Here are a few key questions that every consultant should ask when interviewing a new client:

1. What are your five biggest challenges?

Ask about the client’s overall challenges—beyond the immediate subject at hand. By getting a sense of the larger challenges facing your client, you can be prepared to offer insights and draw connections that the client might have missed.

2. What are your five biggest opportunities?

Find out what the client is truly excited about! Where are some interesting new growth areas for the client’s business? What are some new trends shaping the marketplace? What are some of the most compelling new developments that the client has in store?

3. What keeps you up at night?

Connect with the client’s challenges on a visceral level. What is it that keeps this client from getting a good night’s sleep? What are the “worst-case scenarios” that this client might be confronting? If you phrase the question in these stark terms, you might help prompt the client to answer with greater candor and specificity, allowing you to help your client focus in on the biggest problem areas.

4. Why did you decide to hire a consultant?

Clients hire consultants for different reasons. Sometimes they need help with a specific problem or in implementing a known solution; other times they need a fresh perspective to bring new ideas and divergent thinking. Some clients turn to consultants when they don’t have the right expertise in house or just need more “hands on deck,” while other clients hire consultants to complement their existing team.

And in the less-ideal scenarios (from a consultant’s perspective), sometimes consultants get brought in when a project has a troubled history or has become a political hot potato within the client’s organization. For example, if a project has a history of failing to meet deadlines or has become “untouchable” within the organization, a consultant might be brought in to salvage it. If you can get a sense of why your client wanted to bring in a consultant, you’ll have a better understanding of the internal dynamics of the client’s organization, as well as a better perspective on the client’s true needs.

5. Where is your business headed in the next year and the next five years?

It’s important to get a sense of the “big picture.” You need to find out more about your client’s overall situation. Is he or she optimistic? Pessimistic? Cautiously hopeful or quietly desperate? Get a sense for your client’s overall strategic plan and see how your project fits into that plan—and be prepared to offer new ideas to aid the client’s larger strategic goals, as well as implementing the project at hand.

Knowing how to ask the right questions is a big part of any consultant’s success. You’re not just there to do a job; you’re there to collaborate, build a relationship, and sometimes coax out the hidden needs and unspoken motivations of your clients and their organizations.

You might also like to read:
Tough Times? Stay Afloat with New Client Business
Turn Your Leads into Sign-ups

Checks

Checks have been an accepted payment practice for quite some time. In fact, they have been around since the 9th century, so that merchants could make payments without having to carry around large amounts of gold and silver. There is still wide usage of checks in the United States, mostly in business to business commerce (consultancies). Banks have figured out ways to speed up the checking process by electronically transferring checks from the drawer bank to the drawee bank. This way you may be paid faster. One thing to think about is that producing and handling checks is a big expense for banks, and they are trying to add fees to checking accounts to deter customers away from this payment type and into electronic payments, which are much less expensive for banks to handle.

Electronic Transfers

Electronic transfers (EFTS) can be especially helpful when a payment is urgent or overdue. They can simply transfer funds from their account to your account with your banking information and a click of a button.

Credit Card Processing

Credit cards are often thought of being a payment method for brick and mortar retailers and e-commerce businesses, but you can also take advantage of accepting credit cards in your consulting business. In fact you can set up monthly, recurring payments, so you and your client do not have to worry about performing an individual payment every month. There are fees attached to a merchant account including a percentage of every sale and monthly fixed fees. In my consultancy now, one of my clients is North American Bancard. One of the reasons why I have become well educated about credit card processing, is that NAB and myself have a very good relationship, and there is a reason why they serve 100,000 businesses. They have great customer service, fair policies and reasonable rates. It is important to really understand what your service provider’s pricing, policies and customer service standards are. There are many companies in the merchant account industry that do not mention the small print, so it is important to choose a company that is transparent.

Conclusion

In anything you do in your business, analyze the pros and cons and make a decision based on your own research and the recommendations of the peers you trust. Different payment methods are more relevant to your niche than others, but offering more than one payment option will be a jumpstart to greater revenue.

Enter Darren Rowse, a career blogger who writes posts as naturally as a bird sings. His blogging site, ProBlogger, is filled with expert guidance and advice about writing enthralling posts, attracting a large audience and making an income from blogging.

Lucky for us, Darren has distilled his knowledge from years of blogging into his new downloadable eBook, 31 Days To Build A Better Blog. Darren placed his workbook in the context of a challenge:

“The idea is simple. By the end of this challenge you’ll have learned 31 aspects of blogging and put them into practice. It is designed not only to fill your head with knowledge ABOUT blogging, but also to give you some concrete things to actually DO something with the knowledge.”

