From the category archives:

Building Your Practice

Subcontracting can help build your portfolio

by Peter Osborne on July 18, 2010 · 1 comment

Today’s post was written by Consultant Launch Pad co-founder Michael Brown, the president of StrategyMark Inc, which provides consulting services to the specialty chemicals industry.

Subcontracting for another firm can provide a terrific foundation for an early-stage consultant.

Subcontracting for another consulting firm can be a great strategy for getting your own practice started.  It not only gets the cash flowing quickly but comes with other benefits including:

  • The other consulting firm has already sold the project, enabling you to get started more quickly because it eliminates the normal leadtime required for getting new business.  You can still start prospecting directly with clients while you are subcontracting so you reap the benefits as the sub-contracting gig ends.
  • Subcontracting is another “toe in the water” approach to testing the profession and making sure you have what it takes to be a consultant (see earlier blog on Microconsulting for another “toe in the water” approach)
  • Subcontracting is a wonderful learning experience and a great way to see the inner workings of an established consulting firm, including the sales process, customer interactions, and financial structure
  • For those who dislike selling, subcontracting can even extend beyond start-up and become the core of the practice.
  • It can provide you with case studies and a list of “clients” that can build both your reputation and provide heft to your marketing materials. 

Subcontracting does bring a couple of significant downsides:

  • The rates/fees are usually much lower than those of your “real” direct clients simply because there is another consulting firm marking up your rates for its client and it needs room for a reasonable mark-up margin while still remaining competitive.  If the rate you negotiate is substantially lower, make sure you get something in return (e.g., guaranteed work, office support, training/learning opportunity).  B e sure to lay the groundwork for raising your rates over time, since, once someone starts paying you a certain rate, they may expect to pay that same rate forever.
  • Many consulting firms require non-compete and non-disclosure agreements with their subcontractors.  Depending on your practice and field of work, this may limit your abilities to work with certain clients and slow the growth of your practice.  Try to limit non-competes to a short term and made sure the field is not open-ended; instead, list the excluded clients by name.

Subcontracting continues to be a small but important part of my established practice.  It comes to me through my network and I do not actively pursue it.  While the rates are lower, I find it refreshing to work with other consultants and learn their style and approach as well as swap client war stories!  That said, here are a couple of tips for generating work like this:

  • Add something to your LinkedIn profile and other marketing collateral that says you are open to this kind of work.
  • Let other consultants know you’re interested in this kind of business.
  • Identify consultants or consulting firms that serve similar types of clients but may not serve your particular niche.  Offer them a chance to expand their services.  For example, if you have extensive experience writing business plans or RFP responses, a branding agency that focuses on developing logos, taglines, and websites might be interested in that skill.
  • Listen carefully when networking.  If someone tells you how busy they are, ask questions instead of congratulating them.  Offer them a chance to take less-profitable, time-consuming functions off their plates, particularly if they don’t enjoy them (e.g., technical types often dislike formatting reports or creating charts).

Consultant Launch Pad co-founder Peter Osborne contributed to this post.

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Microconsulting: Putting your toe in the water

by Peter Osborne on July 9, 2010 · 1 comment

Michael D. Brown is co-founder of Consultant Launch Pad. He has worked in the chemicals industry for more than 30 years, 12 of that as a consultant.

There are ways to see if consulting is right for you without a full commitment

A friend recently asked me about consulting and I shared with him my experiences and advice.  As my enthusiasm built, I could tell he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and a little skeptical.  As I probed a little I found he was excited about the rewards of consulting but deeply concerned about the risks.  Of particular concern was the perception that he would be starting up a business he knew little about.  Our conversation turned to whether there was a way to put a “toe in the water” of consulting before “jumping in over his head.”

The answer is yes, sort of.  Depending on your capabilities and value proposition, it might be possible to “micro-consult” conducting tiny projects and services for a very modest fee (sometimes a few minutes consulting for as little as $5).  The wonders of the internet have made it possible to match consultants and clients at very low costs thus enabling micro-businesses that would have been impossible in the past.  Several sites serve the micro-consulting market including fiverr.com, liveperson.com, and elance.com to name a few.  Each site has a different approach, but the premise is the same – very small quick-turnaround projects.  Anne Kadet of SmartMoney magazine covers the topic quite nicely.

A disclaimer and word of caution – I have tried these sites without much luck.  That is because I have an established practice and found the sites were a distraction and that my fees were just not competitive.  Furthermore, I do not believe it is possible to build a large consulting practice with this business model alone.  You would have to be extraordinarily productive to complete enough projects to have a relevant income.  Rather, I believe these sites allow budding consultants to put a “toe in the water” and see if consulting is for them on a small scale before “jumping in over your head.”  At a minimum it exposes the budding consultant on a very small scale to the realities of writing scopes of work, estimating time and fees and participating in a competitive market.

