A presentation given for the Little Fish Consultant meetup in San Francisco on Feb 10th 2017

1. The business
of consulting
@iangotts
ian@elements.cloud

2. Winning
rewarding
profitable
work

3. CREDIBILITY
Notes:
1st impressions: company name, email, website, business card
Most of your work will be referral / word of mouth
Pick a name that is easy to remember and not a wacky TLD
If all else fails, your initials + Partners eg IGPartners.com

4. Every
Consultant
Is
Awesome

5. Expectation
Commonality
Intent
Ability
Notes
This is the order that
clients will judge you

6. DIFFERENTIATION
Notes:
You need to work on this. Pick a niche.
Easy option is align with a product
Salesforce.com is a great place to play as real need for business consultants
Team up with a Salesforce technical consultant
Document your IP (intellectual property) – your methodology, your approach
Leverage your blogs and articles
Write a book - SO MUCH more valuable than blog or white paper

8. Notes:
This was built using Elements.cloud –
free mapping app

9. PROFITABILITY
Notes:
Pick markets which can support your financial needs;
eg avoid small non-profits and startups

10. 3 ways to
increase
day rate
Fix bigger problems
Paid by the size of the problems you can fix.
Project Management is the top of the list.
Commodity technical / coding is at the bottom

11. scope
Losing control of scope is serial killer for projects
Scope should be in your contract with customer
Shouldn’t be starting work without a contract

12. 3 ways to
increase
day rate
Minimize benchtime
Do great work and get referred or find other
projects inside client. It all starts with great work.
And finishes with a name that people can
remember and refer onto others
Start coaching your client from Day1 on the case
study you are going to write and they are goignt o
sign off

13. 3 ways to
increase
day rate
Annuity revenue streams
Annuity revenue is great to have but hard to achieve
Can you license your IP?
Can you provide a support service with a monthly
retainer?
Can you get a product referral for a product you
really believe In and need to use at your client?

14. Always be yourself
unless you can be Batman.
Then always be Batman

15. @iangotts
ian@elements.cloud
Thanks