Consultancy: identifying what you offer

By JoyLynn Reed

This article is part of a two-part series on learning how to be a consultant.

Being a consultant demands a number of skills and characteristics. To really enjoy consulting, you’ll need to find a niche where you feel at home and can use your own experiences to their best advantage. The first thing to do is figure out your own niche and your own collection of abilities. Some of the essential skills and characteristics of first-class consultants appear below.

Essential skills of first-class consultants:
Marketing
Prospecting (searching for new clients)
Self-selling and promotion
Seeing the ‘big picture’ quickly
Assessing situations quickly
Diagnosing client needs
Translating and understanding beneath the surface
Writing proposals
Pricing
Dealing with business issues
Training
Running meetings
Strategic planning
Negotiating mutual expectations with clients
Knowing how to do research (qualitative and quantitative)
Effective problem-solving
Thinking ‘outside the box’

Essential traits of first-class consultants:
Ability to lead
Excellent communicator
Decision-maker
Competitive
Self-confident
Self-reliant
Likes to work long hours
Deals well with chaos
Disciplined
Financially astute
Risk-taker
Resilient
Planner
Strategic thinker

It all looks a bit overwhelming! But remember, the key is to see which traits and skills you have, which you are developing and which you need to learn. For example, you may be very good at researching but don’t have experience with costing and pricing, which is of great importance. Even though you don’t have experience, you can come up with a plan to get that experience. For example, to increase your experience and understanding of pricing you can:
Talk with consultants or with clients who typically hire consultants to perform a given service. Ask consultants how much they charge for X; ask clients how much they would expect to pay for X.
Telephone large consulting firms and ask what they charge for particular services to get an idea of what the big players are doing. Such firms include KPMG, McKinsey and Anderson Consulting.
Trial and error: Write proposals for your clients, and ask for feedback about proposals you don’t get.