The 94-page eBook is in the form of a workbook, consisting of a month’s worth of concentrated tasks to bring your blogging to a new level. Each task spans several pages, because it includes many teaching points to help readers understand how and why the action works.

For example, the assignment for Day 3 is to Promote a Blog Post. The task starts out with instructional points, taking you through 11 ways to promote a post. It then provides lots of detail on how to actually carry through with the task. If you’re wondering how this can all get squeezed in to 94 pages, Darren notes that each page is really two (it’s in landscape mode)—making it a 188 page book!

Once you start to dive in, you can see the workbook can be used in several different ways:

• Go through it as a course and implement every one of the 31 techniques in order.
• Browse through it and delve into the mind of an expert blogger and writer.
• Check it out every so often for inspiration and ideas on those dull blogging days.

The only drawback you might find with this great compilation of blogging knowledge is that it’s an eBook rather than a book you can grab and read on the subway or in the park. That means you’ll need to read it online or print it and place it in a binder. Still, it seems worth the price at $19.99.

To buy 31 Days To A Better Blog, download it from the ProBlogger website.

Types of Adjustments

In fact, Aeron Chairs allow for so many adjustments that they come with a small but clearly written instruction manual affixed to a lever under the seat. One of the most important features aside from the wide range of seat heights are the lumbar support adjustments. You can easily adjust the depth and height of the thick lumbar pad to fit your back. Another surprisingly important set of adjustments turned out to be arm height and arm angle. Changes here seem to impact the neck, shoulder, arm and wrist.

There are several other adjustments depending on whether you buy the Basic or Highly-Adjustable model. Getting the seat adjusted perfectly for your body and posture might be an evolving process, but well worth the effort. Office Designs, where you can purchase chairs at a discount, features short videos for adjusting the Aerons.

It’s In The Mesh

One of the big attractions of the chair is that it’s covered in a flexible mesh material, rather than fabric over cushions as are most office chairs. The advantage of the mesh fabric, according to the manufacturer, is that it conforms to the user’s shape, distributes a person’s weight evenly over both the seat and back and allows air to circulate through the chair, avoiding heat build-up. The chairs are also earth-friendly and are 94% recyclable.

Sizing

The Aeron chairs come in three sizes—small (A), medium (B), and Large (C)—and it’s quite important to find your correct size in order to get the most benefit from the chair. Retailers have a large customized sizing chart for this purpose.

Is It Worth The Money?

The big question most people ask is, “Do I really need to spend more than $500 for an office chair?” The answer is, “It depends.” If you spend most of your time at client sites, it may not be worth investing in a high-end chair, unless your back demands it when you are back in the office.

On the other hand, if you spend most of your time in front of the computer, have physical conditions that can benefit from better posture, or have enough disposable income, then it probably is worth the investment. The new Herman Miller Aeron Chairs come with a twelve-year warranty and the prices have come down over the years.

You can purchase a new Aeron Chair in a variety of colors at OfficeDesigns.com. We’ve partnered with this merchant because they offer free shipping, no sales tax and a low price guarantee.

Aeron Chair by Herman Miller

I got a call from a fellow networker and we began to chat. We weren’t trying to sell each other on the other one’s business or product. Instead, we began to share our knowledge and skills. He revealed a few tips and helped me adjust my system. I walked away from that conversation renewed and in total assurance that all I had to do was apply what he told me. Here’s what I learned.

Tip #1: Ask Questions

You must ask your prospect questions. If you are not asking the questions and learning about your prospect, then you are totally missing the boat. You might be wondering, “What questions do I ask?” Answer: Ask questions that open your prospects up, like, where are they from, are they married, what do they do for a living. Ask questions that help prospects talk about themselves easily and freely.

Tip #2: Then Really Listen

The next thing you must do is LISTEN! See, scripts may help give you a framework, but your listening skills will take you a lot farther than some rehashed script. Most of the questions you are going to be asking after the ones above will arise from how your prospect answers. So if my prospect says he or she is working full-time but is tired of working from paycheck to paycheck, I would ask, for example, “So what exactly are you looking to do on the Internet?” That is not a scripted question, it comes from listening and wanting to know more, not wanting to sell right there on the spot.

