One question I get asked often is how to become a business consultant... Specifically, what strategies, tactics, workflows, and skills a consultant needs... Better yet, what are tips for becoming a business consultant so you can start accepting money for your time, products, and programs?
So, if you want to be a consultant, this is your article!
Before we get to that, could you tell me? Is this your story?
Your chair is squeaking. The office manager told you he would change it three times but has yet to. You get up and walk to the kitchen. You're not hungry, but that's the only room in the office with a great view (besides your boss's).
You want to take a moment to think, but Matt from accounting comes and asks you for some files. He leaves. You get back to your desk and start working. Some coworker drops some files on your desk without saying anything and moves on.
You sigh and look at the motivational poster you have on your PC desktop. You start dreaming about leaving your job and becoming a business consultant... Working with someone who values your time, opinion, and expertise.
Do you have what it takes to be a freelance consultant or a consultant for a well-known firm? Do you have the skills to work with clients and move the needle in their organization?
Here are seven things that great consultants do for their clients... And the skills a consultant needs to be successful!
What Does A Business Consultant Do?
Being a highly paid consultant means that you can quickly identify a problem and provide a solution to that problem soon. Maybe it's something you've been through yourself or helped others through - the trick here is having experience. If you don't have experience in the thing you're consulting about - be it health or business or survival - it's going to be a long road for you,
Identifying the problem is mainly a skill developed by connecting the dots, going from one issue to another, and finding out what's wrong or what could be better.
And that brings up a GREAT question many folks write in with... What does a business consultant do? Or what are the primary skills of a business consultant?
The answer: help your clients.
That's it. It's a lot harder than it sounds, though!
You need to use your experience, education, and wisdom to help them navigate the sometimes murky waters of reality. That could be getting through a business merger or assisting a client in tax savings...
You often learn how to connect the dots through work experience, but your research, study, and passion can help you get there much faster in a startup consulting business.
Want To Be A Consultant? This Is What You Would like.
It's not enough to call yourself a consultant and let that be that. People won't flock to your door because you think they should - they do business with you because you've got a solution to a problem they're experiencing in their life or business.
To be a consultant, you must have a pipeline of people ready and willing to do business with you. You need a pipeline of clients for IT, management, and business consultants.
This, my friend, is more complicated than it may seem... You might be naturally gifted, and you've worked to build up some relationship capital in your area that you can key in on when starting your own consulting business, but that's different.
More often, people venture into the consulting space because they're leaving a job they don't like, meaning they don't have relationships they can capitalize on.
So, you'll need to make sure your pipeline is set up...
At a minimum, you need:
- A website that talks about the value you provide to the market
- At least one landing page giving away a free lead magnet
- An automated webinar or something running to pull people into your marketing process
- Marketing automation runs in the background, sending prospects emails and communication pertinent to their situation and actions.
- A way to book strategy sessions so you can start closing.
We can layer in many things on top of this, like Facebook traffic, live videos, A/B testing, content marketing, etc... But get a good foundation built out first to start cashing in.
Top Skills Of a Business Consultant
As a consultant, you will be your client's best friend, coach, counselor, and advisor. It's a role they pay you for so they can be a better form of themselves. You'll need to distinguish between the accurate information and buzzwords you hear from your client and the educational material you encounter online.
At the heart of the consultant/client relationship is trust. You need to make sure to have their best interest at heart at all times, and that means cutting through a lot of the noise to figure out what they should be doing in their business, what strategies they should be employing, and how to keep them accountable.
The same can be true for clients you're attracting to you. You'll get good clients and bad clients. You want to ensure that you qualify prospective clients well so you don't get stuck in a relationship you hate just because you're being paid. The trick is to learn what qualities and characteristics you should be looking for in clients so you can model your sales and marketing material and reach your exact customer avatar.
You wanted out of a regular 9-to-5 job to get freedom. You don't want to be trapped by clients you don't like working with.
How You Make Money As A Business Consultant
When you're working to become a business consultant, nothing is more accurate than the rule: Time = Money. You'll spend your days working with clients; the last thing you want is for them to take advantage of you. It would be best to be very wary about promising too much and not charging enough.
Here's what I mean - there are 40 hours in a workweek. If you have 20 clients who each demand 2 hours of phone time a week, you're maxed out... Between switching between calls, thinking about their problems and possible solutions, and working on your prospect pipeline, you only have a little time left.
Now, that's different from the path I'd recommend you take... You want to lessen the Time = Money Trap by doing bi-weekly calls or creating a course to go along with your consulting, so you're not spending as much time on the phone with them as you would be otherwise. You want to make sure to use your time wisely.
You'll need a flexible schedule. You might need to delegate and outsource work. I want you to know that you'll need to be connected and have clear expectations set up on email, Skype, chat, and the other ways clients will contact you.
A great tool we built to help manage clients and calls is TimeSlots. Your clients can choose when and if they want to talk to you beforehand. Just follow the instructions, and you can select available times and what questions you need them to answer before your call!
People Skills Are Your BIGGEST Asset
Even if you're the best analyst in the business community, to become a business consultant who people want to work with, you also need to be a people person. You'll want to work on it from the earliest stage of your consultant career.
... That means you'll need to be helpful and punctual in answering emails. You need to be good on the phone or in person. It would be best to be diligent and disciplined in your work schedule. Clients will only work with you briefly if they're too busy trying to track you down in between your beach-going lifestyle.
At the end of the day, people. Your clients will be paying your bills. They'll be putting your fees on their credit card because the value you provide their business far surpasses the cost of doing business with you.
