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The Keys to Becoming a Great Consultant: A Practical Guide

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Becoming a consultant|The Keys to Becoming a Great Consultant: A Practical GuideConsulting can be a lucrative way to make a living. You set your own hours and work on projects that interest you. But becoming a great consultant requires more than just learning how to do the job. It requires great people skills and the ability to work well with others. And, of course, it requires a hefty investment of time and energy. If you’re ready to put in the work, here are some things you can do to become a great consultant.

1. Set up Google Alerts for your client and its competitors.

Do you know who your client’s competitors are? If you’re like most consultants, the answer is no — and that’s a huge mistake. If you know who your client’s competitors are, it gives you a much better perspective on your value proposition and shows you where you need to improve.

If you set up Google Alerts for your client and its competitors, you’ll be the first to know when they release new content or make major press announcements. If you keep up with digital trends, you’ll be the first to see and respond to trends that might impact your business.This will help you stay current on client and industry developments, which will come in handy through the project. Go here to get started.

2. Network like crazy

Network marketing, like consulting, is a profession that requires more than just a strong work ethic. It also requires a network of people who can vouch for you and refer business your way.

As a consultant, you’ll find that the more you network the better your opportunities will be. You never know who you might meet or what connections you might make. So, if you’re sitting at a networking event and an opportunity presents itself, take it.

Networking can be nerve-wracking. You have to make time for it, but you also have to make sure that you don’t spend too much time worrying about making a bad impression.

Here are a few tips that can help you make networking productive and enjoyable.

  • Begin conversations with questions. There’s a lot you can learn from other people by asking questions and getting insights into their businesses.
  • Be genuine. The way customers see you and the emotions, associations, and facts they relate to you are what makes you stand out from your competition. Making sure you keep up a positive business reputation is, therefore, obligatory.
  • Be patient. Networking is a process, not a single event. If you’re expecting a quick payoff, you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re patient and give it time, the network will come to you.

3. Be transparent about your time

If you’re going to take on clients as a consultant, they need to trust you. And to build that trust, you need to be as transparent as possible about your time.

Clients expect to pay you for your time. So, when you’re accepting new clients, be upfront about how much time you’ll need to devote to their project. If you promise to deliver results in three months and then deliver them in two, you’re going to lose trust.

4. Stay flexible and learn new skills

If you’re looking for ways to become a great consultant, you should consider staying flexible. You never know when you’re going to need to pick up new skills.

For example, let’s say your company decides to start offering financial planning services. You’re currently working on a project that requires some financial planning expertise, so it’s a good opportunity to learn.

Now, let’s say you decide to specialize in marketing consulting instead. You’ll want to stay flexible enough to take on projects that interest you and allow you to make money.

5. Partner with other consultants or firms

Partnering with other consultants or firms is a great way to take your income to the next level. The more partners you have, the more volume you’ll be able to handle and the more money you’ll be able to make.

If you have a friend who’s a certified public accountant, you could team up to offer combined accounting and auditing services to local businesses. At Continuum Innovations they strive to deliver state-of the art services helping businesses automate and streamline their processes in a cross-functional environment. This means that you can execute your strategy or take on a project that you can’t handle on your own.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for an easy way to make money, this may not be the career for you. But if you’re ready to put in the work to build a successful consulting business, the advice listed here will get you on the right track. Becoming a great consultant takes hard work and dedication, but the effort is definitely worth it.

Getting It Right When Setting Up A New Business In The US

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Setting up a new business |Getting It Right When Setting Up A New Business In The USMany people who want to start their own business in the US often don’t know where to begin.

What are the legal prerequisites for starting a company in your region? What do you need to go through? What is the process like from beginning to end? How long does it typically take, on average, for a company to be finished setting up operations?

These are questions that can be asked when someone wants to start their own business in the US and get it all done correctly.

Let’s break this topic down into some easy steps and see what it takes!

Business Regulations You Need To Know

From which tax records to submit to understanding everything you need to know about an EIN, setting up a new business is full of regulations, and it pays to collaborate with someone who knows exactly what they are doing in this field.

On the bright side, however, the US is actually one of the easiest countries in which to set up a new business.

To start, you will need to file some paperwork with your local government. If your company is a large corporation, then it might be better that you hire an attorney to ensure that this part of the process goes smoothly.

Choosing Your Company Name And Registering Your Business

You’ll need to file an “article of organization” with your state government which is the first step in getting the business started.

Before filing this document, you should reach out to your state’s secretary of state and get the specifics on how to file this document.

