Consulting firms play a critical role in assisting businesses fields an array of fields. And while the opportunities for diversification allow most firms to deal with change more easily than many other types of business, today’s business consulting firms still encounter numerous challenges in the face of an increasingly digitalized climate.
Today’s business consulting firms tend to support their clients in a variety of ways. These can include guiding them through the formulation of a viable business model, researching competition, identifying and exploiting new market opportunities, increasing operational efficiencies, and creating a process for recruiting and developing talent. To meet the increased and changing demands of today’s clients, consulting firms must be fully committed to bringing innovative ideas to a shifting global landscape. Moving forward, many firms will need to adjust their business models, offerings, and project plans in order to remain viable and to flourish.
Creating Business Consulting Packages for Today’s Clients
The changes in the consulting industry in recent years, driven by increasing complex industry and customer demands, has forced consulting executives to reevaluate their position in the marketplace. Distinguishing your firm from the competition starts with building the unique offerings your firm brings, along with all the messaging and marketing to support those offerings. The process often consists of the following steps:
Identify Your Specific Offerings
The first step in creating your consulting packages is in outlining everything your firm brings to the marketplace. This exercise also allows you to scrutinize the services you offer to determine which are the most profitable and most easily marketable moving forward.
Define Your Market
Once you have evaluated your offerings and strengths, you can best determine the audience to whom your firm will have the greatest appeal. Most firms do not require a very large audience, but they do need an audience that they can define and reach. And, of course, they need to be sure they can build a profitable business from this audience.
Build and Name Your Consulting Package
The next step is in building the components of your consulting packages and naming them for marketability. You can simplify things by starting with a single package and building the messaging around that using natural language that outlines the client challenge and your consulting solution.
Know Your Costs
Before going to market with your packages, you must gain a full understanding of your costs, including the time your team will dedicate to the work, along with any additional overhead the engagement may cost your firm.
Set Your Pricing
You can then set your pricing, making sure that you have built in paying yourself (50% of the project fee is often cited as a good baseline for your profit). If you choose to work with a flat fee, make sure to include margin for uncertainty. And note that you might have to play around with the fee a bit as you get started to see what brings you the profitability you need while gaining customer acceptance.
Incorporating eLearning into Your Business Consulting Packages
Depending on the consulting packages your firm offers, training for your client’s employees can be a critical component of the engagement. This is especially true if, as a result of your client work, you are modifying their processes, introducing new applications, or influencing compliance in any way. In these cases, eLearning can provide the technology you need to cost-effectively offer the employee training your clients will need in support of your engagement.
LMS Portals offers a cloud-based, multi-tenant Learning Management System (LMS) that enables our consulting partners to launch and manage a private eLearning environment for each of their clients. Each portal you launch can have its own branding elements, user onboarding, collaboration tools, analytics, and more.
Visit our Partner Program pages to learn more or contact us today to get started
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