Marketing Consulting – How to Set Your Rates As a Marketing Consultant

There are several hoops to jump through in becoming a marketing consultant. One ever-expanding hoop is of course is how to set your rates? This can be tricky, so use guidelines because with rates too expensive, you may price yourself out of the market and with no packaged rates at all, good luck trying to “reel in” sales.

Truth be told, this was one of our largest hurdles to jump over when setting out on our journey as being a professional online marketing consulting firm. In fact, how to set your rates as a marketing consultant should be the very last thing you actually solidify in your marketing plan before you set out to prospect customers.

The reason why is because without experience, you just don’t know how good what you have to offer really is until you give it a shot! Sometimes you’ll be successful and sometimes you won’t – isn’t that what being an entrepreneur is all about?

If I was to provide you with a blanket answer that would not be fair because what you charge clients for services really depends. We were throwing out quotes to prospective clients that were front-end loaded into the thousands in the beginning and getting totally frustrated at all of the NO’S we were getting.

This is when we realized the power of providing an a la carte menu of services, as well as a packaged rate for our services. When designing your sales and marketing funnel, I would suggest starting at the end first.

Beginning with the end in mind allows you to best know EXACTLY what your clients will be receiving from you. Once you know what you’ll be supplying them, it’s easy to be more revealing and honest on the front-end of your exchanges.

On the a la carte menu, have some ballpark numbers to work with so that you provide both you and your clients the flexibility to create a nice mixture of back and forth correspondence until you agree to the most ideal arrangement.

Most offline business owners know two things about online marketing. First, most are happy to admit know nothing about websites, HTML coding, auto-responder email marketing, QR codes, Facebook, Twitter and who knows what else. All they really want is to be more findable online and make more money.

They are also not very shy about letting you know their prior experience with other online consultants or online marketing services; most services haven’t provided favorable results in the past and they can’t express candidly enough that you’ll be swimming up-stream just to get the chance to prove to them that you can help improve and better their bottom line. They’ll open up if you stay with it.

So my best answer in helping you understand how to set your rates as a marketing consultant is to work off a baseline grid and attempt to package your suite of services into one, all-inclusive monthly cost.

One final tip is that many times, a client is much more receptive to rolling their set-up costs into their monthly cost if you are willing to amortize it over the course of the year agreement you make.

If they have the cash and are willing to pay, don’t offer them the option to pay it throughout the year and put them on a month-to-month, client at will basis.

Sharepoint Consulting to Get Flattering Values

Are you perplexed by the difficulty of Sharepoint features? Do you find issues while trying to solve an essential file sharing process? Searching for an expert guidance in web publishing and collaboration strategies? Then you need proven Sharepoint Consulting services. There are many service providers who interact with you via web session or online teleconference to simply simplify and clarify your doubts, make Sharepoint features and architecture simpler and help in solving the frustrating problems with your collaboration system. They also guide you in brainstorming and strategizing plans to get the most out of the web investment.

Service providers should have good experience and expertise on various products and technologies of Microsoft. Focusing on the systems and strategies developed by Microsoft, the service providers should work on real world design and deployment projects for clients round the globe. Apart from industrial business companies, government agencies and big academic institutions also need consulting services from the expertise hands. Professionals conduct interactive conferring engagements for ventures irrespective of their size and type. You can find many case studies on the websites of these service providers that are prepared from their client engagements.

You can also check with the blue-chip list of companies that have worked with the provider and received quality of services from the consultants. These practices will help you find out the best consulting service provider in the industry. Each organization may differ in the needs and objectives of conferring services and would be at different stages during the time of service adoption. So, people are advised to select consultants who have designed wide range of conferring strategies to best address the specific situations and requirements of different clients. The professionals should have the flexibility to determine the nature of the business and strategize conferring engagements as per the unique requirements of clients.

Ensure that you will receive fast, cost effective and focused services from the experts. Get close-up and personal services to get your business best in its field. The consultant should help you to optimize your site’s navigation and taxonomy. They should provide you with the most out of workflows, alerts, search and Outlook integration. You will be reported with the right information in the right way at the right time. Established consultants will help you to plan deployment, estimate the current system configuration, troubleshoot issues, automation, leverage reporting, integration features and address all other specific needs that you may have.