Michael Brown is president of StrategyMark Inc., which provides consulting services to the specialty chemicals industry.

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Blogroll on Steroids

by Peter Osborne on July 4, 2010 · 0 comments

Hi, there.  Just getting back from some community fireworks and got to thinking that we’re building a community that wants you to be successful and see your revenues go off like the finale of tonight’s show (OK, I know the analogy was a bit weak, but I wanted to tie this a bit to the Fourth before the clock strikes midnight).

Based on where Google Analytics says our visitors are going, I wanted to point you toward a page we think is special and ask for your input to make it even more special. 

Other peoples’ Blogrolls often run down the right column of their blogs.  But it’s not always clear why some of them exist from the titles.  Some are obvious, of course.  You see Tom Peters’ name, you’re pretty sure you know what you’re going to get when you click.  Same with Chris Brogan or Duct Tape Marketing.  Others…not so easy.

So I created our Blogroll on a different page, organized it by Categories, and added a phrase or two about each one — an introduction if you will, just to save you a bit of time.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a bit of exploring and see if you like someone new, but it’s a start.  Because we know how busy you are.  These are the people who will help you move into Free Agent Nation, to help you get started or be more successful in your portfolio career.

And here’s my request:  I want this page to have a lot more interesting people who can help you find new customers, be more effective, and think about a range of different subjects in a different way.  If you have some suggestions, go to the bottom of the page and tell me (and everyone else) whose blog you can’t live without on a regular basis.  I’d like to say that it’ll take two or three recommendations of the same person to make the list, but who knows…if one person makes a suggestion of someone I really like, they’re going to make the list.  Please consider Tweeting the Blogroll (or retweating this post) so we can get a broader range of recommendations.

So who do you like?

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Reduce choice to improve your sales results

by Peter Osborne on June 22, 2010 · 0 comments

Are you giving your prospects too many choices?

I believe that if three different people raise the same issue over the course of a week, it’s worth listening.   Today’s idea is Limit Choice.

It started with coming across Groupon, which is one of those businesses where customers are a great deal on a single item.  The deal depends on either a certain number of people taking it or it’s there until the supply runs out.   I signed up and while I haven’t bought anything yet, the deals are great and I anticipate I will participate before too long.  But I did subscribe to their feed.

A few days later I was listening to an interview where Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of “Crush It,” was offering some advice to start-ups.  He’s a bit over-the-top, but one of his pieces of advice had to do with simplicity and limiting choice.  Gary was talking about how he had tested the “Groupon” model in one of his retail wine stores by replacing a rack near the front that held 10 bargain wines with just one.  The result?  ”We’re crushing it,’ he said.  ”We’re selling these bottles at a staggering rate, one that trumps residual loss of not selling many products in that space.”

All this ended with a conversation with another consultant about one of the key “rules” we followed when offering credit-cards through the mail in a previous life.  We tested everything and inevitably found that Choice Suppresses.  The more variations on a card offer — different designs, different pricing, different value propositions — the fewer responses we received.

This concept is very important as you launch and market your consulting practice, particularly if you expect to have a portfolio career where you work for a number of different clients.  As I look back on the past year, I think I threw too many things against the wall when marketing to prospective clients.  I had a one-page document with 10 different “core competencies” across three categories.  It’s too many and I believe I’ve probably lost prospects who might have benefited from my skills but got lost looking at the others.

Try this exercise:  List your marketable skills and points of differentiation (i.e., segment the different ways you can solve a prospect’s problems).   For each skill, list specific prospects and/or places you can find prospects (e.g, a specific LinkedIn group, association membership lists).  Create separate landing pages on your website for each skill and link them from customized marketing pieces.

I’ll close with a link to a blog I wrote elsewhere that includes a great clip from the movie City Slickers reinforcing the importance of reducing choice and focusing on that one thing that differentiates you from the competition. 

Think about places where you might be offering excessive choice to customers and what impact that might be having on their buying decision.  Are there opportunities to reduce the choice — perhaps by careful targeting of benefits or skills — and actually increase response?

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30 Second Launch Pad: Find your niche

by Peter Osborne on June 21, 2010 · 0 comments

Mark Jankowski

Mark Jankowski co-founded Baltimore-based Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI) in 1995 to help individuals and organizations realize their fullest potential by building stronger relationships and improving their Negotiation and Influencing skills. Drawing on his experiences as an attorney, investment banker, sales manager, and entrepreneur, Mark empowers clients to connect SNI’s systematic approach to Negotiation and Influencing to their real life endeavors.  For more information on Mark, you can go to his bio on SNI’s website or his LinkedIn profile.

