A lot of excitement about AI for consultants is about creating content and trying to automate relationships.
But speaking (out loud or in written form) is not the same as communicating. And communicating is not the same as connecting.
If you’re using AI to “hide” instead of form connections, you’re not going to get good results.
If you’re a consultant, you’re in a relationship business. And if you’re in a relationship business, you’re in a conversation business. And good conversations are human-to-human.
We’ve got lots of amazing tools that help us speak, from printing presses to telegraphs to telephone to email to “email automation” to social media to YouTube and lots of others I’ll leave out, because you get the point– you’re inundated by people trying to speak at you.
Historically, the bottleneck on speaking at you was publication or distribution, which technology has removed. The remaining bottleneck was creation or production, and now AI is removing that.
This will cause an even bigger avalanche of “content”, along with meta-content, as the shovel-sellers move on to the next gold rush (“how to use AI to generate your course to teach people in your niche how to use AI!”). Some of these people will get rich. A few of them may even be helpful. But mostly, it will just be more speaking at people.
With all these increases in “speaking” power, and more people shouting, there’s a greater need than ever for actual communication, and human connection– even (especially?) for us introverts.
The real power in AI will ironically be helping us be more human.
Imagine an intern who can do research, draft content, generate and refine ideas, except instead of taking days or weeks, can do these tasks in close to real time.
Did you put up a LinkedIn profile or website years ago and you know it doesn’t really describe what you do or attract your ideal clients, you’ve just been too busy to change it? AI can take your notes from your favorite clients and pull out key problems and phrases and turn them into a LinkedIn tagline and profile.
Have Zoom chat transcript with lots of attendees posting contact info? ChatGPT can parse that into a CSV file for import into your CRM so you can have one-on-one conversations without having to type everyone’s details into your system manually.
(Just as I wouldn’t recommend having an intern go off and update your LinkedIn profile, but I would recommend having them draft some ideas– don’t just copy and paste ChatGPT output– think of it as a sounding board for ideas.)
I’ll be covering ways to use ChatGPT to help you be more human and more effective as a consultant, in a webinar on Tuesday. Register here.
