A key activity for independent consultants and contractors is to package their services in such a way that prospective clients find it easy to buy from them. A great way to do this is to turn your services into a product as clients often find it easier to buy a product than a consultancy service. It overcomes two potentially fatal objections – “we don’t use consultants” and “we don’t have a budget for consultants.”
This article will show you how to package your services to create a consultancy product that sells.
1. First make a list of the ten steps you carry out when you deliver your consultancy service. It doesn’t necessarily have to be ten but trying for ten makes sure you drive out all the key steps. For example, for one of my service products I have five key steps but they cover all of the phases in the service I offer.
2. Next, write down ten things you do to complete each step. Again, it isn’t always necessary to have ten… just make sure you have covered all of the essentials.
3. Now create a process for the ten steps in each of the ten activities and write a manual on how to do them. This is your blueprint for carrying out your service.
4. Give your blueprint a catchy name. The five step blueprint I mentioned earlier is called DISCO as the five steps are Discovery, Insight, Strategy, Construct and Optimise. These are the key phases for delivering a Procurement Category Management service. Clients find it easier to justify buying the DISCO process and its implementation than they do spending the equivalent amount on consultancy, even though the end result is the same.
5. Finally, price the product in a way that your services look a bargain. One way to do this is to charge a license fee for the product and an additional implementation fee. A prospective client will benchmark your day rate for the implementation but will have no equivalent to test your license fee. If you have pitched your implementation day rate reasonably then the prospect will see the package as being value for money – the upside is that your effective day rate from the combination of license and implementation is much higher.
Follow these simple guidelines and you will have an effective consultancy service that prospective clients will see as having value to them.
As we look out across the fruited plain and blogosphere, we see careerists in sales. Perhaps not the traditional sales role that your are thinking of but the truth is we all sell something, everyday. We sell ideas, knowledge, experience, and even personalities. But you are no used car salesman, right? You are something much more complicated and deeper…You, are a consultant (should you choose to be).
So here is the question: In today’s professional environment, aren’t we really internal consultants for our organization? Undoubtedly, the job market and structural forces have changed significantly from what our parents and grandparents witnessed. And thus, our answer: Yes, we are internal consultants. However, it goes way beyond the concept of promoting ideas, knowledge, experience, personality, etc. Consultant leadership is a mentality and a distinct adversary to employee leadership. The bottom line is that when you begin to think like a consultant, it changes everything! Everything in that leadership becomes much more challenging, harder, but also more rewarding and fulfilling. So as we dive deeper, the next question arises: What do Consultant Leaders do that Employee Leaders don’t? We can start to answer this by considering the following 3 steps to Consultant Leadership:
Embrace Problems Solving
Here is a tenant of life that professionals must reflect on and resolve within their own hearts and minds. Problems employ you! Problems are the demand for our product. Start with the mindset that problems are infinite and they are the lifeblood source for your existence in the working world. Employees disdain problems. Consultants embrace them.
Think Critically
If there ever is a time to differentiate through your abilities, the time is now. And this is where critical thinking comes in. As a professional and college graduate (or soon to be), critical thinking is what distinguishes you from technology and other “employees”. Prepare yourself to ask the question “Why”. And then prepare to channel your inner scientist as you will need to perform “What If?” experiments. Employees assume and propagate status quo. Consultants aggressively question.
Take Risks
Life is full of risks. Careers are full of risks. The key here is that you avoid the hunker down approach, often assumed by employees. All too often, fear paralyzes the employee leader to the point where zero risk is taken. Avoid this approach! Rather, seek to take appropriate and measured risks when the opportunity presents. How do you know when to assume risk? Keep it simple and do the right thing, for the right reasons, at the right time. Employees hunker down. Consultants put it on the line when needed.
Every business may need the services of outsourcing companies offering specialized services in a particular field. Communication is a very important aid to business activities and helps people achieve the objective of their business transactions. At one time or the other, a business may need the services of a telecom consulting agency that offers specific services for it. The choice of company to consult varies depending on several factors.
