HOW TO START YOUR OWN SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICE
A consultant works with the management of a business to
improve the profitability of the business. Working with the top management, you
can rest assured the consultant is a very highly paid individual. Some
consultants charge $100 per hour. Others charge $1,500 per day for their
services, and still others work on an annual retainer fee of $12,000 to over
$30,000 per year from any number of large corporations.
Until a few years ago, the title "consultant" was more or
less limited to retired diplomats and top corporate officers. In other words,
until recently, the consultant's position was more honorary than actual. But
that has all changed dramatically in the past few years.
The number of consultants for almost any problem in life has
increased by tenfold or more during the past ten years! And the field of
consultants is continuing to grow. In fact, independent consulting is one of the
fastest growing businesses in the country today!
A consultant is an expert at recognizing problems and shaping
solutions to those problems. The need for business problem solvers - among large
and small businesses worldwide - has never been greater. The ever changing moods
of the buyer plus the myriad of crisis situations businessmen face almost daily,
have created this "seller's market" for the alert consultant.
Reaching for a consultant when problems arise is as natural
as looking for the sun to come up every morning. When you're not feeling well,
you call for the services of a doctor. If your car isn't running right, you take
it to a mechanic. And so it is with a businessman when he encounters a problem -
whether it be in the field of accounting, legal, sales or customer relations.
Another side of this need for consultants is in the case of
the over-enthusiastic entrepreneur who rushes headlong into a business in which
he has little or no experience. Many such dreamers invest their life savings in
questionable projects without even considering the idea of bringing in a
competent business consultant to analyze and evaluate their plans.
Even experienced people are prone to overrate their own
ideas. The image of the end result, and dedicated enthusiasm toward the
attainment of one's goal are the prime prerequisites for success; however,
unmerited enthusiasm and dedication can also be very dangerous as well. Unless
it is based upon solid research, it may cause people to chase headlong after
nonexistent rainbows. And that's where you can fit in as a business consultant.
It is not necessary for you to have owned or operated a
successful business to become a successful business consultant. Nor is it
imperative that you have been in management or have held a titled position. You
will, however, need the ability to sell yourself, and an up-to-date
understanding of the area in which you intend to assist others.
The first step is to make an honest evaluation of your own
training and experience. You might be an ambitious tax consultant who was never
recognized for your abilities. You might be especially good in such general
areas as systems design, marketing, advertising, distribution, sales, or even
efficiency, time management, scheduling, expediting or productivity. There are
hundreds of consultants across the country specializing in Direct Mail and Mail
Order operations. Most of these people enjoyed some measure of success in those
fields, and then discovered the easier way - advising others on how to operate
successfully. There are consultants for people who want success with a garage
sale, party plan merchandising, or even multi-level operations. The important
thing is to choose an area in which you've had some experience; an area that you
have spent some time learning about and of course, an area of work that you
enjoy.
Almost everyone is afraid of the responsibility involved.
They claim they don't have the experience or the knowledge. Such was the case of
a young lady we know who was seeking work as a personnel clerk. She had worked
five years as assist ant to the personnel manager of a large manufacturing
plant, yet when we advised her to become a consultant to people looking for work
or to start her own resume writing service, she pleaded lack of knowledge,
experience and ability.
Just about everyone has had special training in a certain
line of work, and they've gone on to absorb special studies or education along
the same lines, and most people have worked all their lives along or very close
to a specific line of endeavor. So, why shouldn't a woman who has worked 20
years as a waitress represent herself as a consultant to the training program
for waitresses within a restaurant organization? A shipping and receiving clerk
would be a natural for setting up efficient operations and for solving problems
for businesses just beginning or expanding their production output.
The point is, most people don't realize how much expertise
they really have, or the probable marketability of their training, knowledge and
experience. The important thing is to look over your educational strengths,
combine that with any special training or on-the-job experience, and then offer
your expertise to help others with their problems along the lines you know best.
You don't need a big, fancy executive type office in order to
get started, especially if you start your consulting business on a part-time
basis. A spare bedroom, a section of the basement, or even a corner of the
dining room, will do very nicely. If you handle your own bookkeeping/filing, you
will need a ledger of some kind, and a file cabinet or two. You will need a good
typewriter if you plan to do your own correspondence. An alternative is to do
all letters, etc. in longhand and hire someone to put them in final form for
you. Check the local high school or college. They may be happy to post your ad
for a young lady looking for part-time work.
