Challenges with Start-up Consulting Businesses

Consulting business start-ups face many challenges in the early days. As a start-up, your consulting business may not have any clients, brand equity, contacts, cash flow or even business cards! Weaving your way through the start-up obstacle course can be trying — to say the least.

When I started my consulting business, I was full of confidence, but not much else. I had to learn about taxes, bookkeeping, invoices, contracts and other business basics. I had a good grasp of starting and marketing my business, but I was suddenly faced with managing client politics, chasing unpaid bills, taking debtors to small claims court, and dealing with “non-consulting” aspects of my consulting business. Early on, I’d expected to spend my time on pure consulting. I soon realized just how complex a “simple” home-based business like consulting can be.

All these years later, I’m pleased to say I’m still consulting. And that should serve as encouragement to anyone else who wants to become a consultant — or simply continue to survive as one. You see, although I had a steep learning curve in becoming a consultant, I managed to get to the top of that curve. Of course, there was another curve after that, but it wasn’t quite as steep. Making it over the early hurdles is harder than anything else you’ll face in your consulting career. But, if you stick with it, you’ll get there.

Twenty Great Tools To Start A Consulting Business

With companies pushing their employees off the plank into the sea of financial and professional uncertainty, one of the best options to take control of one’s career is to start a consulting practice.  Starting a consulting practice is a good way to get back your self-esteem, which is usually very low after being left adrift, and a good way to generate revenue.

I can speak from experience.  One of the companies I ran was bought by another company and I had no immediate options.  I always hated interviewing and preferred to have more control over my life.

Now is a good time to start your own business because companies still need professionals with a variety of skills, but can’t afford to hire full-time people.  You don’t need many tools to start your own practice, especially with software, the Internet, hardware and online services available.  Here are the essentials:

Microsoft Office 2007: You can store your contacts, send your e-mails, make presentations, design Web sites, create newsletters, create financial spreadsheets and send Word documents.

QuickBooks or Peachtree First Accounting: You need to keep track of your income and expenses.  Both products are very good.  I prefer Peachtree because I find it more intuitive, which is ironic since the maker of QuickBooks is called Intuit.  For those not comfortable with accounting software, you can easily do the same functions by using Microsoft Excel.

Tax Planning: Here, Intuit’s Turbo Tax for Home and Business is the best product on the market.  Intuit totally nailed it with this product.  It is the easiest piece of software I have ever used and I can’t believe how they can improve it each year.  You can do your federal and state taxes using this software.  If you use QuickBooks, you can download your information directly into Turbo Tax. The software also allows you to plan for the following year’s taxes.

Marketing Material: There is a variety of inexpensive software packages such as Business Card Designs and MyBusiness Cards.  The software typically costs less than $30 and usually comes with business card, brochure and other types of templates.  You can also go online and get up to 200 free business cards with basic designs from www.freebusinesscardprinter

Business Plan: You have to develop a road map for your business.  There are a few products you should look at, such as Business Plan Pro and Bplans.com.

PDF Converter: If you are e-mailing contracts and other documents you don’t want altered, you want to purchase something like Nuance’s PDF Converter 5 Professional.

Tracking Receipts

Business Cards: There is no question: The best product on the market is NeatDesk by The Neat Company, a Philadelphia-based entrepreneurial company. This product is a digital filing system that allows you to scan receipts, business cards and documents.  The device takes up a small amount of space on your desk and connects with QuickBooks, Turbo Tax and Excel.  This is really a must-have product because of the diversity of tactics it performs.

Traditional Telephone: The best buy for the money is Vonage.  You get unlimited calls nationally and to some countries abroad for less than $30 a month.  One of the things I like about Vonage is that it forwards my calls to my e-mail, which allows me to listen to the calls on my computer and my BlackBerry.  You can try to use Skype, but I have still found it to be inconsistent and not appropriate for business use.

Mobile Phone: Everyone has a mobile phone, but as a business tool, I still prefer the BlackBerry, which allows you to collect and send e-mail.  This falls under the category of invaluable.  I once was in a remote part of Panama and a client had a problem, and I could respond by e-mail through my BlackBerry.

Laptop: I have fallen in love with my Acer Aspire One, which is a mini-laptop that weighs less than 3 lbs and has a 1 gig of Ram and 130 gigs of hard drive.

