If you’ve already been enjoying some success in your field and you want to know what else might lie out there for you, you may be considering moving into a different field of work. However, you want to make sure that whatever you do, you want to make the best use of the skills and experience you have already worked hard to build.
Consultants do precisely that, offering an outside perspective to businesses and entrepreneurs, often with a specific focus that tied to their previous career. But, how do you become a consultant in the first place?
Determine what you can offer
You have your specialized skillset and a body of work that is likely related to a very specific business process or function. From there, you need to determine how you are going to use that to help businesses, entrepreneurs, and their teams. Take the market that you are a part of, and think about what people and teams in those markets need or want, and how it can improve their business. Then apply to it the skills that you have or things you can learn related to your skills in order to find your niche, as shown by Nick Jervis. While consultants work best when they are able to help problem solve a wide range of business issues, having a very strong niche offer can help you create an alluring selling point.
Learn the skills you need from other consultants
As a consultant, you have to build on the skills that you already have with a host of those suited to your new methods of work. These include skills like excellent communication skills, project management, being able to analyze problems that you can then provide solutions to, and more. Aside from training in these skills, you should pay attention to the insights shared by other consultants like Robert J Bukowski. Follow consultancy blogs, seeing how they are able to apply these skills to their own, sometimes unrelated, fields of expertise. Then you can see how both skillsets come together to help your client.
Network extensively
If people are going to hire you as a consultant, they need to be able to know that they can trust what you say you can do for them. It’s not a good idea to try and build this trust while also trying to work as a consultant. You should build it while you’re in the current field of work you are in. Take your time, get networking, demonstrate your abilities and your expertise to a broader audience. Don’t let the only people who know how great you are at your job be those who are working in the office with you. Once you have built that trust, you will find it much easier to start bringing clients in when you do launch your consultancy services.
Consultancy can be both a highly lucrative as well as a highly satisfying gig to work in. Businesses will pay top dollar for the expert advice they need and you get to watch your expertise transform those businesses for the better. You just need to put the work in to get there.
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