5 Steps to Working From Home As a Grant Writing Consultant

All of us at one time or another have experienced the loss of a job, being in transition or just plain don’t like the job we have. It’s a tough situation to be in but it also gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we can do differently in getting what we want from our next venture.

If you happen to be floating along in one of these less than desirable situations, let me challenge you to do some radical thinking – have you thought about ditching a job search altogether and creating your own job? Self-employment is the hottest trend according to U.S. Labor Statistics and nonprofit grant writing consulting lends itself beautifully to working from home, making money and contributing to society’s improvement.

I started my own grant writing consulting business as a desire and need to be a stay-at-home working mom. There were just a few things that I needed to happen. One, I needed to make money. That was a given. Second, I wanted flexibility to work my job from home. And, three, I still wanted to contribute to the good of society by continuing my work in nonprofit.

In order to be a successful grant writing consultant, I realized quickly that I was going to have to get five tools working for me. These are very important and they’ll work for you too. Think of yourself as the mechanic of your career. And what does every mechanic need? Tools! Get these tools into your toolbox and see the success that follows.

1. Have confidence in stepping outside of your comfort zone. No luck securing the job of your dreams? Try something new and different by working for you. Thousands of others (including yours truly) have taken the leap and never looked back. Everything and everyone has a starting point. If it’s something you’ve been wanting to try, don’t waste any more time. You don’t ever want to look back and say “I wish I would have…”

2. In becoming a grant writing consultant, first learn correct grant writing techniques that will win grants. Well, duh, you might say. All I’m advising is that you pay attention to who you place your trust in in learning the cornerstone of your new business. Remember that guy with the question mark suit that promised a bunch of free money from the government? He’s an example of who to avoid. Also, read and learn everything you can about this skill. There are many reputable folks that you can learn from. And, practice makes perfect like with anything else in life. Remember the first day on your current or last job and everything just seemed so new and strange? You get over that. For those of you with experience in grant writing, yay!, you get to skip this step and move on.

3. Build and sustain meaningful relationships. This holds true for just about everyone you come into contact with in your business. Get to personally know the folks at the offices of the grant funders that you’re making application to. Like you, they put their pants on one leg at the time and they’re there to help. Take an interest also in really getting to know the nonprofits you serve. Don’t just tell them what you can do for them – actively engage yourself in finding out what matters most to them. Not only is this a polite way to do business – it consistently attracts clients that pay you.

4. Effectively market yourself to attract clients. There are two ways to market yourself as a grant writing consultant – locally and virtually. And, no, you don’t have to be an aggressive marketer to attract potential customers. As a matter of fact, my personality just lends itself to a more soft-sale approach. I advise my clients to hang out where the business is. In this case, it will be where nonprofits gather. If you’re interested in working locally, check out your local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals ( http://www.afpnet.org ) and attend some meetings. All potential clients! Marketing virtually, of course, means establishing a website and connecting via social media for more clients. There are nonprofit groups on LinkedIn to engage in discussion and Twitter and Facebook are also good starting places.

5. Become known as the go-to person. You want to become known as the balm that will soothe your client’s pain. In time, you’ll learn to use speaking and other communication means to your advantage to establish this reputation and become a respected fixture in the grant writing world.

So, there you have it. If you’d like to learn more about the first steps in beginning your own career, be sure to visit my website and download a FREE copy of “You Can Become a Grant Writing Consultant.” You might also be interested in my step-by-step instructional program GRANTcoach – taking you from a grant writing novice into a successful consultant.

A Closer Look at Search Engine Consulting Services

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization or SEO is a great way to generate traffic in your website. Whether the website is of a small or large business, search engine consulting services can be a big help. Google can generate traffic by making your website appear on top of their results in case someone does search for information that is somehow related to your business. There are several ways upon which SEO experts can make your website stand out and be noticed. One of the methods they use is the use of keywords that will eventually attract customers to buy or avail of your products and services.

