Checklist for Becoming a successful Business Doctors SME Consultant

Checklist for Becoming a successful Business Doctors SME  Consultant

Here is a list of things to consider when you are starting or growing your small business consulting franchise:

Start with your own skill-building. You cannot be an effective consultant if you don't bring value to the small business owner. Be relentless in your ongoing skill building. You become more in-demand and can charge higher fees based on your wider breath of knowledge and expertise. Know your products and services inside out.

Check your experience level. An expert is defined as having 10,000 hours of experience with the topic they claim as their expertise. Again, combine your experience and background with in depth product knowledge. Focus on 8 factors and 10 steps and ensure you complete the Launchpad, Alumni and Masters training levels with the Business Doctors Academy.

Determine your Big Why. Before you get down to the nitty-gritty of designing your business and getting clients, figure out why you want to be a small business consultant and help this specific target audience. What is your motivation? Knowing this will keep you going when you hit the inevitable speed bumps along the way to building your business and serving your clients. Our why is that we are passionate about sharing our experience and helping business owners achieve their vision.

Determine what "success" looks like for you personally. Keep your eye on the target. The definition of success differs from person to person. Take some time to visualize all the ways that a successful consulting practice will manifest in your personal and professional life. Compare your performance to the best instead of looking for things to support why you can’t reach your full potential or dream.

Write a business plan. Go through all the same steps you would go through with a client, and work on your own business model design. Things to consider:  what are your mission and vision statements, what services are you focusing on, your pricing and profit models. Include the resources you will need to succeed, like money, time, skills/knowledge, equipment, and people resources. Set goals and milestones for the next 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. As a franchise owner you not only have access to a wide range of products and international systems, you also have access to the brand and scalability that comes with it, so plan BIG!

Write a marketing plan. There are many small business consultants out there. How will you be remarkable and stand out from the crowd? How will you connect with your audience and build rapport and trust? Will you use traditional and franchise marketing techniques and systems only, or combine traditional and internet marketing, incorporating your differentiated skills and capabilities? Which of the 100+ available techniques will bring the best results? How much will you invest in marketing (in both time and money)? What are the goals of your marketing? Business Doctors provide you with everything to plan and execute your own personalised marketing plan while at the same time providing you access to corporate level platforms.

Learn coaching skills. You will be working with human beings who have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Learn deep listening skills and how to ask meaningful questions to get clarity and provide focus. Learn how to hold clients accountable for implementing their action plans, and how to deal with difficult client situations.

Choose a focus or niche. Determine if your specialty requires you to have a license or certification (financial and tax advisors, legal advisors, insurance advisors). Will you focus on a small topic area, like growth strategies, or will you be an expert who can help clients with a wide range of challenges and projects? Will you work with a particular size business based on number of employees or revenue? Will you work only with in a specific industry linked to your own particular background? As a Business Doctor you are trained to work across any industry and are able to provide holistic solutions, finding your niche within these will give you an even greater advantage.

Decide if you are going to advise them, or do the work for them. Some consultants are more like mentors and advisors, who work with the small business owner to do planning and strategy work. Other small business consultants provide a specific service as a sub-contractor, to augment the client's staff. We are positioned as either but remember that our objective is to not to just sell time but IP so ensure that you leverage the exclusive systems provided by the franchise.

Learn the problems that most small business owners have and formulate a strategy to define and solve those problems. We outline the top problems that our clients commonly need help with based on research and our experience servicing SMEs over the last 15 years. Use readily available strategies, tools and assessments to help solve these problems, or create strategies of your own. Consider putting together your own consultant's toolkit drawing on your own experience and the wide selection available as a franchisee.

Deeply understand the (8 or 10) areas of a business model to help your clients in the areas that are causing the most damage or have the best return on investment if they make a change.

Systemize your own business so that you have maximum efficiency. Use templates, automation and sales scripts available to you as a franchisee. Take time early in the setup of your business to create these systems to free up your time and attention for more important tasks.

Get help with the administrative and marketing work from the experts within the network I.e. Marketing Doctors. Outsource the tasks that you do not want to do, that you are not an expert in, or that take away from your revenue-generating time i.e. cold calling to the Business Doctors call centre or marketing and accounting to HQ.

Get your ego out of the way. While your work can and should be meaningful to you, you are not a consultant to pump up your own ego. You are a consultant to serve your clients. You are going to advise them, help them to determine the pros and cons of each course of action, and then allow them to make their own decisions. You cannot stop them from making unwise decisions or from not following through on an implementation plan. Equally, if your client has a big win, it may be partly due to your advice, but much of the praise needs to go to your client for making it happen. Decide in advance what a "successful client engagement" means to you. Ensure that you read and understand the Business Doctors operations manual specifically related. Be honest about your own areas of personal development. No one is perfect. Sometimes we procrastinate. Sometimes we get distracted. Sometimes we let anger or fear get the better of us. Sometimes we don't communicate as well as we could. Discover your weaknesses and either learn how to overcome them, or hire staff to help deflect them.

Choose marketing techniques that bring qualified leads to the sales conversation. Track your marketing relentlessly. If your marketing isn't bringing the desired results, revamp it. Do not choose marketing techniques because they are a hot trend if they don't bring in leads or help build your brand recognition.

Learn problem solving, decision making, project management, and time management skills. These four skills will provide the backbone of the assistance you will offer clients and help you run your own business successfully.

Finally, learn from the masters. Why reinvent the wheel, that’s after all why you joined a franchise. You can discover savvy shortcuts by paying attention to the leading consultants in our network and by completing and furthering your training and personal development.  Study our offerings, our marketing methods, the way other Business Doctors run their businesses, and the way they work with clients. As a franchise owner you have economies of scale and a brand that others will find hard to compete with but remember that making a success of your business is ultimately up to you.