« How to Write a Great Consulting Resume | Home | Smartphone Showdown: iPhone vs Blackberry vs. Windows Mobile »

How To Land Your First Client As An Independent Consultant

By crooky | July 22, 2008

I talk to a lot of folks who are looking to transition from employee to consultant and one of the most common questions I get asked is “how do you land those first few clients?” It’s an excellent question and I’m going to outline how you get started consulting once you’ve decided to make the leap.

1. Leverage Your Network

If you don’t have a network of people who can hook you up with work, you’re not ready to become a consultant. Networking and relationships are the lifeblood of any consulting business. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool.

The real conundrum is how you build and maintain the right kind of network to get yourself work. There are two ways to go about this - using your work network (if you’re going to continuing on your current career track) or finding an existing network in your chosen field (if you’re switching to a new career).

I’ve seen friends of mine try things like Business Networking International and professional consulting associations and to be frank, they don’t appear to bring in much work for my friends.

What you need is an established network that you become a part of. If you’ve been working in a field for a number of years and aren’t completely useless, chances are that you’ve made some connections and have people in your network that you can subtly inform that you’d like to work with them.

That’s the way I did it. I left my public servant career and e-mailed my entire rolodex, letting them know that I was leaving and if they’d like to work with me as a consultant, I was available. This landed me my first three gigs.

If you’re switching to a completely different field, you need to find the networks that your clients are hanging out in. If it’s small business owners and entrepreneurs that you’re targeting, find events with “venture” and “enterprise” in the title and go with a stack of business cards.

If you have a service that bundles nicely with something like home rennovations, get to your local home show and get to know the vendors there.

The key is - you need to make a place for yourself in a community that can generate leads for you. Generic networking and networking with other people looking for the same clients as yourself are a waste of time.

2. Find Other Consultants

My first few clients were actually other consultants that were looking for affordable but capable help with some of their projects. There’s no shame in starting out as a hired gun with other consultants. Consider it like apprenticeship. You can learn from more experienced consultants and, as time goes on, leave their protective fold and become a peer.

A few caveats - most consultants aren’t going to pay you top dollar for your time when you’re new to consulting. Be prepared to take $30-$40/hour for your time. You may have to do this for a few years until you build up enough clout of your own.

Some consultants will also feel threatened when you start to exceed their day rates and land better clients than they do. Make sure you stay on the good side of people for whom you sub-contract. If they think you’re a twit, they can hurt your chances of landing new clients by bad-mouthing you to potential clients.

Also be aware of what your time is worth. My rule of thumb is this: if you have no experience, double your hourly wage at your last job and that’s your consulting rate. If you’ve got 5+ years experience, triple what you would get doing the same work for a government agency or a private company. When you’ve got 15+ years experience, triple what you would get in the private sector for the same work.

3. Volunteer

One of the great things about volunteering is the networking opportunities. Great people volunteer and they expect to meet other great people volunteering with them. To say nothing of your skills as a consultant, you can take advantage of the “halo effect” by volunteering your time at the places where the people you want to do business with are volunteering.

DO YOUR RESEARCH! Ask the people you want to work with what causes they support. You might actually find out what causes they support by looking at their website.

At the end of the day, getting your first gig is about who you know, not what you know. You have to be able to deliver on your value proposition when you get that first gig but until then, you need to know someone.

*********************
Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for over ten years.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Business of Consulting |

One Response to “How To Land Your First Client As An Independent Consultant”

  1. Canadian Business Directory Says:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 7:32 pm

    As an alternative to the $30 or $40 an hour you mention in your article, an alternative I have used and which seems quite well received is to offer my services at no cost up front but for a percentage of the new business we bring the client.

Comments