How to turn your consultancy services into a Business

To start any kind of business is a challenge, but starting a business where your goals are to help others run their own more efficiently is more challenging. Getting a niche is good when determining to start a consulting business, whether your area is Strategy, HR, Technology, or some other consulting service that will help other businesses to improve and grow.

Clients want guidance and not a full-time advice-giver in any of these categories; that's where you come in. You could be on the verge of launching your consulting firm if you have the experience and knowledge to give and enjoy the notion of being your own boss.

The 9 steps to turning your consultancy services into business

Step 1: Know your strengths and skillset

Consultants are typically engaged to tackle difficulties that business owners are unable to solve on their own. Otherwise, why would they pay you, someone with no knowledge of their business? It is critical to have extensive knowledge in a specific subject when launching a consulting business so that you can provide value to your clients. You can choose from a variety of consultation options for your company.

Know your strengths to figure out where you can be of help. It's also worth knowing any missing skills you may have so that you can work on filling those gaps. Also, know that you might need special certifications or licenses before becoming a consultant depending on your area of expertise. For instance, if you're into fundraising consultancy services, it helps to have a certification from the National Society of Fund Raising Executives.

Step 2: Know exactly what your market needs

Consider what types of queries, challenges, and pain points businesses in your chosen area of expertise have once you've decided on a niche. It's not enough to have a solid skill set and a broad understanding of your field. You'll be treading water if organizations don't have problems that your consulting services can fix. The best way to know what your market wants and needs is to ask questions. Start by searching for all blogs in your niche.

What are the thought leaders writing about? You can also use your network to uncover pain areas in your niche. If you want to create a digital marketing consulting firm, for example, who do you know that owns a business, works directly with digital marketers, or is a digital marketer themselves? You probably know a lot of people. Try to Find out about the challenges they face in meeting their short and long-term goals. Then figure out how you and your consultancy services can be of help.

Step 3: Ride the organic marketing train

As an independent consultant, It will be your responsibility to expand your customer base and ensure that business comes in constantly. This is best accomplished through marketing, although organic promotion is usually the best. Hopkins began her business by posting a job on Upwork, a freelancer website. A few years ago the freelancer site (www.upwork.com), was less well-known, Hopkins claims that she had more lucrative contracts. Hopkins claims that her first client is still with her today, and she no longer needs to promote.

Organic marketing offers two benefits to business owners. The first is that business owners know each other and can make referrals for you. So if you work well for someone, you'll probably work well with one of their friends. The second upside of organic marketing is the cost.

Step 4: Invest in your trade's tools.

Hopkins created her company using trade-specific technology that allowed her to keep in touch with clients, potential workers, and her assistant. MightyRecruiter, ZipRecruiter, and LinkedIn are just a few examples.

• MightyRecruiter costs $300 per month

• RecruiterLite on LinkedIn costs $150

• ZipRecruiter costs $1,000 per year

Overall. You can also use video conferencing software, at about $200 per year, to make a better connection with clients.

Step 5: Staff your organization wisely

You might need (or want) staff to help you depending on the amount of work you do. Working continuously seven days a week for 12 hours a day is not always a viable option. Hopkins, for one, sees no benefit in taking on more work than she can do at her current level. You can hire an on-demand assistant who lives overseas and handles the dirty work of consulting on a part-time basis.

You can work with the customer to put together the spec [Job description], and he can go out and find the résumés, people, and LinkedIn profiles, which is the difficult part, and you can outsource those hours to him. They might obviously have their own business and have a B2-B relationship. Some months they log 50 hours to you, and some, they log none. Make sure you communicate with your assistant very well. You can otherwise hire an intern or two from your old graduate school to help with sourcing.

Step 6: Rehearse your elevator pitch

There's no need to have an impressive skill set, a rock-solid marketing plan, and the most up-to-date tools if you can't seal a sale. Your elevator pitch is the first step in persuading potential clients to hire you as a consultant. Your elevator pitch should be a succinct and to-the-point description of your crowd's issue, the solutions you offer, and why and how you are different from the competition.

Although you might be very passionate about your services and the industry problems you see, it's very important to keep your pitch to around three sentences maximum. Another way of looking at your elevator pitch is your value proposition. Once you've delivered your value proposition and a potential customer has expressed interest in learning more, you may explain your narrative and go into greater detail about your consulting services.

Step 7: Compose proposals for clients.

Mostly, the final step in bringing on a new client is writing a client proposal. This should happen right before the client signs on, effectively closing your sale. Proposals are a crucial aspect of gaining work for your consulting firm. Client proposals provide you the opportunity to describe how you can best assist your client and solve their problem.

It is necessary to be very clear about what the project is, why you want to lend your consulting services, as well as when you'll be able to finish the assignment. It's also crucial to be clear about all of the project's elements, such as deliverables, budget, and how you'll measure success. Be very direct, persuasive, and personal with the client.

Step 8: Set your Service pricing

Alongside your proposal, you should include a price. It may not be easy to know how to price your services when starting consulting. You can take your HR manager's salary and turn it into an hourly rate. For a consultant, that's undercharging. And later charge double that hourly rate. When it's time to move on from the starting converted hourly rate—because as an independent, you're taking on more risk and should be paid more than an in-house employee.

You can create a cost/benefit analysis for each of your [current] clients to show them how much money they saved over working with a typical recruiter or a different independent consultant. From there, tell them your rates are going up by 25%, and show them the math. Now you have only pitched clients at the new rate, and no one will say you're overpriced.

Step 9: Stay organized and deliver results

Once your consulting services are on track, be sure to stay organized and deliver results to get repeat clients and referrals. It's critical to stay organized so that you don't lose essential information, miss deadlines, or fail to remind clients to pay you. Begin by identifying which processes you can automate. Maybe you can get paid electronically and switch to an online bookkeeping system like QuickBooks. Software such as Infusion soft can help you manage your clients. Hire a virtual assistant if everything else fails.

Delivering results is sometimes hard to advise on but very important to the vitality of your consulting services. Staying up to date with the industry trends, continuously checking upon clients to ensure you're delivering the outcomes they want and helping their businesses reach their goals. Your consulting services will be successful if you successfully assist your clients in achieving their objectives.

Surveyed Review on working remotely

Due to necessity, innovation, or opportunity, you may want to start a remote business. One out of five entrepreneurs said they started a business during the pandemic and didn't even consider it before COVID-19. Remote businesses usually don't have a physical office or headquarters. Employees work from home, in coffee shops, in co-working spaces, and anywhere in the world; all they need is a laptop, smartphone, and an internet connection.

All in-person meetings and cubicles are replaced with video calls and home offices in a fully remote business. Remote business brings a lot of benefits like efficiency, competitive advantage, and business continuity, which has the advantageous ability to maintain core business functions during and after a disaster or major disruption. Most companies in traditionally offline industries have been successfully operating online in the past several months and even before COVID-19.

Friendly Conclusion

Whether your consulting firm is large or little, brick-and-mortar or online-only, pricey or inexpensive, the bottom line is that you must have the skills, resources, and confidence to assist other business owners in getting back on track. Keeping track of workflow and expectations is the focus of everything else.