I manage a Saas company that provides help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and knowledge to thousands of startups and small businesses across the globe and whenever I explain to folks I meet what I do, I often get asked the same question “Given my working knowledge, how could I put it to use and make earn cash quickly by becoming a small business consultant”? I’m always delighted to provide guidance as I am privileged enough to spend a big part of my day talking to small business owners and personnel ready to go into detail about their issues.
Here is my response:
The net is the perfect medium for finding customers and it makes it easy 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 identify and solve issues.
Information marketing – repurpose and sell your expertise to small businesses everywhere via the net
Now I know I have focused on small business consulting but what I share with you here is just as relevant to any size business. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a digital format such as video, audio or documents. The software to produce superb material are widely available on the web. Making a tutorial in simple to use digital formats is now simple and inexpensive. You just have to be prepared to spend a little time getting to know the software. The objective here is to make [content.
You have to begin with the end in mind. 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 valuable to others then produce a two minute video to introduce yourself and your expertise to your market. Unless you know the prospect(s) exact problem then make the video generic and adhere tothe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Make your messages as interesting as you can and keep the narratives short. 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 secureon the Web or even on a disk and post it, again follow up with a call.
This approach is ideally suited to situations where you are individually targeting prospect(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 bigger your list the more opportunities for consulating and selling information products you will find. If you would like to understand more about how to do this then follow any of the links in this article. I would be very glad to help you.
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