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Three Big Ideas for Gaining an Edge in the Consulting Market

By crooky | June 18, 2008

I wanted to loop back on a few ideas that have been kicking around this blog and my network over the past few months. First, I want to re-look at professional designations. Second, I want to discuss the idea of teaming up with other consultants. Third, I want to talk about lead gen.

1. Professional Designations

I’m currently doing some work for the University of British Columbia around a new Project Management degree that they’re developing. As part of the work I’m doing on this project, I sent out a survey to several thousand project managers. One of them wrote me back today and said “I took your survey but I was reading your blog and wanted to commment on the CMC designation”.

I was thrilled that someone took the time to backread but the gist of his comments were that unless you’re in a market where a professional designation is fully recognized, the benefits of membership and certification are limited. He joined CMC Canada in Ottawa, where CMCs are well recognized and valued. When he came out West, he found that having a CMC did not give him a leg up in the market.

This is an important point - when considering which (if any) professional designation to pursue, make sure that the designation you choose has market potential where you live and work. Designations like PEng and CA and PMP seem to have legs in this market. Others, like CBAP and CMC are struggling to be heard out here in BC. I guess what I’m advocating is DO YOUR RESEARCH.

2. Consulting Teams

This morning, I had an early lunch with two other consultants that I’ve recently met. They’re both relatively new to Vancouver (one has been here a few months and the other has been here two years). They’ve both got about the same amount of on-the-ground experience as I do and they both have complementary skills in public sector consulting.

Our discussion today was around how we might team up as a mini-consulting firm and leverage our mutual experience and networks to do bigger, better projects. We talked a lot about the structure of another firm I’m involved in called Rocket Builders. The Rocket Builders model has some big benefits.

By keeping the operation lean and flexible with relatively autonomous partners, the firm can hit with a force far greater than the combined output of the individual partners. This is an ideal model. While Rocket Builders maintains a physical office, there are further efficiencies to be gained by doing without an office. Pooled resources such as a part-time virtual assistant can be leveraged to make the firm seem even more professional.

I’ll keep you posted as to how our little skunkworks project goes but I believe there’s a lot of benefits in sole-proprietors teaming up and operating under a common brand.

3. Lead Generation

There has been a lot of interesting chatter in the comments section of an article I wrote recently on Lead Generation. The debate is raging around how you get new clients. In some businesses, it is clear that cold calling is the way to go. I’m not convinced that this is the case with consulting businesses.

Just today, when sitting with my consulting colleagues (see above), we were discussing how consultants get contracts and what we landed on was the fact that as consultants, you need to nurture your network and that’s nothing to do with cold calling - it’s spending face time with the kinds of people that you want to work with.

Networking events, doing pro bono work with organizations - they all put you in the face of potential clients. That’s where a successful consultant should concentrate their efforts. My argument against cold calling was primarily around the fact that cold calling wastes so much time and generates so little business for consultants. If you must cold-anything, I’m suggesting that going to an automated system costs a fraction of what cold calling does but might generate just as many leads.

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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 |

2 Responses to “Three Big Ideas for Gaining an Edge in the Consulting Market”

  1. Trevor Says:
    June 19th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    Excellent point about professional designations. Any association worth joining is going to have fairly stringent membership requirements and make those requirements public. This enables potential employers or clients to see for themselves what those letters after your name actually mean and decide whether those criteria are relevant to the job or project. When I review an applicant’s resume and it includes membership in some insignificant association whose only requirements are 300 bucks a year in membership dues, I automatically flag that applicant as a sucker that I probably don’t want working for me.

  2. crooky Says:
    June 19th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Thanks for the comment Trevor. I didn’t really touch on the entrance requirements of the organization but that’s a good point.

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