Has your business used consultants? Or do you run a consultancy?

[Formless]

I have an idea that I'd like to analyse the demand for a little bit.

Does anyone here run a consultancy that helps small to medium enterprises with absolutely anything? If so, please post something in the thread so that I can PM you with a question. I will not ask the specifics of your business or anything else that would enable me to compete with you/steal from you.

if you run a business and you have used a consultancy/other firm before to help with any aspect of your own business, please let me know so that I can PM you some questions too. Same rules apply, I will not ask anything that would enable me to compete with you/steal from you.

Thank you in advance guys and gals.

 

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[Mr.B]

Feel free to PM me, although I'd recommend just posting the questions in this thread as the public discussion would probably help others as well.

 

[Formless]

Yeah, you're right. I'll post the questions here, in the spirit of 'ideas are worthless, execution matters.'

The questions are, for both those who use such services and those who provide them.

1) Can you describe to me the process of finding the consultancy/consultee?
2) Which of the steps would you say are the most time-consuming/expensive/difficult.

 

[Mr.B]

1) Can you describe to me the process of finding the consultancy/consultee?

It's really no different to finding any other service provider or clients. (Advertising, word of mouth etc.)

90% of my clients are referred to me by people I've helped in the past. It's all about the value that you provide.

2) Which of the steps would you say are the most time-consuming/expensive/difficult.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean as this varies a lot across industries. As a general answer, a time-consuming aspect of my business used to be finding and converting new clients - so I've structured things in such a way that I don't really have to do this much anymore.

Instead, I focus on developing ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships with my clients which not only cuts down on the need to find new ones in the first place, but also makes it a lot more likely that they will refer others to me. If you are looking at ways to encourage referrals, I recommend listening to this conversation with Steli Efti from Close.io

 

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[LibertyForMe]

I'd say the most difficult thing is making sure that the consulting company actually knows what they are doing.

I've found lots of consultants who are really unprepared and are more or less english speaking middlemen for overseas developers that they farm all their work out to. Making sure the consultant actually has real world experience and can do more than just talk the talk is hard and important.

 

[OscarDeuce]

New guy here and my first post, but this is a relevant topic. I have run a small consulting business for the past 8 years or so. I'm basically a sole practitioner with a few support staff. Not sure this will be helpful, but so far, all of my business has come through word of mouth. In fact, I only threw up a website a few years ago when I got the misguided notion to try and scale by hiring additional consultants and assuming more of a sales role. Unfortunately, the new hires couldn't deliver and I ended up working 100+ hours a week.

The word of mouth thing probably works for me due to the unique nature of my clients. Many times, they are the head of a consortium of companies. If I do a good job for the client, other members of the consortium will typically become future clients. So, your mileage may vary. It's not that I didn't create an extensive marketing plan when I started my business, it's just that I never needed to implement it. Anyway, I doubt this helps but if you have additional questions, let me know.

Best,
O-2

 

[Get Right]

1) Can you describe to me the process of finding the consultancy/consultee?
2) Which of the steps would you say are the most time-consuming/expensive/difficult.

1. Personal relationships followed by referrals
2. There really isn't a pain point with this (for me)

 

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[CPisHere]

I've used a retail consultant in the past. Fired them after about 6 months. They were really just somebody to talk shop to - which is great, but not worth a consulting fee. It was a referral from another retailer.

I actually tried researching for a consultant on something recently - can't remember what, and found it incredibly difficult. I actually thought about a business to help match people to consultants but then I realized there are massive issues with that. Not to say they can't be solved, just that I didn't feel like solving them.

 

[Nadia]

Run a consultancy, let me know

 

[Formless]

I actually thought about a business to help match people to consultants .

Bingo.

 

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[theag]

Most consultants are useless and clueless.
With that said, my day job (its my dad's company) currently is online performance marketing (adwords + facebook ads) for clients, which kinda is consulting.

Clients come to us through our own ads, I just tell them some stuff we can do for them on the phone, they either like it or not (most do) because I dont want to "sell" them and they sign a contract and we begin work. So no pain points there.

Biggest pain point is that a lot of our clients are clueless and a pain in the a$$ to work with and many of their businesses just suck (think "me-too e-commerce").

Which is why I'm working every single free waking hour of the day on my own scalable product-based business.

Some are cool though and you learn a bunch from others mistakes.

 

[Formless]

This is really insightful stuff, I love this forum.

Here's another question, for those who have hired consultants.

Are there any accreditations that you look for and trust when hiring consultants? I'm assuming that it's pretty necessary when hiring lawyers or accountants, but is there any kind of 'standard' that exists for say 'web design consultants' that you, as a person needing a job, would trust? Or would you say that the only thing you trust is the quality of previous work/word of mouth.

I spoke to a guy who has done consulting work and he also said that most will:

1) Advertise themselves as the best in the world.
2) Be average or worse in their abilities.

 

[Get Right]

only thing you trust is the quality of previous work/word of mouth.

this

 

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[OscarDeuce]

Most consultant certifications/accreditation are designed to make money for the entity that does the certifying. In my field, there is one association offering certification today. I know most of the movers and shakers in that organization and lets just say, yea, they can devote their time to the association because they don't have much paying work! They're not people I would hire for my practice or recommend to others. Unfortunately, they are perceived as the "experts" by outsiders and as a result, most newbies entering the field need to pay their fees and sit through their courses. A competing organization, of which I used to be a board member, is trying to spin up something similar. I opposed it, which is one reason I'm no longer on the board! (the other reason is I was generally too busy working with clients).

The bottom line is, consulting services should be goal oriented. If you hire a consultant, you should do so to achieve a specific result in a specific time-frame. Look for a consultant who has a solid track record of achieving measurable results, not useless certifications. A top tier consultant should be able to provide client references to validate their effectiveness. Don't fall into the trap of thinking someone is competent because they have a string of letters after their name.

Cheers,
"We don't need no stinking certifications" O-2

 

[Formless]

Thanks. That's really helpful. I've brainstormed trying to create some sort of accreditation process that's actually legit, but so far from your feedback, and the feedback of other consultants I called, the PERCEPTION of accreditations/certificates is unfavorable.

Great brain-food. I could offer a guarantee that the consultants I link up with businesses are legit, or I eat the cost. It's a very difficult idea, and might not be viable, but difficult is good.

 

[OscarDeuce]

Since the whole concept of this forum is to support the making of money, I don't want to discourage you from the basic idea of matching consultants to clients and clients to consultants. If you are only doing so within a narrow niche, then you could perhaps create some sort of accreditation. The two problems I see with that are 1) if you define your niche too narrowly, your business simply devolves to a consultancy itself (e.g. your in effect selling web developers, lets say, to clients needing websites). Your business model may be different from a consulting practice internally, but from the outside, it will be hard for the consumer of consulting services to tell the difference. Not that a consulting practice is a bad business model, but I just don't think from the previous posts in this thread that is your intent. Problem 2) is that, i see the appeal of your business model, as I understand it from the necessarily cryptic discussion thus far, to be to offer a broad range of consultant specialties to a wide spectrum of clients. Here, the issue becomes how do you develop meaningful accreditation criteria and standards for a broad range of disciplines?

Looking at this from the perspective of a successful consultant, I'd take the approach of only representing the best consultants, as measured by past performance, in their respective field rather than sign up anyone with a pulse. That way, you become known for the quality of your product, and therefore being associated with your business becomes its own accreditation. In other words, your target client base know Formless only represents the best.

As a successful consultant, I need to jump on a client project now (not really Fastlane is it - takes a lot of my time, which is why I joined! But that's a different discussion for another day).

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
O-2

 

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