As a business consultant, you'll probably be on the phone with them, selling them your services... So, from when they're considering working with you to when they're in the process, your people skills will seal the deal.
And if 'people skills' aren't something you were born with, you'll want to get outside your comfort zone and learn them. It's essential if you want to become a business consultant!
Business Consultants Are Always Learning
Unless you have 40 years in the business, you'll hit roadblocks with your client that you won't know the answer instinctively to... That's OK. What's important is that you understand how to 'learn' quickly, on the fly, and you can apply what you've learned to your client's business.
Iterative learning is, very simply, knowing that you'll constantly grow and accumulate knowledge over time. As a business consultant, it's your job to help your client implement strategies and tactics and recommend solutions if those don't work.
Sometimes, those solutions are variations of the original strategy. Sometimes, it might be a different strategy altogether. What's important is that you learn along the way and gather enough information to make a better choice next time.
Researching and applying new tactics should be a priority for every business consultant.
If you ignore the latest trends and tactics, after a few years, you'll be that guy who does things using default methods, and you will start to lose clients in favor of a newer breed of consultants.
Saying No
Regarding clients (specifically, your prospect pipeline), you should prioritize understanding what projects you can take and what you should leave for others. This is a matter of self-assessing what you do well, analyzing your schedule, and drawing the line when you have too much to handle.
Learn to prioritize cases and clients. Learn to delegate work to others. If you bite more than you can chew, you'll slowly drift away from your clients and team.
How To Become A Business Consultant (As In Starting Up!)
Becoming a business consultant is about heart, drive, passion, and experience.
I know that might be weird, but here's the truth... Becoming a business consultant is much easier today than 5 or 10 years ago. The most important thing is that you have experience and you have knowledge. We covered that. I'm not talking about attending college and finishing a four-year degree in Business Management... That doesn't prepare you for the real-world challenges you'll see as a business process consultant.
Yes, with a 4-year degree, you have value, but in solving real-world business problems, it'll be easy to help honest businesses thrive because of your expertise.
If you have some experience and tenure in solving real-life business challenges, then becoming a consultant is very simple.
Your Business Consulting Practice Can Be Entirely Virtual
For the most part, you can grow your business consultancy using nothing else but the Internet.
- You need a website for your business consulting practice
- You need to grow your audience and platform of people who value and respect your opinion.
- Having social media profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram) with regular posting would be best.
- And it would be best if you had something to sell to your prospects.
Anybody can be an expert in anything. That's one of the things we've learned through social media in the past decade. Every person all over the world has a voice. What they say, though, is what matters.
Every Client You Need Is Already In Your Pocket
Because of content marketing and social media, though, you have a bigger audience in your pocket than the biggest consulting firms did 30 years ago...
You can charge for your services, create your offers, get paid, and handle all your transactions online... Without a physical presence at all, if you don't want one.
Mind you, that could be a bad thing because it also means that you have lots of competition for people who are also interested in how to be a business consultant!
How To Set Your Business Consultancy Apart
I think you'll need to set yourself apart. It would be best if you stood alone. It would be best if you were an expert in your niche. You need to attract your potential clients and turn them into raving fans.
To be a successful business consultant:
- It would be best if you had clients
- You need to engage those clients
- It would be best if you attracted them to your sales funnel
- And ultimately, you need to sell them something.
What To Offer Your Clients
You might think about offering:
- A day-long business consulting package
- A monthly consulting retainer where you talk on the phone with them
- Digital products or memberships that bundle your knowledge into a course
- Books and ebooks
- Multi-day events
You have so many options, depending on what you're comfortable providing. I've written an entire book on creating offers for your business.
Coaching vs. Consulting
We built quite a few sales funnels for consultants and coaches. There's a thin line that separates a consultant and a coach. Often, the lines blur.
In one moment, a coach works for their client more as a consultant. The same is true in reverse. A consultant will have moments of coaching their client before putting their business consultant hat back on.
They are the same. A coach and a client need to attract clients, build sales funnels, build an audience and a platform, and get people to buy from you.
The best way to do that is to focus on a specialty. It would be best if you were unique with one thing.
When I Got Started As A Business Consultant...
For us, we do your marketing for our clients. We build sales funnels and do ad management for companies around the world. We also develop and sell software to help companies with their marketing automation.
But it started with just me building sales funnels because it's something I enjoyed doing, and I also had a lot of experience doing it for our products and smaller clients and projects.
Then, about five years ago, I decided we needed to start doing it big time. So, I started hiring a team and putting together unrivaled processes in our industry.
It started with me being the business consultant, deciding that building sales funnels and solving problems for clients was much more gratifying than simply talking about solving them. That's my take on it. You could be very different.
Specialize In SOMETHING
What I will say is you want to focus on a specialty.
- You don't want to be just a business consultant.
- You want to be a sales process business consultant.
- You want to be an outsourcing business consultant.
- You want to be the programming business consultant
It would be best if you had a focus and a specialty. That will do magic for your business consulting practice, especially from referrals.
Sure, you need elements of a sales funnel. You'll want to have an automated webinar. You'll want to have a sales funnel. You need to have a website. You need to build an email list.
In terms of getting started as a business consultant, you must have a specialty and want to be visible. Create content. Create videos. Be the expert that the world is looking for.
Conclusion
To become a business consultant, you must constantly stay on your toes, learn new strategies and tactics, and ensure your prospect pipeline is always entire.
That way, you can break free of what you're doing and start building a scalable career where you work on stuff you live with people you want to work with.
If you'd like a hand at putting together your prospect pipeline and strategizing the best types of clients to work with, schedule an action plan call with us!
