Consulting Services—Have You Thought of These?
There are some obvious services you provide as a consultant and some not-so-obvious ones. With a little creativity, you can use your consulting infrastructure to make additional money in between other projects and when you travel. Presented here are several ideas including private seminars, teleconferences, coaching, roundtables, critiques, and mystery caller services.
Private Seminars
Private seminars are presentations you make to an individual company or organization just for their individual members, employees, or staff. Many of the companies you will be working with will be large enough that they may want to bring you in-house to do a seminar like this. Although there may be no product sales possibilities, this becomes a great additional source of revenue for you as a consultant.
To prepare for a private seminar, you just take your existing public seminar information and customize it to the individual client. There is no need to spend hours customizing, but you should make it seem like you did enough to make them feel like you did some real work.
Your fee schedule should list prices for half day and full day in-house seminars. It should be in-line with your daily consulting rates. It is appropriate to charge 10 or 15 percent less, depending on how much you like doing private seminars.
Every private seminar you do should be geared to giving the audience a lot of great, useable information, as well as setting the stage and the need for additional seminars aimed at the same group. In your post-seminar evaluation form include a section that asks the group what other topics they would like to see covered in a similar format. This way you can go back to the person who originally booked you and document why their staff needs you to come back.
Teleconferences
Teleconferences offer another great way to earn money consulting without leaving your home or office. The teleconference is a great add-on product. It is easy to do and you can generate revenue from a one- or two-hour meeting. And you can do it in your underwear in the privacy of your own home!
Here is how it works. You promote a teleconference to either your existing customers or to your prospects. If you market it to a group of existing customers, you can try and offer them a very specific seminar topic at a fairly high price range. If you offer the right topic, it would not be unreasonable to get people to pay $99 for a 60- to 90-minute meeting. In some markets you can get even more.
A terrific resource for teleconferences is freeconferencecall.com. They offer free and low-cost audio and data conferencing. Each conference call can have as many as 96 participants, and can last up to six hours. Call 1-877-482-5838 for additional information and current rates. Tell them I referred you.
Monthly/Weekly Coaching
Coaching occurs when you get people together, usually on a weekly or monthly basis, and help them meet their goals. It’s different than a teleseminar in that it is more personal and interactive between you and the participants. It is usually time- and cost-effective to do the coaching via telephone. This will also allow you to get paid the greatest amount for the least amount of time spent on the phone. To do group coaching, you will need what is called a “bridge line” to host these calls.
I suggest you price your coaching high enough to effectively select those who are truly interested in your services. After all, only those who are really interested will call you when they know you’re charging a lot of money for your time.
Roundtables in Cities You Visit
A roundtable is a small meeting (usually under 15 people) of existing or new customers. You typically promote it primarily to your existing customer base. Getting existing customers to show up for small group meetings in their own city isn’t difficult. It is also inexpensive to market. If anyone other than your existing customer base signs up, it will be a bonus.
Use roundtables to maximize your revenue when you travel. Let’s say you have to be in Chicago to meet with a client on a Tuesday. If you get to Chicago by noon on Monday, why not set up a roundtable for Monday from 4 to 6 PM? If you have 15 people show up and pay $300 each, you’ll make an additional $4,500 for two hours of work with very little risk.
If you are dealing with clients who are believers in your abilities, you should be able to send them a very simple letter letting them know you will be in town. The key is to keep the group small and exclusive. Let them know that the group will be 15 people or less. They will gladly pay to “sit at the feet of the master,” meet with other businesses in the group, listen to the latest information, and ask direct questions.
Critiques
A great way to increase the value of your products without spending a dime is with something called a critique coupon. The critique coupon is a small sheet of paper that is included with all of the products you sell that entitles your buyer to send a piece of promotional material or other item for you to evaluate and return to them.
For a little bit of your time, you can substantially increase the value of your package. It may take you ten minutes to do the critique and you increased the value of your package by $150. Not $150 in bogus value, but in true value as perceived by your customers. You can even send them an actual invoice marked “fee waived” or “courtesy review” to further impress them with the value of what you’ve done for them.
Make sure and respond to the critiques sent immediately. There is nothing more frustrating to your clients than not responding as quickly as you can. If it takes you two months to get back to them, the coupon will do more harm than good.
You can streamline the process by developing a template for many of your often requested critiques. For example, I receive a lot of requests to critique yellow page ads in a number of my niche markets. I developed a template to assist with my critique. This makes it much simpler for me to respond to critique requests once they are sent to me.
Mystery Caller
Another service that you can provide for customers as a consultant is to do what is referred to as “mystery calls.” This is where you call and sometimes record (but your client must get their employees to consent to it) the calls you make to their organization for the purpose of assessing the skills and talents of their employees over the phone.
When I perform this service, I send the company contact a cassette recording of the call with a critique at the end of the tape. Company owners are usually open to this kind of service because (in many cases) they know how poorly their phones are handled.
