Ask any consultant new to the field of consulting what is their main concern is and pretty much all of them are going to reply that they worry about how to get consulting clients quickly. This is also true of other services and businesses, but when you are just starting out in any domain, you may have a bit of a rough time.
If you want to know how to get more clients for your consulting business, then you do not have to stress about the process. All you need to do is stop for a second, understand what value that you bring, and build a strategy around that for your consulting business is.
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Who Is Your Ideal Consulting Client?
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You need to ask yourself what kind of clients do you want to attract to your business. In order to reach prospective clients, you also need to have some kind of criteria for them. After you do this, you can move on to the next step on how to get clients quickly: marketing.
Choosing the market that you want to focus on should be based on a niche that you are passionate about, and have experience in. After you have discovered the market that you want to target, you can get towards the method. Whether we are talking about ads, or marketing strategy, when you focus on just a market segment, you are going to create a huge difference for your competition.
Each market segment has its own lingo that can be learned relatively quickly. What you can do if you want to discover how to get consulting clients fast is to check annual reports of the competition and see how they see this industry.
Another thing you should focus your energy on is finding something that is of value to your target customers. This can be a white paper regarding some problems that the industry is facing, a webinar, or some free samples.
Ask for Referrals From People Who Know, Like, and Trust You.
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An often overlooked method of finding new clients is by asking for a referral. An example of this could be that after you finished a consulting assignment for one of your clients that is very satisfied with what you have done, you can already ask them to do you a small favor. If you do not want to put your client on the spot there are more indirect ways.
You can send a letter thanking them for their business and asking for some names, or you can write an email requesting the same things. Get creative with referral requests, and you are going to come up with some ideas that can make you understand how to get consulting clients fast.
You will want to start with all the personal connections that you have. Ask them if they can introduce you to some potential clients in the field. This works very well if somebody that really has a lot of trust in you says some good things about your service towards somebody that might be interested.
We advise that you find the people that can help you with networking, and also define as best as you can the ideal client that you want to reach in the end.
Perfect Your Portfolio
Make a Portfolio Website
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Even if you do not have a vast portfolio, even a simple portfolio can still help you a lot because it shows your talent and the past results that you had. When you want to include links or screenshots of your previous work do not just resume at this. Make sure you have a few sentences that can give you the context for the work that you did.
Create explainers and more than that also add some testimonials from your clients and show them the entire story behind it.
Optimize your website for Google search
If you want to work with local clients, you need good SEO done for your website in order to make it appear in local searches. On top of that, you also want that every blog post that you have to be optimized for any kind of keywords that your ideal might be searching for.
Have your blog
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A good way to understand how to get consulting clients fast is by providing more and more value to them. A blog can become a great asset that is going to help readers reach you and learn from you. This might make them eventually to want to hire you and start doing business together.
Have something to say
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When you are in need of a client, cold calling can be a more direct way to go. People usually want to avoid this, but it is part of how you can make your business grow in just a few months.
If you are still wondering how to get consulting clients quickly, you need to understand that proposals can be very different and that some will work for certain clients while for others they will not. Try different approaches when you do your first consulting.
Send the proposals and the contracts separately, ask clients for feedback. Just make sure you get creative and that you obtain a lot of information from them. Many clients are not going to search for it unless they have an urgent need. For a consultant, an important aspect of the sales process is to have a conversation with those people regarding the problems that they have. The value is in solving those problems and offering them the next steps that they should follow in the future.
Create strategic partnerships with people who need help serving their clients
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This can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to obtain clients, but you will need to invest time in building the right relationships. However, this can be considered a good method if you want to learn how to get consulting clients fast.
The main idea here is that you can find agencies that already have many clients that they cannot help. So, you can take advantage and make some kind of deal to them in order for both parties to win as they lead those clients to you.
Webinars are probably one of the best ways to educate and provide valuable information to buyers so this means you can become an authority in that field. What you can do in front of many people at the same time can bring more and more value as time goes by.
One of the best ways for getting clients is to have a presentation in front of them. This is because you will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the buyer right there that you are an expert and they will be able to see it with their own eyes.
Have a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is going to always be useful no matter the domain of activity that you have. If you want to get many clients you need to get their attention somehow so here is what you can do.
Social Media
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Everybody has at least one social media account these days, and you will want to be where the people’s attention is. Go for social media profiles that are current and popular, and start promoting your consulting business there.
It is quite easy to understand the basics and once you are sure of what you are doing you can start to run different ads, create content and share all kinds of information with the targeted users you have in mind. Facebook is a place to start because the platform has a huge user base. For getting leads more on the B2B side of the business, you could also make use of LinkedIn (even better, LinkedIn Sales Navigator) and various automation tools, such as Linked Helper. With LinkedIn’s advanced search filters and the added benefit of automation, you can narrow down potential prospects relevant to your business and export quality leads from LinkedIn.
Personalized Messages
Make each of your clients feel important by providing custom messages for each one. You can spend more time doing so but in the long term, it is going to help you close more deals. For sure learning how to get consulting clients fast is also about creating something special and unique for each of them sometimes.
Newsletters & Emails
This is one of the best ways to stay in contact with your clients in the long-term. What is great is that you do not only have to offer them helpful information through a newsletter, you can also speak about certain discounts or promotions that you are a business is having in a certain period.
Cold Calls
This is quite an old, but well-known way of doing sales but for sure it still works even today so that is why we consider it as something that you could try. Getting clients is possible by doing cold calls, but you will need to be sure you have the right speech and that the people you are calling might be at least a bit interested in what you have to say.
Ending thoughts on how to get consulting clients fast
In conclusion, understanding how to get consulting clients fast is not something that you learn overnight. It is a constant process of adapting and understanding your client’s needs, and in exchange, you must bring the right solutions at the right time so that they choose you as their consultant.
If you enjoyed reading this article on how to get consulting clients, you should also check out this article on consulting buzzwords.
We also wrote about a few related subjects like consulting business ideas, technology consulting, consulting proposal template examples, how much to charge for consulting, tips for becoming a self-employed business consultant. Maybe you need a consulting contract or tips to overcome the business challenges that a consultant like you is facing.
And if these are something you enjoyed reading, check out our WordPress booking plugin that your clients can use to schedule meetings with you.
