For beginning consultants
Q. How much can I charge?
A. There are 4different ways to calculate how much
to charge. You can charge what the client offers, you can charge
the market rate, you can charge what you can afford to charge, or
you can charge according to the value your work offers the client.
Download the magic
charge-out formula spreadsheet (described in Freetools)
to calculate what you can afford to charge. Talk to clients and
colleagues about what they charge and read chapter 6 of the Australian
Consultant's Guide for more details on how and what to charge.
Q. How do I bill people, and how often?
A. You can bill the client as often as you like. The
more frequently the better. Remember to put your billing conditions
in any proposal or contract you have with them.
You can bill based on work completed, or on elapsed
time. Whenever you can, ask for payment up front (eg 50% up front
and weekly invoices till completion).
If you need an example, download our sample
invoice.
Q. How do I find work as a consultant?
A. The short answer is to tell people what you do,
and how you can help them. The long answer includes 23 different
ways to market yourself without cold calling. Thirteen of these
are outlined in chapters 7 to 10 of The Australian
Consultant's Guide. Then
Ten more ways to promote your
consulting business gives you the other 10. Both of these
books are available from this site. You can also read the chapters
on building availability and affability in Consulting
Mastery also available from this web site. Finding work
could involve networking, cold calling, talking to colleagues and
previous employers about whether they need help, answering tenders,
finding agents, working with other consultants, getting advice and
references, checking thepapers, writing articles, running seminars,
going to courses… there are hundreds of ways to get business. The
short answer, though, is letting people know you're in business,
and what you do.
Q. Do I have to work for a big consultancy to be a consultant on my own later?
A. Not at all. There are no rules for what you have to know, do or be to become a consultant. In fact some of the "issues" that people in general have about consultants arise from this fact.
It's essential to have some expertise, but you don't
have to have worked for a consultancy to be a consultant. In fact
sometimes it's useful to bring your own ethics, customer service
paradigm and professionalism, rather than trying to imitate another
consulting firm's way of doing business.
Having worked for a consultancy can help, on the other
hand, because it exposes you to managing projects and billing clients.
It also gives you a network of colleagues and a clearer idea of
what you can charge clients.
Q. Do I have to be expert in something to be a consultant?
A. I was talking to a very intelligent senior sales executive just last week, and she said she had no idea why people even used consultants. Her tone was contemptuous and dismissive, and she clearly thought that a client who used consultants was stupid. I explained to her that there were a few reasons why a client would use a consultant - only one of them was to get advice on something they didn't know about. There is also the "pair of hands" consultant - where the client knows what to do but doesn't have the resources to do it right now. Then there's the "external perspective" reason for getting a consultant - even though the client knows the solution is there, they may need someone from outside to prove it to them, or to point out what was right under their nose in the first place.
So that said, you can get consulting work knowing very little, as long as you can do what the client is paying you to do, and do it well. It's essential to have some expertise, but it's not necessary to be an expert. Expertise builds. Start out as the photocopying and binding consultant, and you may end up a printing expert. Begin as the person who mows lawns, and complete your career as an expert in hedges and ground-cover. We all have to start somewhere, and as long as you don't oversell your expertise, you can be a consultant too.
Q. How do I get into consultancy?
A. Getting into consultancy can be as simple as printing a few business cards with the word "Consultant" after your name. If you have skills and expertise to sell to clients, you can work as a consultant with little else.
Of course, the longer you're a consultant the more you'll know - you may begin as a learner, and through strength of having done many projects of similar type, you become an expert in that type of work.
The real test of being a consultant though is your
track record. Repeat business is a sure sign that you're doing a
good job as a consultant. Then you'll know you're a real consultant.
The Australian Consultant's Guide
is designed for you to browse and read the stories of what other
people have done to start and build their business. You can just
read the true stories of what to do (and what not to do), and you
can also use the checklists and lists of questions to ask people
around you to get into consultancy. You can buy The
Australian Consultant's Guide on this web site.
Q. What sort of consultants are there?
A. In my definition, a consultant is anyone who sells
their services and expertise. I have encountered consultants in
plumbing, image, architecture, law, management, medicine, human
resources, education, finance, weddings, and even parenting.
If you can package your service so people want to buy it, and then you sell it, you're a consultant.
Q. Why do you say consulting is different from just doing a job?
A. Consulting by its very nature responds to customer demands. This means consultants will often have no weekends, because there's a crunch on, or because there's an excellent networking opportunity at a client function held over the weekend, or because, in fact they're working on a proposal for the next client.
Consulting is different from a job because very few consultants can have a 9 to 5 mentality. Even if their office is separate from their home they can spend hours there at all times of the day or night, responding to a client request, or anticipating one.
It's different because the flipside to all that is that consultants can afford occasionally to go shopping in the middle of a working week, in the middle of a working day. Or they can take off Wednesday afternoon for golf, or take a month at Christmas time to work on their favourite hobby. There's more freedom with consulting.
Most importantly, consulting can be better paid, but more erratic in payment than a job - it's not always the case that the money is in the bank at the end of each fortnight to pay the consultant.
For a full discussion of the pros and cons of consulting,
refer to chapter 1 of the Australian
Consultant's Guide.
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