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Starting a Consulting Business By Leveraging Your Work Experience
from: Cam Forbes
There have been many discussions about what is necessary to
"engage" a client. Engaging a client becomes even more critical
for a consulting firm which is just establishing itself,
especially since the firm probably does not have many (or any)
prior clients to use as a reference.
A firm should perform preliminary research to identify the types
of services capable of being offered. They should then perform a
comparative analysis of these services in relationship to the
services being offered by competitive firms (if any), and they
should also review the current needs of identified target
markets.
A consulting firm sells professional services. The consulting
firm must ascertain the value of the professional qualifications
which they are bringing to the market place. The consulting firm
must also assess the perceived value of these services from the
perspective of the target market. If the consulting firm has a
valuable service to offer, then this service is what they should
be marketing to potential clients.
For start-up consulting firms, the fact that they probably do
not have a long list of previous clients poses numerous
problems. Since they can't identify what they've done with
previous clients, they sometimes tend to reduce the value of the
professional services capable of being provided by reducing the
dollar value of services proposed. This is definitely a flaw on
the part of the consulting firm, and every effort should be made
to prevent this type of "negotiating tactic" to be used when
engaging preliminary clients.
Reduction of fees to engage initial clients should not be a
device which is used to obtain a client base necessary to
substantiate the value of services offered. In other words, if
the firm is not convinced in its' own mind that the professional
services they bring to market are valuable to potential clients,
a reduction in the consultant fees to engage clients will do
very little to validate the actual value of the professional
services offered.
Another way to view this dilemma would be: Does the actual value
of professional services offered increase as the firm's client
base increases? It may be true that a firm's experience and
proficiency may increase over time, but are the professional
services minimal at the outset, or, is the level of client
experience the only thing which a firm lacks when it first
starts out.
A firm may chose to take certain steps to address the lack of
client experience, but it does not seem prudent to reduce the
value of the professional services offered merely due to the
fact that the firm has minimal client experience.
A firm may chose to provide certain fixed services on a pro-bono
basis, separate and aside from the proposed work they are
performing. These pro-bono services may reduce the total cost of
services provided to the client, but the for fee services are
still being provided at the normal rate. Reducing the fee
creates numerous potential problems with the fee vs. value of
services offered. Providing additional services at no charge
avoids this problem, and also addresses some of the needs which
start-up firms experience in their attempt to engage new
clients. Charging $100./hr and providing some additional
pro-bono work is definitely different than doing all of the work
for $80./hr., although the net cost to the client may be the
same.
It should be easier to refuse to do something for free, than it
would be to convince a client that the value of your services
have increased by $20./hr!
A firm should determine how to adjust for a lack of previous
client experience, and this should be something which is
addressed in their operating and marketing procedures. It is
another operational responsibility (similar to managing the
firm, accounting, human resources) which is required to be dealt
with in order to maintain a successful firm.
Finally, if a firm does reduce the value of professional
services offered, at what time will they feel confident enough
to place an accurate value on these services, and how will this
be accomplished with existing clients, and potential clients who
are aware of existing fee structures?
About the author:
Cam Forbes, founder and Managing Partner of Opus One Ventures
has been speaking, training and coaching business owners,
entrepreneurs, and sales people around the world. For more
information about Forbes' "Consulting Solution Toolkit" and how
to get started in Consulting, visit
http://www.consultingstartupkit.com or to receive his free
report about getting started in consulting visit
http://www.consultingstartupkit.com/free_report.html.
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