how to be your own consultant
To begin, what exactly is consulting?
Giving professional advice to professionals or industries that need your guidance and opinion to move forward is what consultation entails.
Step 1: Determine the type of consultant you want to be.
The Independent Consultant Model
As a solo consultant, you collaborate with your clients and complete all project work on your own.
The Consulting Firm Business Model
Instead of just working on client projects, you are in charge of running the consulting firm in the consulting firm model.
Amanda, for example, runs an HR consulting firm that assists technology companies with culture, hiring, and talent retention. She manages a team of consultants who implement projects for their clients rather than working on client projects herself.
Model of Productized Consulting
The productized consulting model entails transforming your expertise into a “productized service” — a repeatable series of steps that results in a predictable outcome for clients.
Step 2: Define Your Ideal Client
Who will your consulting firm help?
This is one of the most important questions you will have to answer if you want to start a consulting business.
It’s also one that many people overlook. As a result, they have a difficult time attracting clients, pricing their services, and winning consulting projects.
How can you assist these customers?
Problems/Action/Results
Your ideal clients are looking for solutions to problems.
As the consultant, you take action to resolve those issues. Your expertise produces results for your clients as a result of those actions.
A magnetic message must include problems, actions, and results.
Assume you’re a sales consultant who works with enterprise software technology companies.
The sales team for your ideal client is underperforming.
You provide a 6-week sales training programme.
As a result, your programme improves the sales team’s performance by 33% on average.
Consultants, particularly newcomers, have a tendency to focus too much on the actions.
However, if you truly want to capture the attention of your ideal clients, concentrate on results.
Your ideal client is looking for outcomes, not just actions.
Do this exercise right now to get started on your path to becoming the great consultant you desire.