Khawand	MaCS-Marketing Communication Services
Erin McCune	Paprika Consultancy, Inc.
Kathleen Nichols	Kathleen Nichols, Ph.D.
Kristen Putnam	Putnam Community Investment Consulting
Maureen Spitz	Skaggs Advertising + Design
Lisa Strand	Brookside Consulting
Nancy Sur	Decision Point Partners
Nancy Webb	Nancy Webb Graphic Design