Instead of going to the expense of paying for a business
phone, use your residence phone and train all members of the family to answer it
in a business-like manner during normal working hours. Save copies of all the
sales letters you send out, and of course, all job proposals you submit. Set up
your file system with your final plan in mind, and you'll save a lot of time as
well as frustration. Get the kind of file folders that hang from the sides of
the file cabinet's drawers, allowing you to position the file folder title
anywhere across the top of the folder. Then as you add clients to your file, you
can keep them in alphabetical order without having a jumbled-looking file drawer
in which you have to search for each title. It's also a good idea to keep your
active accounts in one drawer, your "hoped for" accounts in another, and master
copies of all your letters, proposals, business contact information and records
in still another drawer. You'll also need business cards. You nearest quick
print shop can usually order these and help you in selecting wording and design.
Whether to rent, lease or buy a copy machine is up to you.
But virtually no business can get by without file copies. Carbon paper means a
loss of efficiency, and running over to the corner shop to get copies is going
to cost you time and money, so be sure to fit some sort of copier into your
business start-up costs. If impossible at the very first, use the old carbon
paper - you must have a copy for your file.
Just how good a typist are you, well you can write sales
letters, and how busy you want to be, should be the deciding factors about the
typewriter. If you type at all - and there will always be at least a few letters
that you should type personally - we suggest again that you go for the long haul
probabilities and rent, lease or buy the best and most modern typewriter you can
afford. Later on, when you do move into that "dream" office, hat will be one
less piece of equipment you will have to be concerned about.
Once you've decided what area of business consulting you want
to be in, and have your office or working space set up, the next thing is to let
people know you're available for work. Definitely use some common sense and
applied knowledge before spending any money on advertising. Generally speaking,
you will pick up some customers, regardless of the problem area you specialize
in, by advertising in your area's most popular newspaper. However, we wouldn't
recommend much more than a small ad in the Sunday editions, unless you're a
direct mail, multi-level or garage sale consultant.
Check with your Chamber of Commerce for a list of trade and
specialized business publishers in your area. Either pick up a sample copy of
the business journal at the local newsstand or write to the publisher and ask
for a sample. Look through those catering to the type of business you want to
serve. Check the editorial styles and types of advertising they carry, then
select the one that corresponds with your needs. Basically, unless a publication
reaches the people you are trying to sell to, don't advertise in it regardless
of style, quality, or advertising rates.
Radio or television would probably be a complete waste of ad
vertising dollars, unless you're offering help with direct mail, multi-level
marketing or garage sales. The best time for any broad cast advertising in order
to reach you best prospects seems to be in the evening hours after the
late-night news, when these people are either still laboring over their special
projects or relaxing before going to bed. If you do use broadcast advertising,
the commercial is very important. Really concentrate on this, and use a lot of
common sense in writing the message. Even if you engage the services of an
experienced broadcast copywriter, make sure the message speaks to your potential
customers, and convinces them that you can help solve their problems or improve
the profit picture of their business.
Finally, where to advertise. Go with a quarter-page ad in the
yellow pages of your telephone directory. The space salesman will help you with
the ad, but remember, you want it to catch the eye of your particular client,
and offer a promise of an end to his problems. Always talk to your kind of
people, emphasizing the benefits of your services. It's not good practice to
quote or even discuss prices in either your advertising or on the phone when
people respond. Always get name, address and telephone number, then explain your
services in general. Set up an appointment to look over their operation, analyze
their needs, and make a written proposal to solve their problems.
There may be a number of factors involved in establishing
your fees, but starting out with beginning and small businesses, and until you
line up 50 regular clients, your best bet would be $50 per hour. Count on two to
three hours per clients per day, and devoting 10 days per months to work on
their needs, you're talking about $1,000 to $1,500 per month from each client.
Multiply that times 50 clients, and you'll be grossing $5,000 to $7,500 per
month. As a one-man operation, you'll be plenty busy.
Insiders in this business say a person can leave his regular
job on Friday, start a consulting business on Monday, and within six months,
have an income of more than $100,000 per year. Suffice it to say that a
beginning business consultant should earn from $30,000 to $60,000 before taxes
and office expenses, in his first year in the business.
There's still another very important method of finding new
clients, and that is via Direct Mail solicitation. This is done either by
postcard or sales letter mailings. For a mailing list of local businesses, check
the yellow pages of your telephone directory, under the heading "Mailing Lists."
Tell the advertiser the kind of mailing list you need - if they don't have it,
ask them for the names of suppliers who might be able to supply your needs.
Alternately, you could compile your own mailing list of prospects most likely to
be interested in your services. Mark the names you want in the area business
directory, and pay someone to input these names onto a computer for you. The
computer should be able to supply you with peal-and-stick address labels at a
nominal cost. Putting your list on computer from the start will save you
thousands of dollars in money and count less hours of work.
Your postcard solicitation should basically be an elaboration
of your printed advertising. In other words, an ad or a Direct Mail Consultant
might be transferred to a postcard along these lines: