Consulting Business-Are you thinking of launching your own consulting firm? I’ve been there before. In fact, I quit a lucrative job as a vice president in a market research firm to start my own business as a planning and market research consultant, and I made it work after a few hard months.
Between leaving Creative Strategies International and starting Palo Alto Software’s product company, I made a career as a consultant for 12 years.
14 Proven Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills
Are you thinking about becoming a consultant? Here are 13 suggestions:
1. Treat it with respect
Make a good job of it. Keep in mind the classic cliché that a consultant is someone who is in between employment. Don’t give off that vibe. You should have a website as well as business cards. As a consulting firm, establish a social media presence. Allowing your current or potential clients to have doubts about you is a bad idea.
2. Make no apologies about being alone.
Don’t act as if you work from home or a little office. Meet with your clients in their offices.
“I appreciate the single shingle consultant because I don’t want to pay for overhead, and I want to deal with the person who does the work, not the person who sells,” said one of my favourite clients, who provided a significant percentage of my consulting income for 12 years.
He was a powerful manager in a huge corporation with the financial means to hire name-brand consulting, but he preferred the expertise to the overhead.
How to Control Anger: 7 Tips to Stay
3. Start with a consulting contract from the company you’re leaving if at all possible.
Most successful consultants began their careers with one large, dependable customer, which was frequently their previous job. If that doesn’t work out, you may greatly lower your risk by identifying the one major client you’ll need to stay afloat.
4. Make provisions for late payments.
When big firms paid late, I required a bank line of credit to keep going. And I couldn’t bother my clients because they had signed the invoices and sent them to the client’s accounts payable department.
You’re entering the business-to-business realm, which means you’ll be sending invoices to clients who will take weeks or months to pay.
Don’t bother your clientele about paying on time. Determine who is in charge of payables and stay up to date on payment schedules.
5. Make promises you can’t keep and then deliver on them.
The key to success is repeat business. Finding a new client requires four times the resources as keeping an existing client. Stick to it, even if it’s 3 a.m. and you’re hating your job, so you can give your finest work the next morning.
6. Begin with a little project to demonstrate your ability.
Try to locate a quick modest job for prospective clients to demonstrate your skills without requiring them to commit to a long-term, pricey job.
It’s the equivalent of sharing a cup of coffee before heading to Hawaii for the weekend. It’s also easier to sell an engagement if it begins with just a first step, implying a lower level of commitment. It also allows you to market yourself.
7. Define your timeline and deliverables, write them down, agree on them, and sign them.
Expect scope creep—clients asking for more after they’ve agreed on deliverables and a price—and handle it delicately by implying that the additional work requires additional expenses. This is one of the most difficult situations you’ll face, and there are no simple answers.
8. Create a standard proposal.
Make a boilerplate proposal with pre-written language about your experience and qualifications. Give the client the assurance of seeing the formality of a proposal with extensive background information.
9. Stay away from long legal contracts.
You’re not going to sue your client, thus they’re useless. Offer a short commitment letter to make things easier for yourself and your client. And if the customer requires you to sign a contract, or if you must negotiate critical topics about intellectual property and work product, go ahead and do so—but try to avoid it.
10. Don’t waste time with unsatisfied, unprofitable, or unproductive customers.
If the client is constantly under pressure and moaning, don’t terminate them, but if they ask for a follow-up project, offer three or four times what you normally charge. You have an unsatisfied client if your client is continually late with payments. You can’t win if you battle them. Find out what the real issue is. Get rid of the debt. Continue on to your next engagement.
I hope you find these suggestions useful. I had a great time relying on consulting for a living for the past 13 years. I enjoyed almost all of my clients, as well as the job’s ever-changing nature, new difficulties, and range of tasks. I hope it turns out well for you.
11. Find your niche.
Identifying the niche you wish to target is the first step in beginning a consulting business. If you are a professional with extensive knowledge in a certain sector, you may choose that industry as your speciality. If you are a professional with knowledge in a specific field, your consulting firm may target a variety of sectors searching for guidance in that field. If you’re launching a consulting firm, you might want to hire a few consultants that specialise in different subjects so you can target different industries and job kinds.
An experienced nurse who wants to create a consulting business, for example, might focus on the health care industry. If you are a business professional with extensive management experience, your consulting firm may focus on a variety of sectors, with a focus on management and business operations projects rather than a single industry.
A consulting business may employ consultants that specialise in specific areas, such as health care or law, as well as specialised job functions, such as management or finance. A good consulting firm should be able to pinpoint who they assist and what they do to assist them.
12. Thorough market study and evaluation
You will need to conduct market research and analysis to establish who your competitors are and what your competitive advantage will be, whether you are starting a consulting business as an independent consultant or as a consulting firm.
If other professionals in your area and niche are promoting themselves as consultants, you’ll need to figure out how your experience, talents, and knowledge make you a better fit for the clients you want to attract. You’ll also need to figure out whether there’s enough demand for consultants in the industries or roles you want to target from clients.
13. Define and grow your brand
The brand of a firm is what gives it its identity. You must develop both your personal and professional brand as a consultant. A consulting firm must establish a reputation for expertise, consistency, and outcomes. Staying up to date on industry trends and changes, as well as being committed to always delivering results, are two things you can do to establish and preserve your brand.