Printer/Scanner/Fax: There are a variety of good products made by Brother, Lexmark, and Hewlett-Packard.  Any of them will do the job.  As much as we prefer not to print things out, we still need to do it when we are making presentations and providing written documents that need to be shared.

Legal Software: Get an attorney to develop your initial contracts, but if you are looking to save money, use software such as MyAttorney Home and Business by Avanquest.  There are a variety of templates that you can customize for your needs.

Binding Machine: Any business store carries a binding machine, which you need for proposals and other documents with lots of pages.

E-mail Newsletter: You need to stay in contact with prospects, clients and referral sources by sending newsletters, press releases and invitations.  The two most cost-effective services are Constant Contact and IContact.

Linked-In: There practically isn’t a business person that isn’t using www.linkedin.com to make business contacts.  I get at least one request a week to join someone’s network.

Web Site: A low-cost way to develop your own Web site and host it inexpensively is through services such as 1and1.com; but if you are looking to have someone develop a site for you, put in your request for proposal using Craigslist and watch the responses pile up.

YouTube: A good way to demonstrate your knowledge for free — you take a video camera and have someone film you for one to three minutes providing advice on your expertise.

Blog: You can set up a free blog to demonstrate your expertise by going to

www.blogger.com

Bank Account: Practically every bank provides online banking.  That said, I would suggest using a small bank that will give you more personal service and whose branch managers may be able to make introductions to potential clients.

Credit Card: If you can get a credit card, I would recommend the American Express Plum Card.  Every card comes with points, but not every card can get you an easy cash advance abroad, which I found out the hard way in Italy.

This is a great time to start a consulting practice, which will make you feel better about yourself and more secure.

Ways to Advertise your Consulting Business

Whether you’re just starting a consulting firm, or looking for more ways to market an existing business, there are probably numerous advertising possibilities you’ve overlooked. Here are a few methods that you might want to look into and consider.

Online Advertising
Considering that most people turn to Google, and not the yellow pages, when looking for goods and services these days, it’s certainly a good idea to consider advertising online.

Google and Yahoo, the two top search engines, both have very reasonable pay per click advertising packages, which can yield great results, as do many smaller search engines.

You could also look for advertising space for sale on popular sites, or on the sites of organizations involved in your niche market.

Another option, depending on your services and target market, is to submit your site to one of the growing numbers of online business directories. Some are free, others charge a nominal fee, but they are becoming a popular marketing choice. Two paid directories that are highly trusted are Business.com and the Yahoo! Directory.

Direct Mail
Desk top publishing has made putting together a professional looking direct mail piece easier than ever. And once that’s taken care of, its easy to either deliver the piece by electronic mail, or by traditional postal service.

Speak to the postal service in your area though – some allow you to choose where you want your pieces delivered, while some will target company post office boxes only.

Traditional Media
If you are targeting a specific area, geographically, the easiest way to use the traditional media is to run advertisements in local newspapers.

If, on the other hand, you are targeting a specific industry, it’s best to look for industry specific or trade publications, which cater to the industry in question.

When shopping for traditional advertising options, remember to find out whether the publication is free, or paid for, and what their circulation is like. Prices vary vastly, but the cheapest option may not always offer the lowest rate per view of your advertisement.

Charity Work
Getting involved in charity or volunteer work can be a great way to get your company’s information into the newspapers, and other media. You don’t necessarily have to devote your time, you could sponsor an event, new equipment or some other item for a worthy cause.

Not only will you be doing something to help your community, you will be getting valuable publicity too.

Press Releases
If you, or your consulting business has done something newsworthy, write a press release. Well written, interesting and informative press releases are usually welcomed by small publications, which are on the lookout for content.

Or, you could submit the press release to one of the many online press release sites.

Join Professional Organizations
There are many professional consulting and business organizations, which host events, list members’ names on their websites, and perform other marketing functions.

Joining these usually costs a nominal annual fee, but you are assured that visitors looking for a professional in your industry could potentially see your name on the members list.

Whichever marketing methods you choose to use, make sure you track results. If it’s not working, figure out why, and change it. If it still doesn’t work, try something else. Marketing is an evolutionary process, not a stagnant one!