How to use the internet to find small business consulting assignments

I work for a web company that supplies help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and education and support to thousands of startups and small businesses in all corners of the world and whenever I explain to folks I meet what I do, I repetitively get asked the same question “Given my what I know, how could I use this and make regular money by becoming a small business consultant”? I’m always ready to offer advice as I am fortunate enough to spend the majority of my day communicating with small business owners and their teams happy to to tell me about their problems and needs.

This is what I tell them:

The net is the ideal place for finding customers and it makes it easy to reach 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 wisdom and help them resolve key challenges.

Information marketing – package and sell your expertise to businesses through the Internet

Now I know I have focused on small business consulting but what I share with you here is just as relevant to any size business. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a electronic format such as video, audio or documents. The tools to make superb material are readily available on the web. Creating a series of lessons in simple to use internet formats is now easy and affordable. You just have to be prepared to dedicate a small amount of time studying the tools. The goal here is to create some valuable content that you can either sell or give away to customers to encourage them to do business with you.

You have to decide what you want to achieve. Consultancy and Information marketing compliment each other and if you do both can be very profitable as the consultancy will provide you with the questions, the answers to which you can repackage and sell in digital format and sold over and over again.

If you are starting from scratch with no customers but have expertise you know would be in demand by others then plan to create a very short video to promote yourself and your expertise to your target(s). Unless you know the market exact problem then make the video generic and stick tothe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Make your messages as interesting as you can and keep the narratives short. Now deploy 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 target(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 market. You should always focus on growing a list you can interact with and make sales to. Continual interaction with your list will uncover people’s needs that will help you define what to sell. The bigger your list the more opportunities for consulating and selling information products you will find. 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 more than willing to help you.