The SEO Mission

It is the mission of all search engine optimization companies to work directly with their clients and their clients’ business to be able to create the best, if not perfect, search engine optimization package for their clients. Search engine consulting services can help you from starting with creating and developing the initial website all the way to the reaching your goal to make your business successful. These SEO companies work with their clients in all their marketing efforts to increasing traffic and recognition in the World Wide Web.

Ranking and Pricing

A team of SEO consultants would be able to help your website move up at top rankings with regards to any search engines online, thus, boosting your business visibility and revenue as well. Small businesses need not worry about hiring SEO consultation services because they have affordable packages that are offered to small budget businesses specifically. Consultation may be done through chat, phone, or email and most websites need only around 2 to 3 hours to have most of the website problems fixed.

Custom Consulting Services

Consulting services start with basically presenting all SEO requirements. Website remodeling might also be an option if the SEO experts find the need to do so. The custom SEO packages consists of Keyword research, building of links, copywriting, article writing, press releases, directory submissions, website remodeling, campaigns that involve pay per click functions, and submission to Google. The SEO consultants would look over the source code and put it under optimization to make sure that it would be search engine friendly. While doing this, accessibility as well as the overall user experience is maintained. Most SEO consultation services are affordable so you are assured that you would be able to run your internet marketing campaign effectively and efficiently. Once the SEO services is completed, you can keep letting the SEO experts manage your website, or they can turn it over to you.

Search engine consulting companies guarantee that all their corporate methods have been proven to work effectively and efficiently. Their methods include planning, building, launching, optimizing, as well as managing the website to track its progress. SEO is the latest in online marketing strategies that have proven to work in making businesses and websites visible and outstanding in the busy world of the internet.

Advantages and Benefits of IT Consulting Services

When you decide to use the services of an IT Consulting firm, you would get assistance with the identification of areas of opportunity which will improve your overall efficiency. In addition, it may also improve your costs. You will be provided with a road-map for change and have experienced help as you transition processes / technology projects. They will be able to act as an independent 3rd party engaged in strategic decision making and provide expertise to complement or enhance client resources.

IT Consulting is a domain that focuses on advising organisations on how to enhance the performance of their existing information technology assets to meet their business objectives.

There are a number of reasons for which you may require the help of an external IT Consulting Services firm, as the services provided cover a number of areas, such as:

Consulting for business change
Consulting for infrastructure management
Building competitive advantage through IT
Aligning the technology strategy to the business strategy
Capturing synergy benefits related to technology in a post-merger integration
Global delivery models – knowledge and transition management
Establishment of processes and methodology to transform captive units into external service providers
Reducing IT cost and needless complexity
Projects can be rather complex to design, deploy, secure and manage; therefore, a project requires a strong level of expertise to execute it proficiently. It is a big advantage if the supplier also has the capabilities to deliver IT project management services. A dedicated IT project management team can focus on delivering trouble-free implementation with minimal disruption to your business. They can deliver your requirements expediently, from commencement of your project, or at any stage in the project life cycle.

The advantages that you will gain whilst working with such a provider are as follows:

Aligning business and technology strategy
Reducing IT complexity
Improving overall efficiency and /or costs
Professional and cost effective transition programmes
Change management from experienced professionals
Independent 3rd party consulting will help non-emotional decision making
Expertise when none is available
These advantages will translate into the benefits of your ability to:

Evaluate and prepare a comprehensive IT plan to minimise wastage of labour and spend, if time or experience is an issue
Complement or enhance skills sets where deficiencies are apparent
Improve efficiencies of your work force, if forced upon the individual or department
One of the top 10 universities in the United Kingdom is an example of a client that required IT consulting assistance. The challenge they faced was that, changes in the university funding made it imperative to improve cost savings. Their IT consultants met with key members of their personnel and identified areas of improvement. Then, a technology audit was conducted, wherein the current delivery landscape was mapped to identify areas where the cost to profit initiatives could be exploited, with a view to further reducing IT costs for the University. This resulted in the University as a whole, experiencing reduced costs and improved efficiencies, which enabled it to take on significant projects, in addition to day to day tasks.

