Small business consulting using the Internet
I run an internet company that provides help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and knowledge to thousands of startups and small businesses across the globe and whenever I explain to people what I do, I always get asked the same question “Given my what I know, how could I monetize it and make an income by becoming a small business consultant”? I’m always willing to give guidance as I am privileged enough to spend a significant portion of my day interacting with small business owners and personnel happy to to talk about their issues.
Here are my standard answers which I hope you will find useful:
The online world is the best way for finding customers and it makes it straightforward to communicate with them and sell your expertise. A lot of small businesses turn to the internet to find knowledge or trusted advisors who can provide them with new knowledge and help them fix issues.
Information marketing - repurpose and sell your expertise to small businesses everywhere via the net
What I am about to tell you doesn’t just apply to small businesses. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a digital format such as video, audio or documents. The tools to create high quality content are widely available on the web. Constructing a course in easy to consume internet formats is now simple and inexpensive. You just have to be prepared to dedicate a small amount of time getting to know the software. The objective here is to make some valuable content that you can either sell or give away to customers to encourage them to do business with you.
You have to decide what you want to achieve. Consultancy and Information marketing can work together and if you do both can be very profitable as the consultancy will provide you with the questions, the answers to which could be turned into content and sold over and over again.
If you are starting from scratch with no customers but have expertise you know would be needed by others then produce a two minute video to introduce yourself and your expertise to your prospect(s). Unless you know the potential client(s) precise problem then make the video generic and usethe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Be creative and concise. Now deploy the video to your website/blog or even YouTube if you don’t have the former and send the target(s) an invitation by e-mail containing a personal message and a link to the video. Always follow this up with a phone call. If you know the specific nature of the prospect(s)problem then don’t make the video public, just put it somewhere secureon the Web or even on a disk and post it, again follow up with a call.
This method is ideally suited to situations where you are individually targeting target(s). The one objective you should be constantly pursuing is the creation of a list that you can converse with and sell product to.. Consistent interaction with your list will reveal peoples needs that will help you define what to sell. The more people on your list the more consulting and information marketing opportunities you will discover. If you would like to discover more about how to do this then follow any of the links in this article. I would be very glad to help you.
August 10th, 2009
