Offering Consulting Services
Choosing what consulting services to offer can seem difficult when you are first starting out as a consultant. Many of us have a lot of skills after working in our particular industry over the years and want to offer them all. But the easiest way to get started consulting is to find your niche.When offering consulting services when you first start you want to offer everything like I tried to do. The problem is that when you offer everything (management, strategic, infrastructure) your skills get diluted, which kills you when you are just trying to stay a float as a new independent consultant.
Ideally you want to start planning your move as an independent consultant several months before you do start. During that time analyze what skills you are particularly good at, or pick skills that you want to become good at and develop them over the next few months.
If you are like me, in your industry there are some large consulting firms you will be competing with. The goal here is to not compete with them at all. You can do this by offering unique services, specialty services the the larger firms overlook, or simple are not very good at.
It is much easier to be known as an expert in a small area than a large area. For example you could strive to be known as the consultant who knows where to get the best deals on aluminum, or on the best companies in India to outsource to.
Now by limiting your consulting services you may think you will be limiting your income. This is not true at the beginning. Your goal your first 6 months is to simply get ONE consultant job.
It is much easier marketing and getting the word out when you offer only one service. If you are only one person and offer mulptiple services, it is hard for people to believe that you are an expert in all those fields.
So start today and think about what consulting services you would like to offer. Once you have your practice off and running, then and only then, add more services to your portfolio.
