How to grow my consultancy business: Guide for beginners

So many of us dream of leaving our jobs to start our own gig. It sounds fascinating and gives you that kick inside the heart. Many of us are luckier to give it a chance and start our own consultancy. First feeling we have about doing our own is be your own boss. That feeling is the cause of all problems you will be going to face in your consultancy start up. You are not your own boss. You are the property dealer, interior designer, accountant, finance executive, plumber, and electrician and if you can pay for all of them then you are the person to find them and then get the tasks done.

In managing all these tasks you forget the actual work you were supposed to do apart from sales till you develop a team for the same. Ehh I guess job was better than this. You need not to worry we are here to help you. (Don’t worry we are not selling any start up product here. It is guidance and it’s absolutely free)

First of all let us clean your brain filled with myths related to starting and running your own consultancy.

Myth 1: As I told you earlier you are not your own boss but now you have to take care of every role until you hire them. Yes, You hire them , this hiring would be an another challenge.

Myth 2: If I Survive for 1 year I will be stable in future: As per the great start up mentor Michal E garber most of start up close down in very first year and most of the remaining in next five years. Even I have seen so many people to go back to job after struggling for so many years.

Myth3: My life will be more comfortable and I will be the decision maker: If you are starting your own consultancy to have a better life and comfort then you are doing a big mistake. Your life will be completely indiscipline and 25*8 working now and the worst thing is you won’t get any paycheck at the end of month.

Myth 4: This was something I was made for: How to check it. Starting a new business is a risk and if your risk taking capacity is good you may be made for this thing. If losses and failure broke you and you lose self-esteem and regret for your decision. You are definitely not made for this.

I don’t want to scare you anymore but I want to be honest with you. Stop reading those success stories and fantasizing a great success for your consultancy. I want to make you realise the ground reality. It’s not a hollywood movie here you will have to suffer every stress and pain need to get that success. We would like to guide you to make your strong enough to sail every bad day to reach that best day. After so many bad days there will be a best day.

Let us start with our tips. Anytime you feel like giving up do read here. We hope it will fill you with real hope.

1. How to get the work done and things happen: Learn to do every task whether you like it or not you need to have a basic knowledge to get the work done from employees also. Unless you will have a clear vision of what they are supposed to do and how they can do it most conveniently they won’t be able to perform.
2. Sales strategy: Sales is not USP of any consultant as we are never taught how to make sale. But to survive in your business most important thing you will need is sales. If sales are there everything else will be easier because you will be able to pay for things and services. If you are unable to bring some sales you won’t be able to survive at all no matter how good you are at work.
3. Personal brandingis something very important. In consultancy you are selling yourself, your knowledge, your expertise and ability to serve clients when they need you. You will have to maintain that repute and update and upgrade yourself for all latest things in your area.
4. Sales and branding materials: Visiting cards, brochures, and presentation explaining about your work profile, team and the level of clients you handled is very important. Most of the consultants lack in these designing skills and to use the best of the keywords in their sales materials. Work on it. Search for the best keywords used in elite class of clients for the tasks you do and use them in every sales material you use to pitch them.
5. Sales Pitch:As we told you earlier you need to get expertise on sales. If you can recall most of the companies using sales people develop a sales pitch for their products and services. You also need to do that. Develop a sales pitch of 100-150 words and try to insert most of the strong factors about your services as early as you can. A good sales pitch can have like what are the basic tasks you are handling, your and team’s experience in handling those tasks with name of one or two reputed clients and some examples on how you were able to manage even the worst of situations for the clients. Next thing will be how organised your team is and why you are better from others. Things should be real and based on practical experience. Any kind of copied content will destroy your image.
6. Handling a disappointment: In starting of work you have so many leads and they will eat up a lot of your time and may be end up in nothing. You will have to learn to handle that disappointment. This is general nature of clients they will try to get most of the work for least price. You need to learn how to convince them but it will take time and experience. Give it some time and lot of efforts.
7. Keep your expanses limited: Always remember you are not in job anymore. There will be no pay check at the end of month to pay all your credit card bills. Never count on clients for payment. You will have to maintain cash and you will have to learn to make budget because clients may drag their payments for months. You will have to do consistent follow up but still you can’t be rude. Especially in India clients don’t feel like to pay as soon as services are delivered. They will give you excuses like they payment is dragged, bank holiday, non-availability to sign a check. Be ready for all of these delays and maintain working capital to pay meanwhile.
8. Quality: Make it a habit to maintain high quality for work you deliver and every time you do a new task record it and create some template so that next time it will take less of time and efforts.
9. Reasonable pricing: We have seen most of the consultants charge very low price and then they never ask for advance. You are selling a service and not a product. Once delivered you won’t be able to take it back so develop a habit to ask for advance and charge reasonable. Stop doing work for nuts even if you are sitting idle. Once you will do it for less every time you will be expected to do the same.

Hope these tips will help you in future. Good luck and write us for any bad day at work at shaifaly@consultease.com