Among the factors determining the choice made is the length of time a particular company has been in business. The longer the time it has been in operation, the more the experience it has gained on the job and therefore the better the services it offers. It is able to satisfy the needs of most of its clients.
The field of telecommunication is wide and has many specializations. It is important to consider the specialization of each company before deciding to acquire its services. The best way to determine the specialization is to examine the qualifications of its employees and the past clients it has had.
The size also matters. During the past years, there was crisis in the industry and several companies had to lay off some of their employees. Many of them set up sole proprietorship where they offered services. It is better to go for the services of a more established service provider than a sole proprietorship.
The feedback from the previous clients also plays a major role in determining the choices made. It is important that a business choose the services of a company with a history of fulfilling the needs of its clients. This raises the chances that it will meet the needs of current clients.
The charges also matter. Though clients have to be ready to spend a substantial amount of money on services of a professional, it is not good to overcharge them. The current industry conditions should be among the determinants of prices charged.
There are many reasons why companies need the services of these consultants. Among these is the need to analyze whether they need the services of a telecom management company. This needs an expert in the field to examine the needs of a company.
The professional can also brief the staff of the best practices to carry out in order to reduce the costs of telecommunications needs. If the company hired a team of employees to do this, they would cost more and spend too much time before they are able to educate the others. Generally, consultants are cheaper than large firms are.
To offer these services, an individual needs to have undergone years of training in how the systems work. He or she also needs to have the necessary working experience to be able to work best in the field. These factors should be verifiable with the necessary documents.
Finding a telecom consulting firm is easy with the widespread access to the internet. A company may research online about these companies and decide which one to hire. The factors described above should be a guide in the selection process.
If you are an owner of a website and wish to gain success in your business venture with the help of the website, then you need to find out some expert SEO consulting services right away. The consultant services can help you in your optimization process so that you can prosper in your business plan and gain top search engine ranking to increase your online visibility. They revise your planning and strategies and offer helpful suggestions or advise regarding your SEO. The specialist takes pride in having the necessary expertise and knowledge about your business requirement and SEO development, needed for the relevant website. It is their methodical understanding and attention to minute details that make every company hire expert SEO consultants.
Reasons Behind Hiring Specialist SEO Consulting Services
It is always advisable to hire SEO expert and assign the responsibility of local SEO services to professional SEO consultants as they know the tricks of SEO and other related services. There are plenty of reasons behind the need of hiring a specialist SEO Consultancy Services.
Whenever you hire SEO expert to give your website a professional outlook, there is always a chance of saving your precious time, money and effort. By relying upon a good SEO consulting service, you can make a great profit out of your business. They will optimize your website to such an extent that not only you will get good number of visitors to your site but would get good weightage. However, when you hire some low level SEO services for your business website, there is always a chance of losing. Mind you it can always be a risky affair for you to hire a wrong service provider which can bring an end to your business success. On top of that, if the service provider sticks on Black Hat SEO techniques to optimize the website, then there remains a possibility of getting penalized for adopting the wrong way. Although, such optimization techniques give you a quick success at the initial stage, but at the later stage it can prove harmful to your website.
However, if you take the assistance of SEO specialist for your business website, there is always a chance of reaping good profit. The SEO consulting service doesn’t follow any unfair approach and take good care of every necessary detail to suggest you the right step and make your website secure and safe. The criterion covered by the service providers include keyword selections, link building services, on-page SEO, content optimization PPC campaign and more. The On-Page search engine optimization service deals with usage of keywords and tags which are mostly used in search engines. On the other hand, the link building services focus on highest number of hits and visibility on the website. The expert consulting firm uses normal link building method as a confirmation that your website gains good ratings and maximum number of visitors to the website.
So, considering the importance of SEO in this online marketing realm, it is very essential for a person to find the best SEO consulting services for his/her website.