Again, you don’t have to do it all at once; it’s good to work carefully and piece by piece, starting with just a few basic steps such as filling out a proper business license.

How to Fund Your New Business

When you’re ready to start the business, you’ll need to find an initial investment. A good place to start is with a visit to your local bank.

You might find that the bank will help you arrange a loan through their Small Business Administration office, and you can get an individual loan from this office.

Although there are thousands of banks in the country, it’s best that you check with your local branch of this government office for more details on how to do this.

Branding and Marketing Your New Business Online

If you don’t want to go the DIY route, then it’s a good idea to hire a freelancer who can design and set up your commercial branding.

You’ll need all the particular web domains and important information, WordPress, images, copy, and anything else you’ll need for your online pages.

Finding Employees and Hiring Vendors

Once you have all the systems set up for your website, it’s time to make things happen.

It’s time to go out and hire some employees who will make it possible for your company to start rolling.

If you are not the type of person who can sit at a desk every day (or if you’re running a smaller business), then it might be better that you get some help.

Succeeding As a Leader – Focusing on Building a Strong Team Around You

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StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article |Building a strong team|Succeeding As a Leader – Focusing on Building a Strong Team Around YouWhen you are leading others, you naturally have a lot of pressure and strain to deal with. Improving how you lead, working towards being successful, and making a difference can be difficult things to achieve – especially if your team or colleagues are working against you (and not with you). To ensure that this does not happen, you have to focus on building a strong team around you. You cannot succeed in leadership all by yourself. The support and cooperation you will get from your team will be defined in your role both now and moving forwards. So, what proactive action do you need to start taking?

What Do You Want to Achieve as a Leader?

To begin with, you need to think about what you really want to achieve as a leader. For example, are you looking to raise profits within a business? Are you looking to improve productivity and efficiency? Are you looking to bring everyone together, and form a united business or company in the process? What do you want to achieve and why? When you have this vision firmly in your sights, you can then begin to push forwards. This question is relevant to consider both in terms of your work and your personal goals, so it is one to consider carefully.

Why You Need a Team and Support Network

Now that you have your vision and ideas for the future, you may be questioning why you need a support network and a great team around you. The answer is of course simple: you need them because you need their support and you need their input. As a leader, you can only achieve so much on your own, or by yourself. You need guidance, you need support, and you need backup, and this is what you can expect to get from a great supportive team. You will naturally think that what you are doing is the right way, you need constructive feedback from other people to establish whether you are right or wrong – what works and what doesn’t.

Connecting With Your Team – Finding Common Ground

Leading from the front or leading from the middle means that you need to be connected with your team. To find common ground and truly connect with your team, you have to do things that build relationships and also build trust. For example, you could organize a get-together with key team players at a UK stately home. The best stately homes to visit in the UK have spaces for groups to get together, and they have room for you and your team to connect and strengthen bonds.

Decisive Leadership

As a leader, you have to be decisive, and you have to be assertive. If you are not decisive, then how will others follow what you say, and how will you have a lasting and sustainable impact. To ensure that you are being decisive in as many areas as possible, you need to analyze your behavior and your response time. Are you making decisions as soon as you can? Are you taking decisive action in all work that you undertake? Struggling to be decisive can make you seem weak to colleagues and team members, and this can affect the level of trust that they hold in you.

How To Choose The Right Digital Marketing Agency

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Digital Marketing Agency|How To Choose The Right Digital Marketing AgencyThe public’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and as they do it’s important to acknowledge and pivot to fit the needs of your consumer base. Your marketing tactics need to be short, sufficient, informational, and entertaining, all while also ensuring your brand is distinguishable and digestible to the public.

Partnering with a great digital marketing agency can help you accomplish all of this and be game-changing for your business; but with new marketing agencies popping up every day and anyone being able to fake a good review or two online, how can you ensure the digital marketing agency you partner with is the best fit for you and your business?

More and more digital marketing agencies are marketing themselves as “full-service” firms, meaning they’ll work with businesses on any kind of marketing project. However, with a little digging, you can usually figure out the one or two areas of expertise the company has the most history with.

You want to hire experts in your field to help take your marketing to an exceptional level. With that in mind, here are five ways you can guarantee to choose the right digital marketing agency to help your business’s marketing campaign flourish.

Ask To See Their Portfolio

Digital marketing agencies should be proud to show off their completed projects. When you’re searching for a digital marketing agency to work with, be sure to ask to see their portfolio or any samples of their past work they have available. This will give you better insight into the types of jobs they’ve done and you can see if their work style aligns with what you’re looking for.