What do you know today that you wish you knew when you were starting out?   I was not fully aware how much time administrative tasks would take. Arranging travel, setting up phone calls, closing sales, marketing, making copies, billing, etc have to be accounted for when determining how much time your consulting career will take. Therefore, maximizing your hourly rate is vital because every hour of work probably requires another three hours of sales, marketing and administrative time. 

What was your most important early decision (e.g., financial, organizational, marketing)?    We decided to only pursue a niche and not be a Jack of all trades. Expertise is a valuable commodity, particularly when there is an overload of information and your clients need someone who focuses on parsing that info and just giving them the exact info they need when they need it.  Find your niche. 

Can you offer one piece of advice to help a new consultant get through the first six months?  Exercise :) . There is a great deal of pressure in the first six months as you see expenses mount with no revenue in the door or potentially on the horizon. You will need to blow off steam to make sure that you do not get an ulcer. Not only that, but people tend to think more highly of consultants who are in good shape.

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30 Second Launch Pad: Get that first contract

by Peter Osborne on June 15, 2010 · 0 comments

Michael D. Brown

Michael D. Brown is president of StrategyMark, Inc., which provides consulting services in the specialty chemicals industry; managing partner of TZ Chemicals International Pty Ltd, a consulting and data publishing firm he helped start in January 2010; and one of the founders of Consultant Launch Pad.   A consultant for 12 years with 30 years of experience in marketing and business management of coatings and engineered plastics, Michael is considered an international expert on the specialty chemicals market and speaks regularly at trade organizations and the financial community.  For more information on Michael, you can go to the About Us page of this website or his LinkedIn profile

What do you know today that you wish you knew when you were starting out?   The one thing I wish I knew when I started was how to properly assess the risk/reward of leaving a corporation and starting a business.  I did some modest scenario planning but didn’t fully grasp BOTH the full extent of the risk AND the full extent of the rewards.  I should have talked to more consultants, both well-established as well as those just starting.  Specifically it would have been helpful to know the volatility of income (even for established practices!), the long hours, and, in my case, the heavy travel.  Conversely, I did not fully appreciate the degree of satisfaction I now have as a consultant and how good I feel about being in business for myself.  Simply – I wish I had known more about the “lows” and the “highs!”

Knowing what I  know today, my decision to consult would not have changed, but the way I managed my personal finances in the early years might have changed a little.  I would also have started my own practice much earlier.

What was your most important decision starting out (e.g., financial, organizational, marketing)?  My most important decision was deciding that my passion for strategic planning and consulting would never be fully realized or appreciated as an employee of a corporation and I would be better off professionally and financially as a consultant.  I was fortunate to have the opportunity at that time to enter the consulting profession as a partner in a small well-established firm.  Looking back I realize the importance of entering the market this way as it gave me the opportunity to learn the significance of having a focused value proposition and “elevator speech,” to learn the consulting business and to gain confidence while doing so with some financial stability.

Can you offer one piece of advice to help a new consultant get through the first six months?   My advice for a new consultant is to focus on getting that first contract!  Certainly you should put time in to your value proposition, business plan, company organization and marketing, but the impact of having cash flowing is immeasurable to your confidence and ultimately your success.  You should learn from this first contract more about your skills (and any gaps), you commitment and where your value proposition and business model need tweaking.

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Build your network in a strategic way

by Peter Osborne on June 15, 2010 · 0 comments

Networks exist to help each other

When I left the bank 18 months ago, I had less than 100 LinkedIn connections.  Today, I have 414, and they’re connected to a total of 6 million professionals.  More important, I’ve gone from about 80% of my network being co-workers to a signficantly lower percentage.   The point is that if you’re not working to expand your network to something somewhat less incestuous (i.e., everyone knows everyone else because all anyone is doing is connecting to co-workers), then the rest of this posting may not help you all that much.

