While launching any kind of a business is challenging, starting a business where your mission is to assist others in running their own companies more efficiently is can present one of the greatest challenges for an entrepreneur. For most new consulting businesses, choosing a niche in which your team can offer a specific expertise tends to lead to your greatest opportunity for success. Specific niches to consider can include strategy, human resources, compliance, and any other area that can cause issues for your clients.

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Choosing the Right Consulting Business Model for You

For the most part, the consulting business model is comprised of hiring talented people and charging clients a fee for gaining access to this talent.

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That said, there are typically three primary consulting business models to consider:

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The Solo Model

Under the Solo Model, your business essentially consists of you only.  You may, however, work hire an assistant and outsource contractors, depending on the requirements of your engagements.  While the Solo Model provides a lean and flexible approach to your business, the lack of diverse talent may prevent you from competing for engagements that are outside of your expertise.

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The Firm Model

This is the model employed by most large consulting firms.  Under the Firm Model, the company hires talented people to deploy for consulting projects and captures the margin between what the company pays them for an engagement and what they then pay their staff.

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Product-Driven Model

The Product-Driven may stem from the Solo or Firm model and incorporates a productized approach to providing a solution to your clients.  If, for example, your firm is focused on employee eLearning and training to help ensure your clients achieve a desired level of industry compliance, you might incorporate a specific Learning Management System (LMS) platform into your engagements and solution.

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Steps Toward Launching Your New Consulting Business

Once you determine the right niche for your consulting firm, the following are steps to consider to bring your company and services to market and create your best chance of success:

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Identify Market Needs

As you consider your specific niche, think about the challenges and pain points your clients are likely to have and how your company can help them to overcome them.

 

Create Your Messaging

With a niche and pain points identified, you can start to build the messaging you can use to promote your firm and attract clients.  It may be of value to interview your existing and potential clients to build your messaging with their perspective in mind.

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Build Your Staff

Unless you are planning to run a Solo consulting form, you will need to think about the type of talent you need to gather for your firm and how to best recruit these professionals.  Look to build a staff that is comprised of a balance of expertise that will allow you to compete for different types of opportunities within your niche.

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Invest in the Right Tools

Technology, especially Internet-based technology, is changing and driving the consulting industry.  Incorporating the right systems for both your internal operations and client solutions can help to streamline your operations and lead to a greater number of engagements and revenue opportunities.

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eLearning to Support Your Business Consulting Model

Depending on the niche you choose for your company’s focus, employee awareness and training might be a significant component to an engagement.  In these cases, including eLearning as part of your client solution can provide tour firm with a significant (and often, ongoing) revenue stream.

If you are planning to incorporate eLearning into your consulting business model, it may make sense to become familiar with an LMS that offers all of the capabilities you need to deliver your client solutions.

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At LMS Portals, we offer a cloud-based, multi-tenant platform that allows our consulting partners to launch and manage private eLearning environments for their clients.  You can build and deliver new branded client eLearning portals on-demand, all from a centralized administrative console.