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Play To Your Consulting Strengths

By crooky | January 25, 2008

Two weeks ago, I said that I was going to try cold-calling senior consultants around town to see if they would take me on as a sub-contractor. Here’s my progress report: I’ve started pulling together a list of people that I want to get introduced to and have been working my network to get introduced to them. Before I start calling people - which I intend to do early next week - I wanted to make sure that I had my messaging down straight. The key to getting your message straight is to know thyself. Your marketing materials need to clearly communicate your core strengths. To do this, I came up with the idea for “Project Sidekick”. This new campaign states that I have a foundation in sub-contracting and clearly shows where the value proposition lies for more senior consultants. Namely - I can reduce project costs, bring subject matter expertise and provide scalable human resources to bear as a sub-contractor. I think the messaging is pretty clear but it’s a bit of an admission of defeat in some respects.

Cutesey Sidekick Picture

As a consultant, you always struggle to position yourself against the other, better-established consultants in your field as well as the newbies. 2007 was a frustrating year for me in some respects because I responded to 30+ RFPs and won only one of them. Most of the work that I got was through personal referrals or through my existing network. While that’s good news in one respect - I have a good network and I know how to use it - it’s bad news because the volume of work coming in is not satisfactory.

I had to take a good hard look at my business and what it stands for in early January and I came to the uneasy conclusion that my real strength lies in the support that I give more established consultants. Consulting can be a lonely and socially isolating profession in some respects. When I work with a more senior consultant, I’m not only helping them get the job done at a lower cost or at a higher quality given the project budget - I’m there for them as a partner who can relate to the realities of self-employment. That counts for a lot.

That’s how I came up with the idea for Project Sidekick. It’s a low-key way of acknowledging that I’m not competitive against domain experts with 15+ years of consulting experience but I’m a good generalist with over five years of experience, good rates and some technical expertise that more senior consultants find valuable. I am, in fact, a domain expert in a couple of areas but lack the five-page resume to support my claims of expertise.

I suggest that no matter what stage your consulting business is in, you should acknowledge your strengths, downplay your weaknesses and don’t try to force your clients to accept you as the consultants you wish you were but as the excellent, skilled consultant that you are.

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

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Topics: Business of Consulting |

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