Day in the Life of a Strategy Consultant

The day of a strategy consultant can be long, starting at seven a.m. or earlier and not ending until midnight (if not later.) A given day for a strategy consultant may contain many different activities. Below is a sample day in the life for a strategy consultant, Dianne.

8 a.m. -Dianne leaves the house to meet with a client executive. She hopes to convince the client to drop some of the product lines that are not profiting his company. Because Diane was expecting there to be a confrontation when this idea was brought up, she is not surprised when he disagrees with her. Two hours later, he finally concedes that it is time to create a more marketable product line and agrees to discontinue product lines that are no longer selling.

11:00 a.m. - Dianne is at her desk and calls in for a team conference call discussing a shared document to be presented at a committee meeting later in the week. They made sure the structure and presentation of the document was satisfactory to all on the team.

12:15 p.m. -Dianne replies to her missed phone calls and emails received while in morning activities. Once she has caught up on communication, she brings out her lunch to eat.

1:00 p.m. -Dianne meets with the vice president of strategy. She goes over current projects with him, and she wanted to talk about strategies that can be used for a new client she is meeting with tomorrow. This client wants to change the way he does global manufacturing, and Dianne wants to discuss ways to have a productive conversation on this topic, and goals for her consulting company.

2:00 p.m. -Dianne spends time checking her email, returning calls, and responding to client inquiries. During this time, she makes sure to take care of the concerns from her client executive. During her other activities, he sent many emails expressing concerns over discontinuing a product line that wasn’t profitable, but was quite popular among a certain market.

4:00 p.m.-Dianne meets with a partner and works on a document for a recruiting presentation about what strategy consultants do.

6:15 p.m. -Dianne returns home, but only briefly. She has a dinner meeting with a client and team members to discuss informally the status of one of their projects.

9:00 p.m. -Dianne returns home after the dinner to discuss a design project with an expert on the West Coast. After an hour-long conversation, Dianne begins to wind down for the evening and prepare for another long day of work. Tomorrow her and her team will present their document, she has a meeting with a client vice president, and she will be interviewing candidates.

Management Consultants – Assuring Growth and Prosperity of Your Business

Management consultants are equipped with expertise knowledge and specialized skills aimed at maximizing the growth and prosperity of the business. Creating strategies and mode of operation for any organization is the primary factor that have to deal with. They not only have to assist in analyzing any problem but also need to implement expert solution to that particular problem according to the demand of the situation.

Management consultants play vital roles in various aspects of business. Their services include business strategy making, controlling financial matters, managing human resources, staffing, supply-chain management and e-business. To deal with these entire factors management consultant must always remain well equipped with quite a huge amount of resource.

Management consultants always need to be focused on the nature of the issue the client has to deal with. Thus for any management consultant it becomes very important to keep a steady head under critical situations and come up with innovative solutions from time to time. Research work is therefore very important for them. Consultants have to carry out researches and back themselves up with handy resources.

The typical daily activities include analyzing the nature of the problems, conducting workshops and ensure that the client is always provided with the necessary assistance and recommending appropriate solutions. Consultants need to be flexible in order to be present at the client’s site, provide quality leadership, and prepare presentations, and even take interviews for the client.

In general consultancies are entrepreneurial and they work on the basis of projects. Depending on the nature of the projects and requirement of the clients the length of the projects can vary. Thus management of time is another very important factor. Building up an efficient team and strategize accordingly to carry out the project-is what the consultants should be focused at.

A Marketing Consultant – 5 Golden Benefits

What if you discovered how your marketing consultant can help you to boost your website profits right through the roof? Do you want to know what it takes to make massive money online starting today hiring a marketing consultant?

Here are 5 simple steps to get you started easily.

Step 1 – Hiring a marketing consultant saves massive time.

Step 2 – Helps you to setup a strategic plan of action based on your goal.

