Smart Things to Know About Consultancy

Smart Things to Know About Consultancy provides the complete guide for those aspiring to set themselves up in consultancy. It covers the basics of starting out on your own, deciding service range, branding and fee policy, through to bringing in the business, writing persuasive proposals and styles of working. What is Smart?

Acknowledgements.

Preface.

Introduction: The Nature of Consultancy.

Deciding the Service Range.

Setting Fees and Fee Policy.

Image and Profile.

Your Target Market.

Promoting Your Business.

Personal and Professional Selling.

Writing Persuasive Proposals.

Styles of Working.

Career Options.

Afterword .

References.

Index.

Patrick Forsyth runs Touchstone Training & Consultancy and has worked as a consultant for some 25 years, first with a major firm, subsequently setting up his own operation in 1990. In training he has run public programmes for course organisers such as The Institute of Management, and in-company programmes for organisations large and small. In consultancy he has been involved in projects ranging from one-to-one mentoring to significant strategic studies, always with a practical and hands-on focus. His work has taken him around the world.

He writes extensively on marketing and management matters, for example writing a number of books in Capstone?s innovative ExpressExec series, including Career Management and Business Planning, and Corporate Survival for their Kickstart series.

Smart is a breakthrough series that offers a completely new learning experience for hassled business people. The books deliver all that the fast-track executive needs to shine and perform. Each book delivers a sharp introduction to the basics as well as experiences and tips from the frontiers of the subject and the insights of the hottest gurus.

Smart books have been selected to feature only those subjects which matter most to today?s business professional. The Smart series brings these subjects together to equip the next generation with the secrets of success.

Each Smart book contains icons, features and signposts to help you use the ideas in your career and business:

• Smart things to say: gives you inside tips and tricks
• Smart quotes: what the experts say
• Smart people to have on your side: make friends with the gurus
• Killer questions: ideas to make your colleagues jump
• Smart answers to tough questions: helps you stay out of trouble and ahead of the game!
• Smart voices: real people from smart companies

How does this scenario sound? You have an area of expertise. You can offer sensible and authoritative advice to others. They pay you. You go home feeling fulfilled.

Sound too simple? Well with some enthusiasm and some Smart advice to help you along the way, Patrick Forsyth, successful entrepreneur and leading consultant, will show you everything you need to know about starting and maintaining a successful consultancy.

Smart Things to Know About Consultancy will give you the foot-up you need; from deciding your service range and fee scale, through targeting prospects and brand management, to writing winning proposals and working styles. You need to be a jack of all trades and, more importantly, master of many. Patrick Forsyth reviews these topics and many more:

The nature of consultancy – what do consultants actually do?
• Marketability - any consultant must decide exactly what it is that he or she is going to actually do for their clients. OK, so you�ve got a great area of expertise, but is there a market for it?

• Setting fees and fee policy - consultancy may be inseparable from the word �advice�, but there is a difference. Advice can be freely given, but consultancy needs to be paid for. You need to decide how exactly you will charge and, in due course, get the money that�s due to you.

• Promotion – so now you know who to communicate your message to, but what�s the best way to go about it? And how does one manage that process at the same time as juggling the other twenty things that are just as important?

• Career options – what does the future hold?

Consultancy can be extremely rewarding work – financially and emotionally. Whether you have already decided to take the plunge or it�s just a dream, Smart Things to Know About Consultancy offers inspiring and practical advice.

SMART QUOTES:
'The best way to predict the future is to invent it' Dennis Gabor