Typically, I charge anywhere between $75 to $100 per call. Each call usually takes less than 10 minutes including the critique.
Private Seminars
Private seminars are presentations you make to an individual company or organization just for their individual members, employees, or staff. Many of the companies you will be working with will be large enough that they may want to bring you in-house to do a seminar like this. Although there may be no product sales possibilities, this becomes a great additional source of revenue for you as a consultant.
To prepare for a private seminar, you just take your existing public seminar information and customize it to the individual client. There is no need to spend hours customizing, but you should make it seem like you did enough to make them feel like you did some real work.
Your fee schedule should list prices for half day and full day in-house seminars. It should be in-line with your daily consulting rates. It is appropriate to charge 10 or 15 percent less, depending on how much you like doing private seminars.
Every private seminar you do should be geared to giving the audience a lot of great, useable information, as well as setting the stage and the need for additional seminars aimed at the same group. In your post-seminar evaluation form include a section that asks the group what other topics they would like to see covered in a similar format. This way you can go back to the person who originally booked you and document why their staff needs you to come back.
Teleconferences
Teleconferences offer another great way to earn money consulting without leaving your home or office. The teleconference is a great add-on product. It is easy to do and you can generate revenue from a one- or two-hour meeting. And you can do it in your underwear in the privacy of your own home!
Here is how it works. You promote a teleconference to either your existing customers or to your prospects. If you market it to a group of existing customers, you can try and offer them a very specific seminar topic at a fairly high price range. If you offer the right topic, it would not be unreasonable to get people to pay $99 for a 60- to 90-minute meeting. In some markets you can get even more.
A terrific resource for teleconferences is freeconferencecall.com. They offer free and low-cost audio and data conferencing. Each conference call can have as many as 96 participants, and can last up to six hours. Call 1-877-482-5838 for additional information and current rates. Tell them I referred you.
Monthly/Weekly Coaching
Coaching occurs when you get people together, usually on a weekly or monthly basis, and help them meet their goals. It’s different than a teleseminar in that it is more personal and interactive between you and the participants. It is usually time- and cost-effective to do the coaching via telephone. This will also allow you to get paid the greatest amount for the least amount of time spent on the phone. To do group coaching, you will need what is called a “bridge line” to host these calls.
I suggest you price your coaching high enough to effectively select those who are truly interested in your services. After all, only those who are really interested will call you when they know you’re charging a lot of money for your time.
Roundtables in Cities You Visit
A roundtable is a small meeting (usually under 15 people) of existing or new customers. You typically promote it primarily to your existing customer base. Getting existing customers to show up for small group meetings in their own city isn’t difficult. It is also inexpensive to market. If anyone other than your existing customer base signs up, it will be a bonus.
Use roundtables to maximize your revenue when you travel. Let’s say you have to be in Chicago to meet with a client on a Tuesday. If you get to Chicago by noon on Monday, why not set up a roundtable for Monday from 4 to 6 PM? If you have 15 people show up and pay $300 each, you’ll make an additional $4,500 for two hours of work with very little risk.
If you are dealing with clients who are believers in your abilities, you should be able to send them a very simple letter letting them know you will be in town. The key is to keep the group small and exclusive. Let them know that the group will be 15 people or less. They will gladly pay to “sit at the feet of the master,” meet with other businesses in the group, listen to the latest information, and ask direct questions.
Critiques
A great way to increase the value of your products without spending a dime is with something called a critique coupon. The critique coupon is a small sheet of paper that is included with all of the products you sell that entitles your buyer to send a piece of promotional material or other item for you to evaluate and return to them.
For a little bit of your time, you can substantially increase the value of your package. It may take you ten minutes to do the critique and you increased the value of your package by $150. Not $150 in bogus value, but in true value as perceived by your customers. You can even send them an actual invoice marked “fee waived” or “courtesy review” to further impress them with the value of what you’ve done for them.
Make sure and respond to the critiques sent immediately. There is nothing more frustrating to your clients than not responding as quickly as you can. If it takes you two months to get back to them, the coupon will do more harm than good.
You can streamline the process by developing a template for many of your often requested critiques. For example, I receive a lot of requests to critique yellow page ads in a number of my niche markets. I developed a template to assist with my critique. This makes it much simpler for me to respond to critique requests once they are sent to me.
Mystery Caller
Another service that you can provide for customers as a consultant is to do what is referred to as “mystery calls.” This is where you call and sometimes record (but your client must get their employees to consent to it) the calls you make to their organization for the purpose of assessing the skills and talents of their employees over the phone.
When I perform this service, I send the company contact a cassette recording of the call with a critique at the end of the tape. Company owners are usually open to this kind of service because (in many cases) they know how poorly their phones are handled.
Typically, I charge anywhere between $75 to $100 per call. Each call usually takes less than 10 minutes including the critique.