Step 3 – Helps to clear all your road blocks that you might face if you happen to go all alone.

Step 4 – Helps to setup a highly targeted traffic generation plan.

Step 5 – You will discover some highly profitable cash-engines that only experts will know.

The purpose of this article is to get you started on the right track making easy money online. Here are step by step details that you can apply quickly and easily.

Step 1 – Hiring a marketing consultant saves massive time.

Would it be intelligent if you go on for years figuring out how to set up a successful Internet business?
Or it would be more intelligent to hire a marketing consultant and seek his help to set up a powerful Internet business of your own in next one month. Marketing consultant will easily help you to set up a step-by-step action plan to boost your Internet marketing campaign.

Step 2 – Helps you to setup a strategic plan of action based on your goal.

Marketing consultant can easily help you to setup a step-by-step action plan to market your products and services starting today. This will make it possible for you to jumpstart your promotion campaign and start making sales online. There will be many speed breakers on your way to achieve Internet success therefore make sure to follow your marketing consultants advise.

Step 3 – Helps to clear all your road blocks that you might face if you happen to go all alone.

There will be many speed breakers on your road to achieve massive Internet success and your marketing consultant will make you aware of them and help you easily to boost your product sales. Website traffic generation will determine the amount of sales you make therefore make sure you setup a highly powerful traffic generation plan.

Step 4 – Helps to setup a highly targeted traffic generation plan.

Without traffic your website will fail and you cannot expect to make any sales out of your website. Therefore it is extremely important that you setup very powerful daily traffic generation blueprint that you can use to move towards your end goal. There are simple cash engines to setup to boost your Internet profits that consultants will easily make you aware of.

Step 5 – You will discover some highly profitable cash-engines that only experts will know.

There are many powerful profit generation systems that you can use in your Internet business that will increase its profitability at massive speed. Marketing consultant will be aware about that and will help you to set up the systems on your website to take it to the next level.

Business Consulting Firms Help To Make Launching A Business Hassle-Free

Starting a small company isn’t easy. Signing up your new company and setting it up is demanding and can take several months to complete. The great news is that business consulting firms exist to allow you to find your own feet.

They offer assistance in every process of starting up a business. Developing company structure, sales strategies and company identity are examples of the things they can do just for you. Let them know whatever your goals are, and they will give you a course of action. Several firms in addition offer to complete the certification that goes with registering your own institution. That will actually save you time and effort, that can be used on all the other areas of your trade.

You can ask a small business consultant on the subject of operating a company. Firms get consultants who have got excellent track records and lots of knowledge in the corporate world. Do not be hesitant to ask about procedures you don’t fully grasp. They will explain all of it to you up until you feel you’ll be able to manage things on your own. They can also aid you in building the image that you want to give. What principles would you like to show to all of your clients? Do you want the idea to be polished, edgy, or artistic? Is there any specific demographic you want to concentrate on? These are some of the queries that you’re going to answer at the same time.

They offer a wide range of products that you will want for your industry. Most documents and applications are offered in templates so you do not need to originate from nothing. Constructing a website is a breeze using their easy to customize website templates. Coming up with official papers is not hard because of their business templates. Additionally, they offer software to take note each and every process within your enterprise like issue trackers, staff member data managers, and financial wizards to mention a few. You won’t have to worry about documenting anything that goes on in your company. Most of these offerings can be found online. A specialist is as well available online to reply to any queries you may have.

You can ask: “Why do I need a business consulting firm to do every one of these? I can pay people within my company to do this.” They can look at issues more rationally. A person who works for your business may be reluctant to make efficient choices. They may be worried about how their decision can impact the brand new company. At the same time, it could be a call which may not really appeal to you. A small business consultant can certainly make difficult judgements without ever worrying about your response. He takes your best interests in mind and integrates it together with his expertise to present you with the know how to operate your enterprise successfully.

Newly founded corporations aren’t the only ones acquiring the assistance of those firms. Even bigger companies get third-party consultants to help them improve their work circulation. The significance of getting the services of business consulting firms is starting to become clearer every day. You will want their services if you’re just starting up a corporation. Watch them take you down the road to success. You would rapidly understand they really are worth the cost.

