181–190 of 270 posts
What are some good resources for learning how to handle corp to corp paperwork (contracts, billing, insurance, etc)? It's very easy to land contracts through agencies, who handle all of that stuff for you, but billing these kind of rates through them is not possible, since they are going to take a large cut for themselves.
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"How early can I start doing this?" Read the book Million Dollar Consulting. It pretty much gives a step-by-step guide, from lead gen to writing proposals to how to bill by value: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_19?url=search-alias... It repeats itself a lot and is generally poorly written, but there's still a reason why it's been the top consulting book for decades.
I have absolutely no idea how people start consulting. How old are they? Did they work something else before? Did they major in anything? Are they all independent or work at consulting companies?
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"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender r…
Lots of clients require you to say, in your contract, who will be working on a project. They will inquire after individuals.
You absolutely have to meet the customer requirements in your response. But its up to you where you place the emphasis :-)
There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…
As a marketer/rainmaker, I can assure you that I get much further with clients when I can cut their advertising and marketing costs, or cost per acquisition, than when I find them more profitable traffic and revenues.
My clients never scream, bring me the rain... They demand, "Bring Me More Rain For Less Money."
I think the dynamic going on is that people hate losing money, and when you find them wasted money they can save, they view it as "their rightful money,not something you got for them." In fact, saving them money that they were wasting can really rattle their ego, and make them feel like they were taken advantage of, and who wants to be the bearer of bad news?!
Making money for companies though is just not powerful enough to be the end all solution to rake in the dough.
Being able to find cheaper traffic and revenues to generate proportionately less traffic or revenue is a much bigger win. (i.e. if you make them $1000 at a cpa of $100 a customer... you are better off generating for them $800 for a $75 cpa... even though the rain is less, the cpa is better, which makes them look really good, and is a defensible place to be...
There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…
I humbly disagree with your theory that making money for a company is more valuable than saving them money. As a marketer/rainmaker, I can assure you that I get much further with clients when I can cut their advertising and marketing costs, or cost per acquisition, than when I find them more profitable traffic and revenues. My clients never scream, bring me the rain... They demand, "Bring Me More Rain For Less Money.…
I think the OP was making the contrast more with people who try and reduce the companies admin overhead slightly by automating parts of the accounting system.
That type of thing is easy for a company to put off and involves getting through cultural change and threatening people's turf to implement. A harder path.
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I humbly disagree with your theory that making money for a company is more valuable than saving them money. As a marketer/rainmaker, I can assure you that I get much further with clients when I can cut their advertising and marketing costs, or cost per acquisition, than when I find them more profitable traffic and revenues. My clients never scream, bring me the rain... They demand, "Bring Me More Rain For Less Money.…
You're still way up the pointy end of the business though. You are directly involved in acquiring customers. I think the OP was making the contrast more with people who try and reduce the companies admin overhead slightly by automating parts of the accounting system. That type of thing is easy for a company to put off and involves getting through cultural change and threatening people's turf to implement. A harder pa…
There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…
This is a great point. I've been trying to think of as many things programmers can do that increase revenue as possible. A/B Testing and sales funnel optimization is definitely a winner. - Optimizing how a company utilises it's resources - Optimizing the speed and performance of a critical business function. - Increasing marketing reach - Generating more sales leads What else guys?
One such formula would be to browse API's on programmableweb, and other places looking for opportunities to leverage other sites audience as a platform.
Another thing you can do is profile an audience and crunch big data to help find new opportunities...
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I admire people who can execute this consultative approach (and, it should go without saying, I admire Amy Hoy's work in particular). If you can make $500/hr/person for talking sessions, I think you should do that. But I want to take yet another opportunity to stab wildly at the idea that only people who can execute at this level are "consultants", and the rest "freelancers". Though I find the terminology a little si…
I don't think we're disagreeing here about pricing at all! Lots of very good freelancers are undercharging and everybody should price on value delivered. (Especially those freelancers who disappear and only get work done when yelled at. If only!) That's why a lot of the educational content I've used to promote Freckle is about delivering, understanding & capturing value… for freelancers. (Which includes understanding…
I've always been doing that, and felt uncomfortable to call this activity ‘programming’. Local clients (small businesses) hire a web developer to build a site, but it usually requires at least some education and research, as they rarely have good understanding of their needs. Still I'm shy to call it consulting except to myself. Your comment helped me understand better that it's almost exactly that consulting everyone talks about—thank you.
You mentioned books—can you recommend some titles, authors, or maybe subjects?
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And what about those who not even in US and belong to a "3rd world country" where one wish to give work only because it's Cheap?
And what about those who not even in US and belong to a "3rd world country" where one wish to give work only because it's Cheap? Be good at what you do; your location shouldn't affect your consulting rates. By way of example, I routinely bill in excess of $100/hour despite being located in Poland. And trust me, I'm working on increasing the value I deliver, and charging appropriately.