Tip #3: Assume The Close

The final thing you must do is two-fold. First, you must decide in your mind if this person is worth your time. See, you only have so many hours in a day, and if you spend your time with people who don’t match your drive, work ethic and motivation, then you will find yourself wasting the time you do have. And second, you must assume the close and have your prospect take action right then. This is where my glitch was. Ever since learning the magic phrase, convert those prospects into team members, customers, members or whatever, I can’t wait to call my leads everyday!

It can be all too tempting for freelancers and contract consultants to limp along, hoping to sustain ourselves on existing client work and old standbys until the economy turns around. So is it realistic to expect a boon in new business? In a word, yes—with a targeted strategy and a little creativity:

1. Network, Network, Network

Yes, we have heard this one before, ad nauseaum and ad infinitum, but the power of ‘who you know’ cannot be underestimated. A few tried-and-true tips:

• Expand your network in non-traditional ways. ‘Who you know’ can include contacts from places of worship, schools and universities, hobby and interest networks, alumni associations and career placement offices in addition to former clients, colleagues and supervisors.
• Subcontract. Even if you prefer the ‘call the shots’ aspect of consulting on your own, consider subcontracting to a larger firm or consulting organization. Many consulting firms maintain an affiliate or subcontractor program through their recruiting departments. Registering with these firms/recruiters can help you fill in the gaps as your own client work ebbs and flows.
• Nurture your network. Stay connected to your contacts, even during the flush times. Sharing updates and new client success stories, and inquiring about your contacts’ recent work helps keep the lines of communication fertile during the lean times. Janet Borggren, a Chicago-based consultant has been freelancing for over 6 years. She offers, “(Be) the person your client wants to work with again. Being that person goes beyond producing great work. You have to nurture the relationship. It’s hard to impress strangers with your portfolio. Be someone your clients want with them in the trenches, and they’ll do your marketing for you.”
• Share the wealth: Pay your network back in kind. Pass along leads for projects or positions that may not fit your skill set or utilization. Make introductions between contacts across your network, offer recommendations to your colleagues on social media sites and suggest they use you as a reference should the need arise. Making yourself available to scratch others’ backs, helps ensure your own back never itches!

2. Offer your network something of value

Rather than reaching out to your network over and over with a vague message such as, “I am available for project work immediately,” offer your network something of value. Write and publish an article, then share it with your network. Join a panel discussion and share the recorded version. Attend a networking event and invite your contacts to join you. Offering insight, thought leadership or other points of value to your network:

• communicates your worth to the market
• emphasizes your ongoing achievements and connection to the market or industry you serve
• provides your network with direct examples of your skills
• and encourages your network to open and respond to your messages, allowing you the opportunity to communicate with your contacts regularly.

Ongoing ‘value’ communication will help to keep you top of mind, should an opportunity arise to consider you and your talents, without always having to say ‘Keep me in mind if you hear of something.’

3. Utilize technology to complete the ‘push-pull’ cycle.

Think beyond the ‘push’ communication process of online job/project searches and application submission. Job search sites are numerous, unwieldy and often a black hole of information input and output. While it is important to visit these sites and maintain a profile, searching and applying for positions online can be an overwhelming process, and can often feel fruitless. Consider using technology to ‘pull’ opportunities to you.

• Create and publish your own web site. Detail your talents, service and project success through inexpensive site build and hosting sites such as www.intuit.com or www.wordpress.com. Register your site with the major search engines and optimize your site so it is more attractive to spiders. Regular updates to the content, using keyword-rich text, can help to improve rankings.

• Post regular updates. Post to your blog and/or profiles on social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, detailing project work, recent successes, networking events you plan to attend, industry insight and other news about your work and services.

• Stay current. Subscribe to newsletters, blogs and other industry information sources to stay current on trends and to join online networking groups with similar interests and goals. Join network discussion groups and ask for ideas and advice from these contacts, in addition to your core network.

• Watch for trends. Stay abreast of events in capital project approvals within industry organizations. A major area of opportunity for consultants in a soft economy is to backfill or temporarily fill a project or position need associated with a capitalized project. Many companies are not able to hire a full-time permanent employee, but can justify the capitalized cost of hiring a consultant for part or all of a project’s duration. Use your network to target these opportunities and/or introductions to the department managers who may make these decisions over the next year.

The prospect of keeping the pipeline filled during difficult economic times can, indeed, be daunting. Tough times do call for tough measures – but a little creativity along the way can literally mean the difference between feast or famine for self-employed consultants industry-wide. Good luck!

