Pier 5 Condo

Some independent consultants developing their marketing strategies will say “I’ll be OK, I have many good friends in the industry”. This is not the red-carpet path it may seem to be. The trouble with ‘friends’ who may be sharks as far as their business etiquette is concerned, is that they can sometimes want to use you as a consultant on a “friendship” basis, meaning double the work for half the price, with the payment of fees sometimes getting set aside altogether.

In most circumstances, for most people, the search for “how to get clients” will likely be endless, even if the consultancy is fundamentally “a success story”. An attempt was being made to headhunt a very-highly-qualified business psychologist as a new very senior member of staff in a very successful change-management/training-management consultancy working in a very intense commercial environment and with more business than it could handle. “Will I just be dealing with client programmes,” she asked. “No, we will expect you to spend about 40 percent of your time on marketing finding new clients.” (She didn’t join the consultancy. She didn’t think that being a sales rep would be the way she would want to spend 40 percent of her working life.)

You may, by this time, be feeling that this article? is more about identifying the (pooh traps) (problems) there are likely to be in finding clients, rather than positive guidance on “how to find clients”. However, it does stand to be said that advice on where the pooh traps may be found ought to be useful as far as it goes.

There is no short answer to “where do consultants find clients?” But what there is, almost overwhelming in quality and quantity, is the internet, It has grown into something that is a goldmine for many consultants who know how to mine it properly. The trouble with most consultants is that they do not know how to mine gold and generate hundreds of prospects and a consistent supply of clients.

If you search Google for “How to get clients for an independent consultancy” it lists well over 400,000,000 sites. Serch it for “Books on How to get clients for an independent consultancy” and it lists over 2,000,000 million sites.

The likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN have search engines that will enable you to customise your search more narrowly for the field of consultancy you are working in, or intend to be working in.

But far beyond this, there is much more to forming an independent consulting business which is capable of generating a pipeline of regular clients. With the correct strategy and knowledge, it is not very difficult to create such a pipeline, but it has been difficult until now, to know where to get such stategies and knowledge.

Many independent consultants try to sell before they market to prospective clients and this can be fatal, thus sealing the lid on any chance they previously had on establishing that prospect as a new client. There is a huge difference between marketing and selling, and the sooner independent consultants learn that – the faster their bank balances will grow.