Internal Consulting – A Survival Guide – Part 2

In describing this dilemma, let’s get clear about some differences. Internal consultants have a variety of roles in different organizations, many of them in the managed change arena. To be consulting, there are some assumptions about consultative position and intervention stance. Schein lists three consultative positions: expert resource, doctor/client, and process consultant. All are valid roles to play for clients, but it is very important to understand which of these roles you play. Let’s say, for instance, that the organization is rolling out an initiative with a predetermined method and outcome. Your role is to provide the expertise of implementation to the system owners who now have the chore of following an initiative. The more the outcome is predetermined the more you fall into the realm of doctor/client or pair of hands.

Internal consultants live with a daily balancing act between being like the system and different from the system. To operate effectively in a consultative role, you must offer something different in terms of skills, abilities, and perspectives than what already exists widely in the client system. If you are operating redundantly, you are probably not operating effectively in a consultative role. Your role is to stretch the system. You can’t do that by being identical.

Determine a strategic focus

One of the most important items to an internal consultant is to understand how they intend to impact the client system. All consultants must be clear about why they are there and how they expect the client system to benefit from their presence. You need to be able to articulate it and live it out so that your clients totally understand your position and the role you are attempting to play.

Know your limits

Here is the time to be your own consultant/client and get very honest about your abilities. It often helps to get some outside feedback in these areas. What is important is for you to understand who you are and what you will or won’t do. Internals don’t often recognize the power of their ability to say no.

It is clarifying and empowering. Just know when and where you will say yes or no to different roles or types of work. In order to do that, determine the areas in which you can comfortably operate. You know what you’re good at. Make a list that matches with your strategic focus and the organization’s direction. After that, identify some stretch areas and make a plan to grow into these areas. This does a number of things. First, it keeps you in the learner’s perspective and makes it easier to relate to the change processes going on with your clients. Second, it helps you grow and generally be more interesting to your clients..

Become an expert in your field

Internals are rarely received with the same esteem as external experts. One of the reasons is exposure, the second is because they often don’t have the same sort of skills, training, and experience as others in the field. So, the simple solution is to spend time becoming the expert in your field that your clients will recognize. Read, attend conferences, and network. Write white papers about your findings. Present at conferences and professional associations. Build credentials in your field that your clients will recognize and respect.

Be methodologically consistent

Here’s one of the places of deep differentiation that you will find with the experts in the field. There are many different models and beliefs about human systems and the ways in which you intervene in them. Get out your toolkit and really learn what’s behind your exercises, methods, and interventions. Both you and the participants in your events will feel the disconnect between exercises build on conflicting models of behavior. It is a seemingly small thing, but the payoff can be huge. As a small example, following a participative problem solving exercise with an autocratic implementation will cause more problems that if both were either participative or autocratic, or you simple reversed the situation to autocratic problem solving following by participative implementations.

Follow a model

There are a number of these currently available in the literature, most of which are built to follow the discovery learning cycle. Find one that you like, believe in, and follow it. Your work will move to new levels of effectiveness. You begin to learn the ins and outs as well as begin to get creative through your experience. You might even experience a level of branding associated with it. Also, when it stops working, find another!

Contract! Contract! Contract!

Internals do not always think of contracting in the same perspective as externals. It is, though, equally important. In the opening scenario, a good contract with the leadership team would have been the necessary requirement to provide a solid footing for the consultant and to discuss the mumblings of the disgruntled participants. A social contract is absolutely essential to handle the role shifting that many internals experience as well as the crossing of levels within their own organization.

Be Genuine

The issue of presence is as important to the internal as the external. It is well worth your time to spend some time thinking about how you present yourself. Think about it as branding. You work on your mental abilities, work on your emotional and spiritual elements as well. There are many ways to do this. Get a coach, join a growth group, or sign up for courses that offer deep personal development. After all, the thing you are really offering your clients is your self. Be clear about it, own it, and share it.