New consultants will spend far more time on prospecting for new clients that they expect.  As you grow your network, there are a number of ways you can leverage that group to find new clients and build a portfolio career across a variety of industries and regions.  You can ask them to:

  • Validate your value proposition (i.e., confirm that your view of your strengths are shared by those who know you well and may be a touch more objective)  They may well see the thing(s) that will differentiate you as being something much different than what they may have said in a fomal review.
  • Introduce you to other people in their networks, particularly as you begin to target specific companies as prospective clients.  This is the so-called “warm introduction,” where a more personal introduction is far more effective than clicking Add XXX to Your Network or doing a third-party request.
  • Provide references and testimonials, and perhaps even write a Recommendation that you can post on your LinkedIn profile.
  • Be part of a focus group for your business or for a specific study or survey that you plan to write to demonstrate your expertise or to provide as a “freebie” on your website to improve your traffic.
  • Provide feedback on your business plan, website, or key start-up decisions (e.g., LLC vs. S corp).
  • Be part of your consultancy’s “advisory board.”  This can be effective if you’ve cultivated people for your network who are well-known within your industry or target market.
  • Help you raise money for your venture or for an expansion.
  • Proofread documents or marketing collateral before sending it out to sales prospects.  This can avoid huge embarassment if you have an ugly typo or two.  You can also click here if you’d like some tips on proofreading if you can’t find anyone to help you.

Your LinkedIn network is not designed to prove you’re popular or provide you with a distraction during slow times.  Build your network strategically and use it to figure out answers to difficult questions or connect with someone who can help you grow your business.  And don’t forget that to get help you need to offer it too.  I’ve always been a big believer in karma as it relates to this kind of thing and the sooner you focus on helping others, someone else will focus on helping you.

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Avoid sales minefields: Lead them on a journey

by Peter Osborne on June 14, 2010 · 0 comments

What statement will derail the sales process?

One of my sons started off a conversation that involved his effort to get me to give him money by saying, “you’re going to love this idea.”

That statement rarely turns out well for the person who says it.

My initial thoughts were, in order, “I doubt it” and then “I wonder what this is going to cost me.”  If it had been one of the other sons, the first thought probably would have been “wanna bet,” but that’s a result of past experience.  This is an opening line that breeds skepticism.  Better approaches to making the sale include:

  • Help the prospect see your idea in full living color with story-telling and visual images.  This idea, by the way, extends to presentation decks where you should avoid lots of bullets and standard clip art and use images that complement your storytelling.  For example, I use a photo of a tiger peering out of a forest for slides about lurking danger, images of elevator doors to start a discussion about options, and a picture of Peter Falk as Columbo to illustrate a slide on asking lots of questions. 
  • Get rid of the handouts but use leave-behinds. But don’t hand out the leave-behinds at the beginning and say they’re leave-behinds. Wait until you’re actually leaving.
  • Once you’ve made the sale, stop selling.  How many times have you been in meetings where the salesperson was so intent on getting through his or her deck that the sale was lost by an errant or misplaced bullet point?
  • Aim high.  My friend, sports agent extraordinare Ron Shapiro, urges negotiators to Aim High.  Do the same in your sales.  While there are benefits to taking an incremental approach once you have the business and bringing about change, don’t play it safe during the sales process.  Be logical and clear, but paint a greater vision.  Bring the prospect along on a journey and encourage them to feel a part of figuring out the solution.

One thing that most consultants have in common is the need to constantly sell, particularly those who are trying to build a portfolio of projects or clients that provide consistent income.  When selling yourself (your skills, experience, and value proposition), what approaches do you take?

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Strong references help fill your customer pipeline

by Peter Osborne on May 23, 2010 · 0 comments

Your technical skills will only take you so far…

Building a successful portfolio career requires you to have customers — a word I far prefer to clients — who speak well of you.  In many cases, these happy customers will be your best source of new business.

LinkedIn is just one place where your references can sing your praises, a great place actually because you eliminate the reciprocal reference (“you recommend me and I’ll recommend you”) that can undermine the power of a positive recommendation.

But keep in mind that as important as a great reference is to you, it may quickly become an after-thought to the person with whom you worked.  So it makes sense to ask for the reference at some point during or just after the project and then provide some specific direction, particularly if the reference is going to be in writing for your LinkedIn profile or in a specific place on your website.  Think about the questions you’d ask if you were looking to hire someone like you:

  • Was he easy to work with?
  • How much supervision did he require?
  • What makes him different from his competitors (i.e., from others who offer similar services, particularly those who might charge less)?
  • Did he show up when he said he would?
  • Did he deliver what he said he would (i.e., Did he meet expectations or exceed them)?
  • How were his invoices (e.g., clear, detailed, and reasonable for the work delivered)?
  • Would you recommend him to others (or, under what circumstances would you hire him again)?

The technical aspects of your skills are important, but successful consultants are trustworthy.  They deliver something unexpected, and they build relationships.  Your references should reflect those qualities.

What other questions would help a client provide you with a great reference?

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Welcome to the Neighborhood!

May 23, 2010

Welcome to Consultant Launch Pad, where we want to help people decide if they’re cut out to consult or do contract work and then help them set up their businesses and find customers.  Our success depends on inviting visitors who have been doing this for awhile and are willing to offer their advice and counsel.  Many people are [...]

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