Asking to see their previous client list can be helpful in cases where their work may not be conducive to portfolio presentation; for example, their SEO services or their content marketing campaigns may not be housed in a portfolio but still give great insight into their capabilities.

Check Into Their Reputation In The Industry

Good news travels fast. Therefore if the marketing agency you’re interested in is that good, talk of their work must be happening somewhere. Ask around your industry to see if any of your peers have insight into the digital marketing agency you’re looking to work with.

Or, if you’re still looking for suggestions, ask around to see if companies in your network have worked with any digital marketing agencies and see if they would recommend them. Your community can help give you insight into the firm you may not be able to find online or through your conversations with them.

They Have A Well-Designed Website

A well-designed website is usually a sign of a digital marketing company that cares. It should be updated, easily navigated, and have all the key elements about their company present for you to peruse. A good way to gauge the digital marketing company’s SEO practices is to search for their website with keywords that match their geographical location and services offered. If they are not one of the first search results, you may want to go with another company that knows how to optimize its search results.

Their Values Match Your Own

Working with external teams can be hard. People can buttheads, there are different work styles, problems occur and deadlines get pushed. You never know what can happen in the middle of a project. That’s why working with a digital marketing agency with a team that values the same things as yours can make the experience that much better all around.

When interviewing the digital marketing agencies, ask what the culture at their company is like, see what their problem-solving techniques are, and lastly see if you get along with the people you may be working with.

Their Team Members Are Well-Versed And Experienced

Businesses turn to digital marketing agencies for help. They want experts who can execute successful campaigns. When selecting a digital marketing agency, ask to see the resumes and backgrounds of everyone on the team you’ll be working with. The last thing you want is to realize you’re paying to work with a team of fresh college graduates or with a team leader who has never worked on a project in your field.

LinkedIn is a great place to look into the background of digital marketing agency employees as well, you can see how long they’ve been with the business, in the field itself, and their specialties before meeting with them.

Humanizing Your Website: Why The Personal Touch Is Best For Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website|Humanizing Your Website: Why The Personal Touch Is Best For BusinessYour website is your opportunity to communicate directly with customers, clients, suppliers and partners. The visual appearance of the site and the content that it contains are the most direct way that you can speak to anyone interested in working with your company. It is also the foundation for your marketing and your brand presence online.

If your website doesn’t show off your business in a positive light, it is not only going to make it challenging for you to gain new customers, it can also leave your team feeling underappreciated.

Focusing on a more personal element to your website is the right way to move forward, and moving away from that more impersonal ‘corporate’ style site can do wonders for your business. But how exactly do you implement this practically? Here we take a look at some of the best strategies that your company can use to humanize your website.

Avoid stock photos at all costs

One of the major issues causing company websites to look cold and corporate is the overuse of stock images. Stock photos might look more professional than those you can take on your camera phone and they can lend credence to a small business that is just starting out. But, having these images lingering on sites can leave it feeling corporate, less personal and unrealistic.

It’s a much better idea to take your own images. This is clearly a good option for companies producing products, but it can also be effective for service-based businesses too.

There are still many businesses that are put off providing their own product or incidental photography because of the perceived high cost of camera equipment. Yet this isn’t the right way to think about it. Of course there are some initial outlays to investing in high quality in-house images, but they have so many advantages compared to stock photos it is really worth doing.

It should be pointed out that equipment costs don’t have to be as expensive as they used to be. It is now possible to spread out payments from more costly equipment by using services which utilize so-called ‘buy now, pay later’ companies, such as Klarna and Affirm. For businesses keen to follow the sustainability route, another option is trading in used equipment to get money off a new purchase – many camera specialists offer this.

Speak like a human

It is still extremely common for small businesses to have websites that use a very corporate writing style. Being formal and professional can be appropriate in some settings, but it is no longer the case that all companies need to present themselves in this manner, especially if it does not necessarily suit the target market and industry.

Of course, it won’t suit every business to be extremely conversational and loaded up with jargon and many professional writers prefer to think in terms of ‘business casual’ as the standard preferred style. However, again this will depend on the specifics of the business and what works with your audience.

Focus on community

One of the most fundamental ways to humanize your website is to install a sense of community with your customers. The benefits of building a community amongst your customers are well established.

“As a part of your community, members feel more emotionally connected to your brand,” says Rachel Burns, writing for Podia “and when people feel connected, they’re more likely to recommend your brand and products to others.”

Companies are still regularly using social media platforms for their community building, but actually it can be beneficial to do a lot of that work yourself to optimize the business success of a site. This can be done by making use of user-generated content.