Yet one of the biggest problems business owners have with blogging is they don’t know how to get visitors to their site. A website that is not connected to any others, is like an island in the midst of a very large ocean.

Linking Strategies

Getting high-quality links to your business website or blog is an important way to get traffic. It also improves your Google ranking, which means your site will display higher in the list of Search Engine results. Obtaining these backlinks can be involved and time-consuming, so it’s best to develop a linking strategy for your business to keep you on track. Schedule tasks on specific days to accomplish some of the strategies discussed here.

Follow proven linking strategies such as the ones below.

Create Value

A basic premise for building backlinks to your site is that it must provide value to your audience. Whether it’s a site of technical tutorials or business advice,  it should be so compelling that other sites will want to link to your site. Here are some ways to create value:

• Add reviews to products that are relevant to your readers
• If you have enough traffic, add a forum so visitors can discuss topics related to your consulting business
• Provide content that is difficult to find elsewhere
• Teach how to do something related to your niche, or
• Write articles, white papers or eBooks of interest to site visitors and offer these as a free download

Write Articles for Other Sites

An effective way to build links is to write articles related to your consulting business. You can submit your articles to Ezine directories, which in many cases allow others to reprint your article as long as you, the author, is given due credit. You can also ask blog owners if you can write a guest post. Often bloggers are seeking more content and will oblige. Be sure that your business site url is clearly displayed on the article.

Industry Directories

Search for the authoritative directories in your niche or industry. Remember you want links from the highest quality sites. Then submit your site to these directories. Many directories have an obvious way to submit a url using a form. Others charge a fee. In some cases, you will need to email the webmaster and ask if he or she will link to your site.

Blog Directories

If your site is based on a blog using blogging software, such as WordPress, you can submit it to Blog Directories. After your blog has around ten posts, submit your blog to the major Blog Directories, such as Bloggeries, All Top, and others  specific to your area of expertise. You can also request to have your blog listed in the Blogroll area of some of the most popular blogs in your niche. If your blog provides value, blog owners are usually very willing to add you to their list. This is a good way to drive a targeted audience to your site.

1. Showcase Expertise

If you write at least one post to your blog every week, you will begin to build a large body of information that is available to anyone who has access to the Internet. By reading your blog posts, readers will learn about your business, your experience, your thoughts on the industry, and your body of knowledge.

If I want to hire someone to do my taxes, I go to the Internet to see who prepares taxes in my area. I’m more likely to hire the person who has a blog with dozens of posts on different aspects of preparing taxes. I can see she knows a lot about taxes. I give her a call.

2. Build Credibility and Trust

Credibility and trust are something that are built over time. I may not even know you, but after I’ve spent some time reading a little bit of the information on your page, I start to get a sense for who you are, how you do business, and what you know about your industry. I highly recommend you include a photo of yourself on the blog. This too allows readers to get to know you better and begin to trust you.

3. Boost Your Reputation

People like to do business with people and companies they know, like and trust. You may have your mission statement up on your wall in your office, but do your customers know what you stand for? And what you are trying to accomplish? Do they know what’s important to you as a company? On your blog, you can post about charities you are involved with, share customer success stories, demonstrate solutions you offer and problems you’ve solved, all with the end in mind of building your reputation and brand.

4. Create Customer Loyalty

The more customers know you, the more loyal they become. As you feature different solutions you offer, they are encouraged to do even more business with you. You might also feature some of your best customers and solidify your relationship with them even more.

5. Bring in Traffic

Blogs are a strong tool for search engine optimization. Search engine spiders like fresh content. A regularly updated blog provides fresh, keyword-rich content that search engines love. This will cause your site to rank higher when potential customers search for your products and services and drive more traffic to your entire site.

The internet savvy buyers today look to blogs for sources of information, reviews and recommendations. Until they are ready to buy, they will surf the internet gathering information. If you do not have an active blog, you are missing out on sales. If you don’t have the time or staff to post on your business blog every day, an experienced internet marketing service can be hired for much less money than paying a staff member to perform this all important task for you. Don’t miss this opportunity to grow your business. Start your blog today.

With an email newsletter, you can broadcast your blog posts, send out information about industry events, provide targeted product and book reviews and so on. The key is to always be sure that your newsletter will be of interest to most of your audience. Experts suggest it is ideal if your newsletter is delivered on a regular but non-intrusive schedule, such as once a week or bi-monthly.

