Some consultants say, “I don’t need a marketing strategy – I have many good friends in the industry”. This is short-sighted, foolish and not the red-carpet it might seem to be. The trouble with ‘friends in the industry’ who may suffer from lack of business etiquette, is that they can want to use you as a consultant on a “friendship” basis, meaning double the work for half the price, with the payment of fees sometimes rather slow – because you’re friends!

In many circumstances, for many consultants, the search for new clients will be endless, even if their consultancy is a success story. An attempt was being made to headhunt a highly-qualified business psychologist as a new senior member of staff in a successful change management consultancy working in a rather intense commercial environment and with more business than it could handle. The business psychologist asked if she would be dealing with client programmes. The firm responded; “No, we will expect you to spend about 40 percent of your time on marketing.” She never joined them.

Perhaps you are feeling that this article is more about identifying the problems there are likely to be in finding clients, rather than positive guidance on how to find clients. However, it does stand to be said that advice on where the problems may be found are useful.

But, beyond that, the point is, there can hardly be a short answer even for a starting point. But what there brilliantly is, almost overwhelming in quantity and quality, is the internet, It has grown into something that is absolutely matchless for this kind of thing. But most consultants don’t know how they should tap into the internet to grow a prospect list and generate clients.

If you search Google for “How to get clients for an independent consultancy” it lists well over 400,000,000 sites. Serch it for “Books on How to get clients for an independent consultancy” and it lists over 2,000,000 million sites.

They all have search engines that will enable you to particularise the search more narrowly for the field of consultancy you are working in, or intend to be working in.

But beyond this, there is far more to establishing a consulting business which also operates as a client generating marketing machine. With the correct strategy and knowledge, it is not difficult to create a pipeline of regular paying clients. The difficulty is in knowing where to get such stategies and knowledge.

Many independent consultants try to sell before they market to prospective clients and this can be fatal, thus sealing the lid on any chance they previously had on establishing that prospect as a new client. There is a huge difference between marketing and selling, and the sooner independent consultants learn that – the faster their bank balances will grow.