How Do you Determine the Types of Services to Provide in your Consulting Business?
When you’re just starting out, determining your services can be overwhelming. In any market there can be hundreds of different services offered, and choosing the right one for your business and you, can be difficult, which is exactly why I’ve come up with the top three things you should consider when determining your services.
Consider Your Strengths
When I say consider your strengths, I mean that you want to be really clear on the strengths that you possess. What’s in your leadership DNA that makes you unique? What’s your juice? Your special sauce? Think of your internal gifts and talents that give you synergy and magic.
If you’re not sure where to start (or even if you are) I’ve found it to be extremely helpful for folks to use tools like Clifton StrengthFinders. Though it is about $50 for the full report, I find it’s worth every penny especially for the clarity it can provide on your leadership DNA.
The assessment reviews your responses and places them among 34 strengths. If you purchase the full report, you’ll get a full ranking of your 34 strengths. It’ll also provide some details and recommendations of how you can leverage your strengths and play into them.
I'll give you a quick example. On my Strengths Finder Assessment, my top strength out of all 34 is Relator. So, when I am one-on-one with people, it’s like magic, I’m like magic. That is my secret sauce!
When I read that on my results I was like ‘Yes! This makes so much sense for me!” I want to know people's stories, build connections, find common interest in places where we can build common values. That's my top strength and because Relator is my top strength, guess what I'm really good at in terms of a service model?
One-on-one coaching.
I can do one-on-one coaching in my sleep. I can walk into a one-on-one coaching session and automatically turn up, be in the zone, and activate. That’s why I say it’s like magic for me, because it’s effortless.
Another example is one of my other top five strengths, Focus. Y'all, and I think this is from me being a principal, when I am in the zone, I don't hear anything else. If I put on some music, I turn over my phone and I'm lasered in on a task, I could literally spend hours on that thing because I'm so focused. Knowing that, I had a better understanding of how I could structure my business and services to best suit my needs. Instead of trying to squeeze an hour of work here and there, I gave myself long chunks of time to dive into the work.
The Strengths Finder results are also organized across four different categories: Relationship Building, Strategic Thinking, Executing, and Influencing. You can see where your strengths fall in each of these categories, and determine what kind of service can cater to your strengths.
For example, if most of your Strengths are focused in Relationship Building, then you’ll probably focus more on one-on-one services. If your strengths are mostly focused in Strategic Thinking, you’ll likely avoid one-on-one services because that isn’t a service that plays to your strengths as much as perhaps a project based engagement like creating a curriculum would.
Again, the most important thing is to find your strengths and build your business around those strengths. Forcing yourself to provide certain services because “everyone else does them” is not going to bring you joy or help you build a business you love. And that’s the goal isn’t it?
Consider Your Client’s Obstacles
In the problem that you are attempting to solve through your business, what's prevented your client from finding that solution or implementing that solution? You want to determine any obstacles that may prevent your clients from solving their problems so that you can provide a service that removes those obstacles while also solving the problem.
For example, if one of the biggest obstacles for your clients has been time, whether they’re stretched thin or have trouble with time management, you want to be thoughtful of that in terms of how you build your offer. How will you pace the work to ensure their success?
Remember, you need to be clear on any obstacles your clients may face so you can build out a service that your clients can use without worry.
Consider a Revenue Building Service
What service can you implement that will generate revenue in the next 30 days? If you choose a service model that won’t provide any revenue within the next 30 days, don’t start there.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be your service. I'm saying you shouldn’t start there, because you’ll be spending time wasting money. Think of it this way, the longer it takes you to build your service, the longer you can't offer your service. What I would recommend is that you consider what service you could start with that would allow you to build to that ultimate service offer that you want to have in your business.
The reason why I name 30 days is because I know each of you are great and amazing excellent educators and there is someone right now facing a problem that you could help them solve. They are literally waiting on you for the solution, and if you spend however many months building out a service, when you could do a live professional development, virtual session, webinar, or one-on-one coaching and help that someone right now.
Look, I know many of us who are perfectionists (I’m including myself in that too!), choose the big, fancy, complicated service model that takes a lot of work to build. Meanwhile, all of our gifts and talents are sitting around, not being offered up into the world. The longer you wait to launch a service, the longer it takes you to build it, the longer you're losing money in your business when you could be bringing in revenue and building towards your dream service model.
So I’m going to leave you with this question: What service can you choose to generate revenue in the next 30 days?
If you are interested in learning more about the different types of service models, enroll in my “8 Service Models for Your Consulting Business”. Click here to learn more and enroll.