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Mac*Chat
The Online Newsletter for Macintosh Professionals
Number 084 - August 3, 1995
Tips for consultants: How to get clients
by John Friedlander
Executive Director, Macintosh Consultants Network
If you want to catch fish, you go where the fish are. If the fish you're looking for need help with their computers, look for them in computer stores.
To be more accurate about it, retail computer stores are where you're likely to find individuals and small business clients. If you're looking for corporate clients, go where the corporate types hang out: computer sales operations with a corporate emphasis, industry seminars, workshops and conferences, business-related networking organizations and social gatherings of all types, civic groups with heavy-hitting boards of directors, etc.
Computer stores are populated by two basic types of people: people who have too little time to learn enough to appropriately configure and support the products they've been hired to sell, and people who have too little time to learn how to analyze their own computing needs and choose the appropriate solutions. Usually, the sales reps don't have enough knowledge to properly prescribe solutions, and customers don't know what to ask for or how to ask for it, and end up taking home the wrong tools for their job. As a consultant, your job is to get in the middle of this equation somehow and add information (for a fee) so that both buyer and seller benefit.
As well positioned, but overworked, generally underpaid pawns under the (generally remote) control of management, sales reps are good people for new consultants to get to know. Smart sales reps are always looking for ways to more easily handle the onslaught of ill-informed but demanding customers who have money to spend and too many demands to meet. You can help the sales rep by volunteering to help configure an appropriate solution for a prospective client with specific needs you have expertise in. If you can build a trusting relationship with an overworked sales rep (these people should not be hard to find...) you'll have many opportunities to meet prospective clients and impress them with how valuable you could be on an ongoing basis.
Sounds logical, and it is. Sounds easy, but it's not.
In reality, most sales reps don't want to give up anything to anyone they don't know. For some reason most sales reps and most consultants get along like sheep and wolves--although it's not always easy to tell which is which.
Assuming you really are really good in at least one area, the key to getting started is persistence and patience. Keep looking until you find a sales rep that understands the equation described above. Keep talking to people until you find someone who needs the skill you've got to sell.
Volunteer to do a job in your area of expertise for a local charity or civic group. Look for a group that will be willing to acknowledge its use of your services, or that has a board of directors which will learn of your efforts and is made up of people you'd like to work for.
Advertising is always appropriate when you want to sell something to someone who needs your service but doesn't know you yet. The key is to keep the advertising message and method consistent with the kind of service you're offering. As a professional service, consulting is most successfully advertised in manners consistent with other professional services: listings in publications read by members of your target market, tasteful, personalized direct mail, getting published as an authority on your particular topic, etc. (always insist that your phone number be included in your bio). Sales techniques that work for commodity goods, popular services or consumer items don't work very well for consulting. Skip the gaudy mass mailings, Yellow Pages ads, logoed tee-shirts and broadcast ads.
What do clients really want? What do consultants really do?
Prospective clients really want to know they can stop worrying about their computer problems. Whether this problem is a computer that is located in the wrong place, a monitor that has gone bad and needs to be fixed, a hand-written general ledger that is a pain in the neck to create and maintain and doesn't provide enough management information, or a sales force that needs computer support but doesn't think it can learn how to use the tools, successful consultants find ways to help clients stop worrying about their computer problems and get back to worrying about running their business.
Consultants do whatever they need to buy groceries! Whether this means moving a computer from point A to point B, arranging for a warranty repair of a failed product, configuring and customizing an off-the-shelf software package for a clients' specific needs, or training a sales force in how to use a new computer system, consultants need to keep their eyes and ears open to any opportunity to make some computer users' life easier.
And remember, you don't have to do everything yourself. Knowing when to get help is just as important as knowing how to solve problems yourself -- and just as valuable to a client.
I frequently tell prospective clients to consider me the custom shirt maker of the computer industry: we work together to get the clients' measurements, then I custom-fit the solution, hand-delivering it and replacing buttons as needed.
Other points:
If you don't know what area to specialize in, pick something you absolutely love to do and work it in to your plans. Remember, you have to eat, breathe, and sleep your specialty, so you might as well enjoy it. If you don't like dealing with people one-on-one or in groups, find a "people person" whose skills or dreams complement your own and work with that person. Consulting is a people-oriented business--technical skills are only half of the equation. Referrals don't generate themselves, you've got to work your network of contacts, and don't be afraid of saying what you do well and that you'd like to do more of it. If you isolate yourself socially, you'll be both lonely and broke. If you have trouble communicating face-to-face or in writing, take classes to get better at it. People who can't communicate with potential clients might be able to write code (or whatever) like a genius, but if you can't speak or write well, you can't sell. If you can't sell, you won't eat. Remember that you're not a database designer, or a network guru, or a desktop publishing genius, you're a problem solver. You make people's computer problems go away. You're not a faceless, anonymous lab tech, you're a doctor. Whether you're a surgeon or a shrink, you make people feel better.
With a lot of motivation and a little bit of luck, your next challenges will be how to manage a growing accounting task, how to raise your prices, how to pick good (and lose bad) clients, how to hire employees and manage growth, and how to get away on vacations.
Good luck!
I wrote this article, Tony Lindsey and CASDA published it, and if we ever duked it out over copyright, I'd put my money on Tony, 'cause he's bigger and meaner than me. But the column appears here because I put it here, and no other publication is allowed without express permission from me. Come and get me, Tony...