Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Find Consulting Clients

chrisachard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–97 of 97 posts

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#91

Post by monknomo »

JamesBarney wrote: post #53
monknomo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually more "We think we need some type of system to manage our business, please deliver a white paper and presentation comparing options, and then stand by to design the option we choose"

Yeah, we've had a couple of leads like this but each has wasted an enormous amount of our time. The general story has been they'll bring in several companies, we'll compete to get their business. We'll win the "competition" and then they'll assure us they're right about to pull the trigger for years. I've found that a large portion of clients that have vague idea of what they want are window shopping or very early in…

Ah right, that's the key. Window shopping is ok, if it's the kind where they will write a check for you to help with the shopping. Window shopping where they are not anywhere near writing a check is no good, and is something sales funnel should try to actively disqualify leads for

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#92

Post by TooCleverByHalf »

apercu wrote: post #6

I've used a lot of the same tactics. I find that although I like the "control" of direct projects, I do more and more subcontracted work because I can push a lot of the account and project management back to the company that subcontracts me, often this frees me up to just do the work, rather than all the activities around the work. Also, I tend to do 80% of my work with the same two clients - professional services fi…

> professional services firms that subcontract work to me

How were you able to create these kinds of relationships with the professional services firms?

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#93

Post by cloudartisans »

rcconf wrote: post #75

I've been able to scale consulting to about 20-35k / mo as a single developer.I've gotten all of my clients through word-of-mouth and I've spend zero dollars in marketing. The trick being that I always try to do the best work and communicate instantly with my clients. I.e, if a client e-mails me, or sends me a text, I respond in about one second. They seem to love that. I try to be as honest and forthcoming with each…

My trouble has been that I automate everything and document it so well, that I basically "code myself out of a job."

I also strive for instant response time (my wife hates that) and often, I'll already be working on a client issue that the servers emailed/paged me about by the time the client gets in touch (that definitely impresses them).

So, the typical pattern is this: I meet a new client, understand their needs, build a RESTful API back-end (Python, Django, Terraform, AWS), automate any internal processes and/or build internal tools, and then support their front-end team in building their web/mobile apps that consume the API.

Usually, it's a few days to a couple of weeks of full-time work, and then my hours drop off a cliff: either 1) the client's team takes over completely, or 2) if I stay on, any subsequent feature or issue takes just minutes for me to do, so then I'm back to square one, looking for the next client. So far, I've been lucky enough to make all the clients happy and have them become "clients for life," but that "life," added up between all the existing clients, is just a few billable hours a week.

Any advice for me to break this pattern?

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#94

Post by rpedela »

blunt_asshole wrote: post #19
rpedela wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see his comment and I don't have "showdead" turned on?

Turn on showdead to see all the other comments that didn't show up. You can vouch (if you have >500 karma) for individual comments to make them not dead.

Ah I didn't know that. Thanks.

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#95

Post by MR4D »

mdorazio wrote: post #79
BrentOzar wrote: post #10

The title is way off: he's talking about contractors, not consultants. Short version: Consultants tell the client what to do. Contractors are brought on to do what they're told. The advice in the article is a lot about "do you need someone do to ___ task" or "are you hiring an FTE, and could you do with a contractor instead" and that's contracting, not consulting. It's still valuable advice, but you don't find consul…

This is a distinction that ceased being meaningful 10ish years ago. Even the big management consulting firms run a combination of staff aug and strategy advice on most projects because there are so many more dollars for staff aug and project work than there are for advice. Yes, there are advice-only consultants and clients looking for that, but "consulting" is a bucket of work that encompasses a lot of different thin…

> Even the big management consulting firms

They are more outsources than anything. The management consulting tag is a leftover from decades ago.

Today, real management consulting firms are pretty much limited to McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and a few others.

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#96

Post by stevenicr »

Would like to see a new write of of resources that are good for running a consulting shop these days.

Sure I have some things bookmarked from previous HN threads like open-source- contracts to use, contracts, communication tools, project management, milestone sharing, invoicing and such perhaps? demo - sketch mockup sharing and such?

whats the popular freelance tech stack these days if one was going to go this route today?

Re: How to Find Consulting Clients

#97

Post by rcconf »

cloudartisans wrote: post #93
rcconf wrote: post #75

I've been able to scale consulting to about 20-35k / mo as a single developer.I've gotten all of my clients through word-of-mouth and I've spend zero dollars in marketing. The trick being that I always try to do the best work and communicate instantly with my clients. I.e, if a client e-mails me, or sends me a text, I respond in about one second. They seem to love that. I try to be as honest and forthcoming with each…

My trouble has been that I automate everything and document it so well, that I basically "code myself out of a job." I also strive for instant response time (my wife hates that) and often, I'll already be working on a client issue that the servers emailed/paged me about by the time the client gets in touch (that definitely impresses them). So, the typical pattern is this: I meet a new client, understand their needs,…

It sounds like you are doing $10k-$20k jobs in a few days or weeks.

Charge way more than you're charging. If you're successfully building our their entire backend, their internal tools and their automation in a few weeks, you should be charging for a few months instead of a few weeks.

In your case, it sounds like project work is better for you. I wouldn't recommend that you work hourly since that's probably where you're being burned. If you quote a REST API, automation system and internal tools for $10k-$30k and you finish it in 2 weeks, then you're golden and so is the startup since they just saved a lot of time.

I would highly recommend that you get on retainers with your clients. If they appreciate your work, and need help from time-to-time, you shouldn't be charged for 1 hour whenever they need you. They should pay for you to be available for them, so perhaps try to get on $500 - $1000 / month retainers. They may only need you a few times a month, but you're not billing them for $100-$200 for 1 hour of work, what a bad deal for you (and a great deal for them!)

Post reply on HN