I lead an internet company that supplies help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and expertise to thousands of startups and small businesses worldwide and whenever I explain to people what I do, I constantly get asked the same question “Given my skills and experience, how could I apply it and make earn cash quickly by becoming a small business consultant”? I’m always willing to supply guidance as I am privileged enough to spend a major amount of the time of my day communicating with small business owners and staff always prepared to talk about their problems and needs.
This is what I tell them:
The internet is the perfect medium 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 guidance and help them address problems.
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 create professional standard material are widely available on the world wide web. Producing a series of lessons in simple to use web ready formats is now easy and affordable. You just have to be prepared to dedicate a little time getting to know the systems. 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 repurpose for sale through the internet and sold over and over again.
If you are starting from scratch with no customers but have expertise you know would be needed by others then produce a no longer than 120 secs video to introduce yourself and your expertise to your potential client(s). Unless you know the potential client(s) precise problem then make the video generic and usethe 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. Follow this up with a phone call. If you know the specific nature of the prospect(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 method is ideally suited to situations where you are individually targeting prospect(s). 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 more people on your list the more consulting and information marketing opportunities you will discover. If you would like to understand more about how to do this then click on any of the links in this article. I would be very glad to help you.
