Finding Your Niche In Consulting

Part 2 in The Getting Started Series.

The first step in becoming a consultant is finding your niche. What type of advice can you provide or what kind of services do you offer that clients are willing to pay for? It is important to look broadly at your experiences and knowledge base to define your space in the consulting marketing place.

Assessing Your Skills

Consultants often have skills in strategy, operations, design and information technology. Your first step should be to take a functional inventory of what you have done in your current and previous employment. Look beyond your job titles and classification. Think of it as creating a resume focused on experiences, not a chronology of where you worked.

You should also consider skills that are specific to your industry. For example, if you work in the technology arena you should consider the “brands” of software and hardware. Or if you are in the Human Resources field, is your experience with organizational development or benefits? Another consideration is what part of the business your skills support. Are you the hands on implementation person, are you best working at the design level or can you help businesses strategize?

The Strategy Focus

Successful strategy consultants need to have been responsible for setting and managing organizational strategy. This does not mean that you need to have actually been an executive officer of your organization. You will, however, need experience interacting at that level.

Understanding the elements of a business strategy and business plan development is essential. Anyone who has been involved in this realizes that there is much more structure to the process that meets the eye.  Consulting in this area requires exceptionally good interpersonal and facilitation skills as well. You will need to lead your client through this process as it is ultimately their strategy.

Your value comes from recognizing the key components of a strategy or business plan and challenging the client to make the necessary assumptions and set goals. Producing a quality written end product is also essential for this type of consulting.

Operations Consulting

When you look at your experiences here, first determine what type of business processes you were involved in. Did you work in the infrastructure processes, such as purchasing or finance, which support the entire organization? Or was your work focused on industry specific processes, such as shop floor optimization or rate setting and pricing? Experiences in both of these types of processes are transferable to the consulting arena.

Although experience in organizational support can be easily applied to any industry, specialized industry experiences may require you to focus on that industry initially. With experience and creativity you can later leverage these skills with other industries.

Design Consulting

Another opportunity exists in the consulting arena for those who have been involved in the creative aspects of their organization or working for a creative agency. This can include media, design and graphic services. Many organizations cannot afford to maintain such a service in-house due to the infrequent demand for these services. They tend to outsource these as the need arises.

While they may have an arrangement with an external group, there is a need to advise management on the strategy and implementation of the external groups’ products.  Depending on your level of skills in this area, you may expand your relationship to developing communications or graphic media yourself, rather than using the external group.

Technology Consulting

Technology consultants have a wide variety of experiences and skills. Assisting your organization in translating business requirements to technology requirements and creating a design is a valuable skill. The person who effectively speaks both “languages” can easily work in designs across industries. There is also much more of a niche specialization in technology as well.

Your level of brand expertise and application experience are important, as well as the entire suite of Internet and e-commerce product experience. In this area there is less of an importance to brand expertise then there is to system functionality. However, you can still leverage your brand expertise. Do you want to take your experiences and continue applying them in the same area but for different organizations? Or do you want to leverage your understanding of technology into a broader role than you have now?

What Does the Marketplace Want?

Once you understand the value you have been providing to your employers, you need to match that to what clients need. Is there some change in legislation or in the regulatory environment to which many other organizations need to react? Have you implemented changes in business processes in your organization that led to being a best practice for your industry or function? Are the technology platforms and applications you have been involved with on the cutting edge of your industry or do they support changing business requirements? One way to get answers to these questions is to talk with peers in your organization.

Another approach is research with industry and professional organizations. This will provide you with insight into the demand for your skills in the marketplace. Additionally, look at job postings. If organizations are hiring for a particular set of skills, they may very well have a need for consulting services in that area.

Your skills inventory is the first step in defining your niche in the consulting world. Don’t be timid in determining the areas in which you are an expert. But be realistic in assessing the marketplace demand for that expertise. The next step will be matching up your expertise with the marketplace and obtaining clients.

Read Part 1 of this series:
Is Becoming A Consultant Right For You?