Pier 3 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.)

Perhaps you are feeling that this article is more about identifying the 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 problems may be found are useful.

But, beyond that, the point is, there can hardly be a short answer even for a starting point. But what there brilliantly is, almost overwhelming in quantity and quality, is the internet, It has grown into something that is absolutely matchless for this kind of thing. But most consultants don’t know how they should tap into the internet to grow a prospect list and generate 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.

They all have search engines that will enable you to particularise the 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 creating a thriving consultancy business which also operates as a dynamic client generating marketing machine. With the right strategy and knowledge, it is not difficult to generate a long pipeline of high paying clients. The challenge is in knowing where to get such stategies and knowledge.

A lot of new independent consultants try to sell before they market to prospective clients and this is a big mistake which can end any chance they previously had on turning prospects into clients. There is a significant difference between selling and marketin, and every independent consultant should be aware of that.