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Posts Tagged ‘consultancy’

The challenge of getting more clients is something that every consultant should take very seriously indeed. It would be unwise for any independent consultant to think that this is something that can be left until later.

But there can hardly be a short answer even for a starting point. Ask the internet search engine Google for “Independent Consultants” and it lists 232,000,000 websites. Both Yahoo and Alta Vista list 133,000,000 sites when asked the same question. It is inescapable that many of all these millions, if not most, will have settled for different approaches to the “how-do-I-get-my-clients?” question.

Some elements of some solutions will suit some peoples’ circumstances and intentions (and geographical location); some quite-different elements of quite-different solutions will be the right way to go for others. (But it does have to be said that many good business plans are likely to have many things in common.)

Illustrative of how things can be different will be even the basic matter of where you live - or intend to live. If you have it in mind to become a business consultant of some kind and you live in, or within easy reach of, a busy, modern, major commercial centre, it is likely that you will have a big, well-stocked river to fish in and can formulate a client-acquisition plan accordingly.

If all your experience and enthusiasm lead you towards a consultancy in office layout, and you live in a remote area of the countryside with no commercial offices in sight, then you perhaps need to adopt a very different approach. You might also consider adding ‘moving home’ to your business-plan. After all, you are perhaps looking at a completely new future for yourself and your family.

“How many clients will I need?” is another question that has to be asked. And the matter of whether you want them to be long-term, low-turn-over clients, or to have a regularly-changing turn-over of the people you work with is another.

Most experienced independent consultants, of whatever kind, will tend towards the view that you need five or six, seven or eight clients on your books at any one time, if that is possible. Then if you lose a client (for whatever reason - they can go out of business, or can have a boardroom revolution) you can hope you still will have enough fee income from “the rest” to enable you to keep paying your bills and not have sleepless nights.

So why not have 10, 15 or 20 clients? Many consultants do (coaches for example) - but basically it depends on the nature of the consultancy business in question. As the client-consultant relationship grows, it is likely that the client will ask for more work to be done and the consultant’s workload can grow as a result. Every client will expect to be treated as your number one priority and while having a full schedule of paying clients may be a nice-to-have, when it turns into a situation where your own personal bandwidth is exceeded, you could find yourself in a tight situation.

Working very long hours can be almost the least of your problems. It is likely to be a conflict of priorities that become the nightmare to resolve. Two top-tier clients wanting you to be with them over the same weekend. It does happen!