How To Get Started

To get started, first check out the email marketing services listed below. These are a few of the many respected email service providers that prohibit spam. The best email marketing services, as they are often called, have built relationships with large Internet Service Providers based on the fact that they do not allow spam. The ISPs know that these services use a permission-based model for building email lists.

Permission-based Marketing

In a permission-based approach, all potential receivers of your newsletter must opt-in or consent to getting an email from you or your business in their Inbox. This means business owners can’t buy a list of 10,000 email addresses and blast a newsletter to everyone. By going with one of the respectable service providers, your emails are more likely be delivered to the recipient than to end up in someone’s Spam folder.

How to Build a List

To begin building an email list, you’ll need to place a sign up form on your website. Email marketing services typically provide the html or javascript you need to place one in your blog’s sidebar or somewhere prominent on your site. If you’re not technically minded, you can outsource this task. Then you’ll need to encourage clients, peers and website visitors to sign up for the newsletter. Consider giving something in return for a signup, such as a well-written tip sheet, report or white paper.

Features of Email Marketing Services

Most email marketing services provide templates for making newsletters, tutorials on how to get started, and access to statistics so you can see who has signed up and how many are opening your emails. Two well-known email marketing services (who are also site sponsors) are reviewed below so you can compare their pricing and features. There are many other email marketing services that you can find online.

AWeber

AWeber is probably the most well-used of the automated email systems for sending out newsletters because it has all the features of an autoresponder, provides blog broadcasts, website sign up forms and allows as many lists as you’d like for the same monthly or yearly price. AWeber has an affordable pricing structure and provides a free “test drive” so you can check it out before signing up. For help services, they provide online chat, tutorials and live webinars. Go to AWeber site.

iContact

iContact also provides excellent service for setting up, sending and tracking newsletters, surveys, RSS feeds, autoresponders and other email campaigns. They have a guarantee to Internet Service Providers that their customers will not send spam and they terminate customers who do. iContact also has a free trial period. Go to iContact site.

Other Marketing Articles:
Social Networking: Turn Relationships Into Profit
Personal Branding 2.0

It wasn’t too long ago that consumers looking for a home office printer didn’t have many choices. Fast forward to today when those looking for printers have a vast array of possibilities, and that choice has to made before selecting the best ink and toner, and multipurpose paper to go with it.

At first glance the task can be daunting. Choosing the wrong home office printer won’t ruin a business, but it can leave the professional constantly asking him or herself, “How did I make this mistake?”

People who choose the wrong home office printer often do it for the right reason: the price was right. While price should play an important role in the printer selected, it should not be the sole factor, especially if it means failing to consider the best ink and toner, and multipurpose paper to go with that printer. Sometimes the printer is cheap, but the accessories and supplies are more expensive.

How will the printer be used?

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the factors that go into choosing the right printer for a home office.

The first seems obvious, yet it is frequently overlooked. How will the printer be used?

If it is simply going to be for limited purposes like printing emails, short papers or receipts, a basic ink jet printer will suffice. Such printers can be found at close to $100, though they do tend to go through even the best ink and toner cartridges quickly.

The next step up is a laser printer which, when combined with the best ink and toner cartridges, produces professional looking documents at a relatively inexpensive price.

Most home office printer needs, however, require a little more versatility. One small office can need a scanner, printer, fax machine and copier, and all the papers and ink cartridges that go with them, or it can have one machine that does it all. Multipurpose printers, combined with multipurpose paper and the best ink and toner cartridge can provide functionality while usurping a limited amount of physical space.

How frequently will the printer be used?

Once the primary function of the home office printer is determined, consider how frequently it will be used. Printers that will be used often are more convenient if they can hold large stacks of multipurpose paper, keeping them from having to be loaded for every print job.

Think about the amount of color that will be needed if the documents are to look their best. Ink and toner cartridges can be bought in bulk to save money, but printers that hold larger cartridges, including color cartridges, will be more convenient because they don’t have to be constantly replaced.

How will it be linked to the computer?

Finally, consider how the home office printer will be linked to the computer. Nowadays, not all printers have to be connected via a printer cable. While there’s nothing wrong with cables, printers that offer wireless network connections are nice because they allow multiple computers to be connected to the printer at once. Wireless users also gain convenience because they can print documents from places outside the home office.

Printer, multipurpose paper and ink cartridges combine to form the home office document center. Considering all the above factors before purchasing a home office printer will help ensure that the printer that’s purchased can fulfill the tasks that need to be performed.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maria_Nelson
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