How To Tell If You Are a Consultant (Or Want To Be One)
Thinking about the freelance life? There are many ways to earn your bread as a freelancer. Fields like copywriting or website design may quickly bring clear pictures to mind. But you may have a hard time visualizing yourself as a “freelance consultant.”
Preconceptions about what it takes to be called a “consultant” often get in the way. You could miss some good ideas and great opportunities simply because you assume you are not in a consulting business.
The most common misunderstanding about what it takes to be a consultant has to do with size: the size of the consulting business, and the size of the consulting client.
Really, Size Does Not Matter
On the one hand, there are some massive consulting firms out there, like the well-known McKinsey group. But consultancies come in all sizes, and there are certainly many highly successful solo, freelance consultants. That’s easy to see.
The more problematic “size” misconception is that consultants are people who work with big corporate clients. In reality:
- While many consultants do focus on large clients,
- Some consultants focus on small businesses, and
- Some consultants work exclusively with individuals.
Indeed, some work across several levels. I have worked with some of the biggest and best known companies in the country, but I spend a lot of time advising individual freelancers, providing marketing support for training consultants.
It’s A Matter Of Wits
Are you, could you, would you like to be a “freelance consultant”? Consider this rough definition:
- Freelancers are people who live by their wits.
- Consultants are people who sell their wits.
Freelancers have very little given to them. They don’t have a boss telling them exactly how to do everything, and when to do it (client directives and deadlines notwithstanding). They have to figure out how to run their businesses.
Freelancers can, of course, provide very concrete services. You may turn to a one-person shop to get your plumbing fixed or to do your taxes.
Basically, consultants give advice, and clients pay for the opportunity to receive that advice.
The consulting angle comes in when one of the primary services or products you provide is your knowledge, your expertise, your skill in influencing people. Basically, consultants give advice, and clients pay for the opportunity to receive that advice. Often, they pay consultants because they know more about best management practices, safety issues, environmental law, or some other subject, than the client does.
They also pay consultants who can make advice stick. Companies hire professional trainers because they not only know their subject matter, they’re exceptionally effective in communicating that knowledge in ways that produce long-term benefits to the client.
Remember, it is not just large companies that will pay for advice. For instance, coaching is a significant area of consulting activity. Some very successful coaches work one-on-one with individuals to improve either their personal or business lives (or both). (And some coaches are hired by large corporations to work with their executives.)
The Consultative Approach
Being a “consultant” is less an either-or proposition than it is a position on a spectrum of possibilities. A more consultative approach involves more time understanding the client situation, more independence in crafting and proposing solutions, and more independence in how the job gets done.
A more consultative approach involves more time understanding the client situation, more independence in crafting and proposing solutions, and more independence in how the job gets done.
For instance, I recently saw a major blogging platform promoting their design services through a case study. One of their users had contacted them with a detailed description of how he would like his blogging site to be rebuilt into a full purpose website. The blogging service created exactly what the client wanted, and it looked lovely. But they didn’t do any consulting on the project.
Had they asked a lot of questions about the client’s business; probed deeper; anticipated future as well as immediate needs; suggested features that the client might not have been aware of; and provided a more informed framework for the client to make decisions about his website, they would have been playing a consulting role, even as they provided basic technical services.
Indeed, it’s almost a natural evolution. Often, if you are really good at what you do, clients start to ask your advice. After years of providing straightforward services, you find yourself spending more time sharing what you have learned to help clients achieve their goals more quickly. (And you should find yourself charging more!)
You have, perhaps without realizing it, entered the consulting business.
Whether your clients are big or small, whether or not concrete products and services are part of what you offer, when clients are mainly after what’s in your head, and your ability to share that effectively, you have some great consulting opportunities ahead of you.
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Amazing article! I have found myself incorporating more and more consulting into my design business, and now I’ve been pulling mentees like it’s my second job! I never realized I had such a lucrative set of tools in my process and discipline, but lately it’s been how I’ve attracted new clients.
This article really helped break that seemingly round-about process down in a clear and concise way
Thanks!
Sounds like you’ve had a happy evolution in your work.
One thing that happens to people as they learn from experience is that they get more efficient, which can be a problem! If they can complete a superior design in half the time, and they charge by time instead of by the outcome, they lose ground!
But beyond that pricing strategy, if they can recognize the added value their experience brings to the client, and get the client to recognize that, as you say, it opens a whole new world of options.
What would be the best way to price for consulting services?
Price by the hour. Always. If you agree to a fixed price up front, you’re inevitably going to get screwed: the client will never stop asking for little tweaks and so on. I say this having worked as a freelance programmer for 20 years.
I have to disagree with Dan. I work with clients on a price per project / campaign.
I do agree that you can end up with a client asking for tweaks (this is called Mission Creep), but you can overcome this with making really clear up front contracts.
After a while, you can premeditate what the clients are going to ask for tweaks on, so when you learn, you add that to your way of working from the start.
The problem I have with charging by the hour is that you box yourself into a certain category.
At the end of the day we are freelancers and consultants and we are hopefully delivering some really excellent results for our clients. This is what they pay for and for me, it makes sense to pay for it as a package.
That’s what works for me though and i’m sure Dan’s system works really well for him.
I am a freelance writer, who raises money for organizations and I bring consulting to every project. But I don’t have the luxury to say, “You should do this, this, and this.” I have to do a lot of the work for them. What I say is “this will work to bring in X dollars and this is how I will execute the project.” I imagine it is the same for web designers and software developers. We are people who not only have ideas, but must execute them.
Some consultants give the profession a bad name. I have worked with people, who called themselves consultants. And all they could do were hold endless meetings, delegate all of the work, and pretty much were a waste of space. And for some reason all of the consultants I knew talked slowly. Maybe it’s because they charge $250 an hour.
I like how you mentioned the “transition” into consulting more. In most cases it does take a while to build up a client base and for word of mouth to travel.
Fascinating article, but I think for me a HUUUGE chunk of consulting was missed out, the ability to relate ideas in a way that the client finds pallateable. Now this seems very easy, but when you get a client who is a non-native english speaker, literacy or numeracy problems or gets frustrated easily, I think the real skills of a consultant come to play!
There’s a message which is spoken here, but not forcefully enough: it’s expressed in the article as “live by one’s wits”… but it’s more than that. A freelancer/consultant must be aware that a screw-up means the end of the contract, and not getting paid. So there has to be an ability to do away with the idea of stress: since consulting is, inherently, attritional in nature, one must be able to disregard that aspect of the business and just get on with it. Most people are unable to do this: they require stability and order in their lives – a consultant must be able to adapt to a situation which can change 180 degrees in a few seconds.
Well written and have to say published at a time when needed the most.Thanks for sharing.
Lewis, Will did mention that, by stating ” … consultants… can make advice stick… they’re exceptionally effective in communicating that knowledge”
This article is very concise and helpful to anyone trying to discern what it is that qualifies someone to be a consultant.