Change #2: New Course

...once the new course book is complete, we will be requiring that the candidate's strategic focus, rates, and fees be completed before awarding the ACRE® designation.

A couple of months ago, I posted on the members-only Coaching Exchange that it was our intention to upgrade the ACRE® course. Counsel Member Tom Pickering (our education guru) is working on this project; taking my "prose" and making it into a true course book, both because it needs to be, and because it will better ACRE®'s chances of being picked up for CE credits.

Once the new course book is completed, it is our intention to raise the bar in terms of the requirements to become an ACRE®. Clearly, in order to become a successful consultant, one needs to not just understand the model, but also have developed a strategic focus (I don't want to use the phrase "business plan" as it makes most agents' eyes glaze over) and most importantly, have calculated your hourly rates and any fee packages that you want to offer. Without this practical work complete, the theory is useless.

Originally, we felt that we could test on the theory and then, since we were offering a year of access to the Exchange, the practical work could be completed "after the fact". I don't need to tell you that this experiment did not work as planned. This is not to criticize: irrespective of those who took the course just to get the letters after their name, most took the ACRE® course with the intention of completing all the work. But, let's face it, life gets in the way and the urgent of working IN our businesses takes priority over working ON our business to transform it. The end result though is that the vast majority of you have not developed your rates and fees.

So, to remedy this, once the new course book is complete, we will be requiring that the candidate's strategic focus, rates, and fees be completed before awarding the ACRE® designation.

Of course, the practical question now becomes: what to do about present ACRE®s. On one level, we shouldn't care. After all, they paid for the course, and if they don't practice consulting, it's the individual ACRE®'s issue, not ours. But here's the problem: it has come to our attention that in at least two instances a consumer has contacted an ACRE® through the ACRE® Locator for consulting services only to be told that they "don't really offer consulting choices". YIKES! This makes ACRE®, as an organization, look really bad. So, what to do?

Our decision is that going forward, if you've earned your ACRE® designation, no one will take it away from you. You can continue to call yourself an ACRE® if you wish. However, once the new edition of The Consulting Times is launched, if you want the exposure on the ACRE® Locator, you will need to complete your focus, rates and fees. We will give all ACRE® grads different avenues to do so: you can re-take the course if you want a refresher, you can download just the worksheets and do it on your own, or we are certainly willing to offer webinars to complete this work as a group if there is enough interest. But, suffice it to say that once the new course is online, if you have not completed your rates and fees, you will be designated as a "Future ACRE®" on the map without a link to contact you, until your work is complete and submitted.

BTW, I'm excited to tell you that with the new course, you will have the opportunity to learn the content in two ways: