Small business consulting using the Internet
I run a web company that delivers help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and know-how to thousands of startups and small businesses worldwide and whenever I explain to folks I meet what I do, I always get asked the same question “Given my what I know, how could I use this and make earn a living from small business consulting? I’m always willing to give advice as I am lucky enough to spend a major amount of the time of my day interacting with small business owners and workers eager to chat at length about their problems and needs.
Here is my advice which I hope you will find useful:
The digital world is the ideal place for finding customers and it makes it simple to communicate with them and sell your expertise. A lot of small businesses turn to the internet to find knowledge or trusted advisors who can provide them with valuable insights and help them fix issues.
Information marketing – package and sell your expertise to businesses through the Internet
What I am about to tell you doesn’t just apply to small businesses. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a electronic format such as video, audio or documents. The software to construct high quality content are widely available on the web. Making a course in easy to consume web ready formats is now easy and affordable. You just have to be prepared to dedicate a small amount of time getting to know the systems. The objective here is to make [content.
You have to decide what you want to achieve. Consultancy and Information marketing are great bedfellows and if you do both can be very lucrative as the consultancy will provide you with the questions, the answers to which you can repackage and sell in digital format and sold over and over again.
If you are starting from scratch with no customers but have expertise you know would be attractive to others then produce a no longer than 120 secs video to promote yourself and your expertise to your target(s). Unless you know the target(s) precise problem then make the video generic and stick tothe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Keep it short, interesting and sweet. Now upload the video to your website/blog or even YouTube if you don’t have the former and send the target(s) an invitation by e-mail containing a personal message and a link to the video. Always follow this up with a phone call. If you know the specific nature of the target(s)problem then don’t make the video public, just put it somewhere away from prying eyeson the Web or even on a disk and post it, again follow up with a call.
This method is ideally suited to situations where you are individually targeting target(s). The one objective you should be constantly pursuing is the creation of a list that you can converse with and sell product to.. Treat the people on your list well and they will tell you their needs to which you can match and your content products. The more people on your list the more consulting and information marketing opportunities you will find. If you would like to find out more about how to do this then follow any of the links in this article. I would be delighted to help you.
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