How To Become a Consultant

**This is a sponsored post which I will be compensated for**

I was wondering how to become a consultant and now I have the answers for you if you wanted to be one as well. I found this at https://www.consulting.com

1. Embrace The Entrepreneurial Mindset

The first step to being successful as a consultant is embracing the entrepreneurial mindset. Only around 14% of people will risk starting a business, and out of those, half will fail within 5 years. In other words, to be a successful consultant, you have to be more persistent and better at solving problems than 93% of the world.

Success is unlikely. Nobody is going to bail you out. You figure it out or you lose.

If that excites you, you’ve embraced the entrepreneurial mindset. If that scares you, the question becomes, "What are you going to do about it?"

2. Identify Your Optimal Niche

Once you’ve embraced the right mindset, the next step is to find the niche specialization that fits you best. The goal of a consultant is not to solve random problems for random people but rather, to solve a specific type of problem for a specific group of people.

3. Identify a Common Problem You Can Solve

Now that you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to identify THE problem that you will solve as a consultant. To identify some of the key problems in your niche, ask the following questions:

What do people in your niche want the most?

What is keeping them from getting that?

What problems are keeping them up at night?

What issues are causing the most anger or frustration?

What solutions are people currently investing the most money into?

4. Create Your Consulting Value Proposition

Who are you? What are you all about? What’s your pitch? What do you do?

How do you respond to these questions? Many new consultants don’t have a good answer. They will give very vague answers like, "Well, I uh... help people with their businesses." That's not good enough. To become a consultant, you will need to effectively communicate the value you provide. How you pitch your "offer" is incredibly important, and you can answer all these questions effectively with a Consulting Value Proposition. Your Consulting Value Proposition should succinctly include everything we’ve already discussed:

-The Niche

-Problem Solved

-Solution Method

5. Build Your Online Hub

Now that you have established who you are and what you are offering, it’s time to build your online hub. Your online business hub should typically start with a website. Social media profiles and pages can be part of your hub, but it’s important that your primary online location business location is completely under your control, which is not the case with social pages.

6. Create A Repeatable System For Attracting Leads

If you can consistently bring in leads and close sales, you can succeed in business. Period. This is probably the single most important part of starting a consulting business, and it’s what we spend the most time covering in our training.

As a consultant, your goal is to find out where your potential customers are and then create a repeatable system for attracting them to your business.

7. Optimize Your Method For Closing Sales

Attract and close. Attract and close. As we just mentioned, our preferred method for closing sales is the 1-to-1 sales call, but that may not be the optimal method in every niche. Just like there are alternative methods for attracting leads, there are numerous methods you can use to close sales.

Options include:

Online orders

Inbound sales team

Outbound sales team

Referral network

Affiliate sales

Perfecting your interpersonal 1-to-1 sales skills is always incredibly beneficial, and to this day, it remains one of the most effective methods we’ve seen, which is why we recommend it.

8. Improve Your Delivery Method

While bringing in paying clients is the most difficult challenge most consultants face, the gig isn’t over once you have the cash. To become an independent consultant, you also need to be able to deliver the goods and solve your client’s problems. How you go about doing will determine your profit margins, earnings, referral clients, and overall brand standing.

 9. Build Your Brand

When first learning how to be a consultant, branding shouldn’t be the focus. You don’t need a brand to solve problems and collect payment. That said, by building your brand, you can increase demand for your expertise, allowing you to command higher fees for your advice and services.

10. Evolve Your Offer

If you gather 100 consultants in a room and ask them to describe their "offer" you will hear a wildly diverse assortment of answers. There are many types of consulting careers and consulting offers out there, and some are more lucrative than others.