I run a web company that delivers help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and expertise to thousands of startups and small businesses around the planet and whenever I explain to folks I meet what I do, I always get asked the same question “Given my skills and experience, how could I apply it and make an income by becoming a small business consultant”? I am always willing to provide guidance as I am fortunate enough to spend a lot of my day communicating with small business owners and personnel always prepared to chat at length about their problems and needs.
This is what I tell them:
The net is a perfect platform for finding customers and it makes it easy to talk 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 wisdom and help them tackle key challenges.
Information marketing – package and sell your expertise to businesses through the Internet
Make no mistake this opportunity isn’t just to be found in small businesses it’s equally applicable to large businesses. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a multimedia format such as video, audio or documents. The tools to produce professional standard material are widely available on the net. Making a series of lessons in easy to consume digital formats is now straight forward and doesn’t cost much to do. You just have to be prepared to spend a modest amount of time studying the tools. material] that you can either sell or give away to get your target customer’s attention.
You should start by deciding what you want to achieve. Consultancy and Information marketing are great bedfellows 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 valuable to others then produce a very short video to explain yourself and your expertise to your target(s). Unless you know the potential client(s) precise problem then make the video generic and stick tothe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Keep it short, interesting and sweet. Now upload 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 potential client(s)problem then don’t make the video public, just put it somewhere privateon the Web or even on a disk and post it, again follow up with a call.
This approach is ideally suited to situations where you are individually targeting market. The one objective you should be constantly pursuing is the creation of a list that you can converse with and sell product to.. Regular interaction with your list will help you discover people’s needs that will help you define what to sell. The bigger your list the more opportunities for consulating and selling information products you will find. If you would like to know more about how to do this then visit any of the links in this article. I would be very glad to help you.
