Your Best Consulting Career Strategy In Nigeria: The Twenty-First Century Way to Become A Great Career Consultant
Your best consulting career strategy might be tricky but if you are inclined to using online consulting, then it becomes so much easy.
The truth is that it is much easier to consult now more than ever. You can be doing what you do best from any part of the world and for anybody in any part of the world. You can work while relaxing and you see, it offers a lot of benefits for you and your family.
You know consulting simply means providing the right advice on a set of issues. When you are an expert on a particular field, you can set up your career on getting on consulting online and you can do that from anywhere.
Work now is much more flexible given the breakthroughs on internet issues and technology in general. You don’t have to don sweet suits, attend high priced dinners, and work for about 80 hours a week for one big company for you to be considered a consultant. That was in the past.
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The guy who consults today can choose to do all of that or he can be in his home, a hotel room or anywhere wearing anything.
You see these consultants serve their clients through the provision of online content and other online media such as Skype calls and other social media. They don’t have to move from one city to another and stay in fancy hotels.
You get to serve mostly individuals, small and medium scale businesses and on rare occasions, the big firms.
Becoming a consultant: The best consulting career strategy
Do you know that starting a career in consulting is not really that difficult? It can be as easy impregnating an ovulating girl.
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Except for those who don’t want to have time and resources for other things, coaching and consulting can be very interesting. You want to know why? Here is why;
- The margins or profits are huge
- The overhead or the cost of running an office is almost nonexistent
- It is location independent
- You can work from any part of the world
- You essentially get to help people achieve their aims.
There is however something that is required of you. You have to be able to help people solve difficult problems in the areas you have chosen.
For everything in the world that is doable, there is usually the right way and the wrong way. Most times, they are not universally acceptable but still, they work to some extent. If you want to become a successful consultant in any field of your chosen, you might want to get it right.
Therefore, these few best consulting career strategies can be of help to you.
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Choose your market and your niche
The very first step in your best consulting career strategy is figuring out the market and the niche. You have to figure out the people you want to offer your services and that requires choosing the area of expertise.
You have to figure out who will benefit from your consultancy. You have to answer very important questions about the places or areas you are really good at.
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If you go into consulting for people, you must be good at what you do. It is suicide going into this career with mediocre qualification.
Step one in starting a consulting business is to figure out who you can help. It is advisable for you to list at ten areas you think you have helped people perfectly in the past if it is your first attempt at consulting. That will help you make a decision.
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You have to define your offer
At this stage, I want to assume that you already know your market and your niche. The next thing on this list of strategies is to define what you can offer. Those your prospective clients that make up your market, what do you think is the problem that they are currently facing that you wish to solve? That is the point you start.
Without a problem, you really have no business. Business in this sense simply means providing solutions to problems.
You see now you understand the problems of your clients. The solution is to restore them to their ideal place. Moving them from where they are to where they are supposed to be. We will give three instances;
If you are consulting on fitness, you have to be able to guarantee that a skinny client puts the necessary lbs of muscle he wants or that the lady loses the quantity of fats that she requires to lose.
If you want to coach on relationship, you have to be able to help frustrated and busy men and women find the love of their lives without necessarily passing through a century of dates.
If you want to consult on website management and blogging, you must be able to guarantee that your clients will get the necessary breakthrough in traffic that they seek.
There are endless opportunities here. Look to your past to see what sort of results you’ve gotten, or what sort of results you think you can get for someone.
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Give away free strategy sessions.
To build your reputation, you will be needed to give away free strategy sessions. You use those sessions to build a customer base.
Before you can be in demand, you need to achieve great results in transformation and not information. People will see the results you have achieved and join you.
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The best way to do that is to give free sessions.
Think about that trip to the doctor. The doctor will ask you to accurately describe the symptoms of your pain, and then he will “prescribe a solution.” He doesn’t care if you want to or will actually follow his advice or not.
Your sales process should work in exactly the same way. Figure out the pain, prescribe a solution. Be unattached to the outcome of the call. If the prospect asks you for more help, tell them how you can work together.
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You must close your first set of clients
You have worked on your offer and you also know how to sell. The next thing in your best consulting career strategy is to close your first couple of clients.
You know what they say about the first impression. It lasts through time. The impression could make or mar you. So make it count.
Reach out to people who you know are experiencing the problem that you solve, and ask them to get on a phone call with you.
Once you get them on the phone, find out what their motivation for making a change is. Walk them through where they are now, and where they want to be. Find out why they haven’t made the change on their own.
If they’re stuck, make an offer to help… and boom! You have just closed your first client by providing a solution to a painful problem.
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Get your clients results.
In this best consulting career strategy, getting results is pretty amazing. You have to get standard end products for your first couple of clients. You have to know what they want, not what you think they want, and get them exactly that.
One client satisfied can bring a lot of other potential clients and one dissatisfied client is equally destructive. You understand what I mean. Be result-oriented and grow.
It’s important to be hands-on and to get amazing results for your first couple of clients. I use a combination of online content and weekly coaching calls to get clients results.
It is in your best interest to spend time with your clients so as to understand what they want and be of help. Use whatever media necessary to achieve this as far as it is ethical.
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Generate leads and scale your business.
When you have built your reputation for what you do, the next logical thing in our best consulting career strategy is to generate leads and scale your business.
You can begin to widen your scope and get more clients. You can make more money too because at this stage you have become a professional.
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Get a coach and mentor
The words of Isaac Newton still resonate in my head every time I think about it. He said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
You need others who have gone farther than you in the area you want to be part of. This helps in expediting things and minimizing mistakes.
The easiest way to achieve something you have not done before is by standing upon the shoulders of those who have a proven record of success in that field. There is no successful entrepreneur who was not coached and mentored to success.
Find a coach and get a mentor.
