Selling your Expertise

If you’re in the business of selling your expertise or ideas, getting past the launch period and moving into a stage of sustainable growth comes with unique challenges. When your primary product is knowledge, that is, your personal brainpower (comprised of education, industry experience, intelligence, gut instinct) your customers are hiring you. You can’t hire and train people to do what you do, because your service offering is not a trainable or transferable skill. That means that traditional business growth strategies such as refining processes and implementing systems may not work for your business.

So exactly how do you grow a knowledge-based business, such as a consulting firm? Your company needs to be something that can run without you personally doing all of the consulting with clients. You need to switch from being the front-facing client contact, to being the visionary and marketer. You will be responsible for branding the business, developing the staff, and implementing the strategic plan.

Consultant or Owner of a Consulting Business?
So, do you want to be a self-employed consultant, or do you want to own a consulting business? If you want a business, you need to hire talent who can do the consulting; and you’ll need to sell your firm’s expertise – not yours – to your clients. The downside to this is that you probably chose this business specifically because you are passionate about working directly with your clients, and you won’t get to do a lot of that anymore. The upside is that you’ll have a true business that can run itself if you decide to spend a morning on the golf course or – just imagine – take a vacation. You’ll also have a scalable business that potentially can be sold, further securing your future.

Being a self-employed consultant is an honourable profession; just be clear that it is a very different thing from being a business owner.