Consulting for beginners
Advice on making the switch from being a commodity to being a consultant.
Please note: this is an experimental ‘live’ blog post, which I’ll be updating on a regular basis as I learn about consulting. It’s more like a notepad than a traditional article, so please feel free to add your comments, questions, and content suggestions. Follow @j_greig on Twitter or join my mailing list for more tips.
Short form advice:
From Ian Sanders:
- Be You. Don’t try and be someone you’re not. Do strategy and consulting the James Way
- Don’t hide the James Story. Share your story so people know why you’re doing what you’re doing
- Keep on putting potatoes in the ground. It’s not gonna be easy (but that’s ok. What is?). So keep on at it, keep on planting seeds in the ground.
- Check out my manifesto…
When finding consulting leads I don’t just look for people saying “I need a freelancer”, I look for people who say “I need a problem solved.
—Lets Workshop
How do you differentiate yourself as a freelancer? (Love this…)
After a kick off meeting for a $10K+, I send a gift to the client by mail. Currently it’s a 1lb bag of Ethercycle branded coffee called “Coding Fuel.” I include a thank you note.
Long form advice:
Let’s Talk Consulting: How I Built A $270K Freelance Business In 2 Years
Who to work with:
I’ve made mistakes in the past of working with poor clients but I feel I’ve figured it out. I’m now picky with who I work with and solely work with clients who believe in accountability and are not interested in me telling them what they already know. I’ve stopped responding to RFPs (Request for Proposals) and have a focus on working with B2B, startups and enterprise brands. I make some exceptions when the client has a culture fit but if it’s not something I believe in or an amazing opportunity — I pass it along to others.
On setting up your processes:
New Business Onboarding: Develop a standard process for the approach you take when onboarding new customers. It could be as simple as sending them a timeline that requires approval followed by the estimate. Either way, having this structure locked down ensures trust in the early days of your business.
Standard Project Steps: The best thing you can do for your business is productize it by breaking out each step into chunks. For me, every project starts with “Discovery” which is when I get to know the client followed by “Planning” which is when I develop a plan (obviously) and then “Execution” which is when the creation, delivery or distribution of deliverables takes place.
Standard Pricing For Services: No one likes it when you stumble over your prices. Know what you’re worth and communicate it with confidence. No one likes it when you stumble over your prices. Know what you’re worth and communicate it with confidence.
Why I Love Consulting
It’s the freedom to choose who I get to work for, and on what projects. It’s the freedom to vary my work schedule to accommodate both errands and whimsical desires (it’s 1pm in the afternoon, let’s do some woodworking). It’s the freedom to choose to work anywhere. And it’s the freedom to pursue work that is constantly more challenging. In short, it’s not being trapped to one thing.
Why Consulting Is A Job Everyone Needs To Experience (Neil Patel)
What is consulting? It’s simple really…
No matter what field you are consulting in, your job is to identify problems and fix them.
And how is being a consultant different from being an employee?
As a consultant, you won’t be shy to speak your mind and tell companies what they are doing wrong. Why? Because you are getting paid to do that! Speaking your mind is a really important trait… these days there are too many people who are afraid to do this in the corporate world.
What you’ll learn from being a consultant:
- How to communicate effectively
- How to work to a limited budget, and get maximum results
- How to work to a deadline
How to Start a Side Hustle Consulting Business that Gets Paid (An interview with Kai Davis)
Two ways to figure out what to work on:
1) What skill do I have? What problem does this solve? Who do I know that has this problem that I can sell this skill to?
2) *Kai’s Preferred Method* Answer the last question 1st: What group of people do I want to serve?
For example, “Help real estate agents get found online.”
What recurring problem do they have in their business?
What’s costing them money or preventing more profit?
What skill do I have or can I learn that solves that problem?
How do I become enough of an expert to solve that problem for them?
To get your first clients:
Go to where they are. Get out of your peer group. Talk to the people, find out about their problems, and introduce yourself as a consultant.
This can also be done in the online world: What forums, blogs, or Facebook groups are they in? What type of tools do they use and where are those support forums?
Getting Started — What you should do next
How One Cold Email Landed Me A $15K Consulting Project
Great tips on how to identify your ideal client (use this free template to get started)
Days 1–3: Spend the 1st couple hours identifying WHO you want to work with.
Days 4–8: Get 4 interview meetings with business owners in your community in that industry? (Try this door-opening line: “I’m a consultant who wants to learn about it, this is not a sales pitch.”)
Days 9–12: Craft a service that addresses the pains you identified in the interviews?
Days 13–20: Call other business owners in that industry and say, “I am a service provider that offers X. Is this a pain that you have as a business owner?”
Now you have validated people you want to work with, the problems they have, and if they’re willing to pay.
Examples of productised consulting:
- UX Test ($199)
“Give us your URL, tell us what actions you want users to take, and a design Pro will give you insights that would usually cost thousands.” - Diagnosite ($100)
“Stop wasting time, improve your website in 3 easy steps” - Undullify Me ($900)
“We bet your ‘About’ page sucks. We can rewrite your About Page, make it awesome, and dramatically increase your conversion rate”
Examples of great ‘Work with me’ pages:
Qualifying Prospects by phone
When someone first emails me, I ask a series of qualifying questions to decided if they’re a good fit and worth the 30 minutes it takes a for an initial phone call. (I’ve automated this process with Drip.)
Since I can’t automate phone calls just yet, I have a quick script I run through that gives me all the answers I need to write a great proposal (and double check to see if we’re a good fit.)
1. Tell me about your business — This is just a quick overview and a good ice breaker.
2. How has your business performed over the last 12-months? — This will give you a good picture of how their business is doing in general. It’s also an indirect way to get a feel for budget. Though I use productized consulting so my prices are both fixed and advertised.
3. What’s the goal of this project? — I want this answer to either reveal a pain the client has or be a an obvious metric I can improve. Either are great to know for a proposal.
4. Why start now vs six months from now or six months ago? — This is one of my favorite questions. It’s a thought provoker. Try it, this questions more than any other works as a catch-all to reveal all sorts of interesting things about the client and their business. It’ll reveal problems they had in the past and future plans.
Why choose me for your project? — Asking this will get your client to flat out tell you what they like about you. You can use this to make sure you’re a good fit and so you can play that up in a proposal.5. What’s your conversion rate now? — You can use any metric for this, but you just need to know some quantifiable thing that you can improve for them. Then you can say, “We’ll know this project is successful if we increase X by 20%” for example
6. Let’s say I approve you as a client today. Can you walk me through the process of you deciding to work with me? — I love this question. It closes deals on the phone. No one has ever told me their process, they’ve just paused and said, “well we could just get started.” You’ve forced them to think through making a decision which usually reveals that there is nothing actually stopping them from going with you (all without you looking like a hard-selling salesman). The first part also implies that you’re still on the fence because you are an exclusive hotshot who picks and chooses his clients carefully.
