Before starting a consultant activity, it is first necessary to understand the specificities inherent to this status. A consultant who has started his professional career in a field other than the council will indeed tend to model his past experience on his new activity. This is an error since business advice requires the deployment of specific skills and the adoption of an appropriate attitude. An adaptation effort that is not necessarily self-evident! It should be understood that the place occupied by the consultant - the support of companies to improve their functioning - implies the existence of an expert, but also an ability to understand a problem and to apply a suitable method to answer them. Our advice: talk with consultants!
Try to find out what makes them stand out from what you already know from the world of work and compare these specificities to your expectations to make sure you are not on the wrong track.
2 LEARN HOW TO HANDLE THE ART OF PITCH
The pitch is this short presentation of 15 to 30 seconds whose purpose is to pique curiosity or cause an almost spontaneous adherence to his interlocutor or his audience. But here, succeeding in keeping in a few sentences the substantive marrow of a project cannot be improvised. Creating an effective pitch adapted to your target requires a lot of work upstream! Our advice:
Prepare a pitch according to your objective
• Practice practicing it in front of the ice or in front of friends
• Collect feedback to improve it
• Mingle the gesture with the words to support your words
• Instead of memorizing your pitch, remember the structure and the most important points.
3 KNOW YOUR AREA AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Many professionals who embark on a new activity generally overestimate their knowledge of their sector. Deficiencies that can very clearly play against them , especially if they have to face particularly fierce competition.
Our advice: After determining your field of expertise and your added value, take the time to understand in detail the specificities of your market:
• Which actors are already in place?
• What are the expectations of your target?
• How to obtain them?
• Which companies can show interest in your services?
Without this prior work of clearing, which you must spend the necessary time, you could simply tap next to your target!
4 PROSPECT LIKE A REAL COMMERCIAL
When not on a mission, one of the "favorite occupations" of the consultant is to find missions and answer them: this is the very foundation of commercial prospecting!
Nevertheless, finding interesting assignments , convincing your prospect to start a fruitful collaboration or negotiating their fees advantageously are not necessarily easy steps to apprehend!
The professional who is moving towards the consulting profession will therefore have every interest in developing his commercial skills so that his actions bear fruit. Our advice : practice the method of active listening during your meetings with your prospects to identify their needs precisely while clearly showing your interest in the mission.
5 BUILD A STRUCTURED SERVICE OFFER
The commercial activities of the consultant are based on the construction of a service offer. It must first and foremost be developed to meet precisely the needs of the companies targeted by the consultant. Only, the construction of consistent and effective service offer requires time, sometimes more than a year. In addition, it is by nature evolutive and must be corrected over missions and feedback received by clients or the network of the consultant.
Our advice : There are several methods to develop your service offer. One of them, known as the acceleration curve, consists of designing a logical suite of services; from more generic (and attractive in terms of tariffs) to more specific (and commercially interesting for the consultant).
6 ORGANIZE TO GAIN PRODUCTIVITY
Being a consultant means being able to manage your time more or less freely. An autonomy that implies however the establishment of an organization adjusted to the millimeter . Added Constraint: Accurate assessment of the time required to complete a task of intellectual activity is far from simple. To avoid having to put an end to his family life, the consultant must always provide an extra margin of time when assessing the time required to complete a mission. In addition, the workspace plays an important role in the consultant 's organization. While some professionals are attached to their disorder, this is not the case for the majority! Our advice : to save time and productivity, remember to formalize your operational tasks upstream. Automate everything that can be, optimize the management of your messaging, prioritize the tasks of your todolist, impose deadlines and stick to them, cut tasks in several easy steps to achieve in no time ...
7 HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR PROJECT
Whatever the nature of the consultant's project and his level of expertise, it will be difficult for him to fulfill his objectives if he does not trust him. Much more than an attitude, self-confidence is above all a tool of great efficiency for the prospecting consultant. Whether viewed consciously or unconsciously, the confidence of the consultant will allow the prospect to take full measure of the relevance of the offer presented to him. Our advice : if you face a situation whose complexity can undermine your confidence in your abilities, consider it as an opportunity instead of trying to extract from all means!
8 STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD BY FINDING ITS ADDED VALUE Unless
you have the ambition to create your own market, you will necessarily have to compete with competitors who are sometimes distinguished by their number or their great experience. Instead of attacking them head-on, at the risk of losing a lot of energy, instead adopt a counter-positioning , or at least find your added value and put it forward in your commercial proposals! Our advice : Defining your added value is not necessarily an easy exercise. To find leads, ask yourself what is your business advantage, your experience, or your personality trait that might cause a company to choose you over another consultant.
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