I founded a web company that supplies help in the form of small business management and accounting software tools and know-how to thousands of startups and small businesses in all corners of the world and whenever I explain to folks I meet what I do, I constantly get asked the same question “Given my skills and experience, how could I monetize it and make regular money from small business consulting? I am always delighted to give guidance as I am fortunate enough to spend the biggest part of my day interacting with small business owners and workers enthusiastic to talk about their issues.
This is the advice that I offer:
The digital world is the perfect medium for finding customers and it makes it simple to talk 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 education and help them identify and solve key challenges.
Information marketing – package and sell your expertise to businesses through the Internet
What I discuss here is equally appropriate to businesses of any size. You can repackage and sell your expertise in a digital format such as video, audio or documents. The tools to produce excellent content are widely available on the world wide web. Producing a course in simple to use web ready formats is now simple and inexpensive. You just have to be prepared to spend a bit of time playing with the software. material] that you can either sell or give away to get your target customer’s attention.
You should start by deciding what you want to achieve. Consultancy and Information marketing go hand in hand 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 plan to create a two minute video to introduce yourself and your expertise to your prospect(s). Unless you know the market exact problem then make the video generic and usethe following format – S.T.A.R (Situation or Task, Action, Result). Be creative and concise. Now deploy 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 marketproblem 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 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.. With the right interaction with your list you should easily be able to discover what people want and deliver it. The bigger your list the more opportunities for consulating and selling information products you will find. If you would like to know more about how to do this then follow any of the links in this article. I would be delighted to help you.
