You have decided to become a successful business consultant. Good start. But first, let’s make some things clear.
Who is a Consultant?
According to the Dictionary of Cambridge, a consultant is a person who is “a specialist in a particular subject and whose job is to give advice and information to businesses, government organizations, etc.”
The word ‘specialist’ is something you should underline and understand. Specialisation is no joke and that’s why it is highly respected. It takes time and consistent effort. Instead of working 9 to 5, you work for 27/7.
As you are striving for the best of the best, we believe that you know the business side of your work. Now allow us to tell you something about the growth side of your work –
8 Hacks To Become A Successful Business Consultant
1. Start by deciding your niche.
Consultations can be of many types and in various fields of business. So you’ll know what is going to be the scope of your work after you decide the niche you want to specialise in. Often there are a lot of opportunities in diverse niches. But specialising in every category will take a lot of time and effort. This may also shift your brand image to the general category over one or two specialised categories. Hence, choose what you want to do beforehand.
2. Get the relevant certifications for your niche.
Paperwork is very important to gain the trust of your potential customers. It not only helps you get more authentic customers but also builds the brand reputation as genuine and trusted. Furthermore, in the process of getting certified, you’ll get to know more about the laws and regulations of the place that you are practising in.
When you go online and cater to a wider audience that is around the globe. Make sure you have a strong legal team to help you get things done. Service-oriented deals often require a well-defined contract so as to get paid in any cases of clashes etc in the future.
3. Form a Company
It is essential to register yourself as a practising consultant. Further, building a company will help you with taking the benefits of government schemes and policies that are meant for you. If you start early, suppose in your 20s, in your 30s, your company will 10 years old, which makes a good impression on your clients. It doesn’t matter if your company does one project in one year, making it big will take time. And certainly starting early will help you in becoming a successful business consultant.
4. Build a website
In today’s competitive market, there is no doubt that you need a website in place to become a successful business consultant. And no, not just creating a website is going to work. You need to keep it alive and updated with the work you are doing. Have allied social media accounts and direct the traffic to your website where you can book an online consultation. Also, start using digital marketing for your website.
There is no doubt that your customers or clients would increase tremendously as you transition to digital marketing simply because you are now visible to all the people who use the internet, which is a lot, mind you.
Even though I am asking you to target a particular niche, the audience for the targeted niche can be of a variety of age groups. There can be experienced family-run businesses who may require your help and know very little about what the internet trends are. And on the other hand, there can be startups made by fresh college graduates who have little experience about how the market works etc. Both these groups have their own strengths and weaknesses and how you tackle both the clients smoothly is going to be your own skill. Hence, keep your website open-minded and user-friendly.
5. Proper Billing System
Products are easy to sell. Why? Because they are tangible and have a defined substance of matter. But services are not the same as they are intangible in nature. When you are consulting someone, you may be doing it for a few hours or days or weeks, but the advice you give is worth all your experience in the business from years. Therefore, your pricing needs to be very clear and well-defined.
It’s best if you form a contract with the help of a legal team as mentioned earlier. Getting the legalities sorted beforehand will give you the size of the room that you can play around and the client will also be clear about what he/she/they expect as an outcome.
6. Hire your staff
Hire the most basic staff like – Secretary, Consultants, Accountants, and more according to your niche. Also, form proper contracts with the consultants that you are employing. While forming contracts for your staff make sure you have clear contracts in place, particularly the “right to work” or non-compete agreements.
7. Set up a proper marketing strategy
Yes, even as a business consultant you need to set up a digital marketing strategy to get clients. The people who hire you don’t just look for a consultant first. They Google their problems –
- How can I grow my business?
- How can I boost my sales?
- How to do – so and so – in your business niche?
What you need to do is target these keywords that people are searching for. And use them in the SEO. This way, you will be shown by the Search Engine when they search for these keywords.
8. Collaborate!
Collaborations expose you to the audience of your competitors in the most friendly manner. This way you know the targeted audience is a potential client of your service and hence collaborations bring in a lot of exposure towards potential clients. Therefore, collaborating and sharing profits can also be a good idea to gain friends in the field. This other consultant can also refer you to the clients that come to him but are not from his niche.
Here’s what all you can do with Exly –
- Create your own page without any coding or having a coding background. The website is very user friendly and there is a team, one call away if you have doubts.
- Create resources for your website in relation to your consultation business to engage relevant customers.
- You can receive payments using the same website and don’t need to complicate anything in the process.
- Exly gives full ownership of the resources and services to the creator which I personally feel is the best part. Many other website builders or course-seller platforms lack this particular feature.
- This tool also has analytics that lets you track visitors on your website. This way you can get to know which part of your website is working and which isn’t.
- It also has a marketing suite that can be used by creators so that you target the people looking for your services and are potential customers for you.
There’s so much more to this ever-evolving app that you’ll be the one telling me all about it. So go now and become a successful business consultant while having a lot of fun in the process!
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