29.4Techniques for marketing consulting assignments

Every consultant prefers clients to come to him or her. Yet many consultants, in particular newcomers to the profession, would never get enough work by merely waiting for potential clients to come. They have to find clients and market assignments to them. The main techniques are reviewed in this section.

Cold contacts

Cold contacts are visits, letters or telephone calls initiated by a consultant to try to sell a service to a potential client. A lot has been said and written about these contacts. They are generally regarded as the least effective marketing technique and some consultants never use them. Yet they are still used, and newly established consulting firms may be unable to avoid them.

Cold visits (unannounced) are least suitable. Managers resent being disturbed by unknown people for unknown reasons. In some cultures, however, this is acceptable.

Cold mailing of letters is a slightly better technique. Its purpose is not to sell an assignment, but to present the consultant to the prospective client and prepare the ground for a further contact, to follow in two to three weeks.

Cold telephone calls have the sole purpose of obtaining an appointment with the client. They also allow the client to ask questions before deciding to receive or visit the consultant.

The effectiveness of cold contacts can be increased by observing certain rules. First, the prospective clients have to be properly selected. They must be target organizations, identified by research on the potential market, and the consultant must be convinced that he can do something useful for them. He should work out a list of addresses or, if he decides to buy one from an agent, he should screen it before using it.

Second, cold contacts require technical preparation. The consultant should learn as much as possible about the organization to be contacted. The worst thing that the consultant can do is to exhibit flagrant ignorance of basic facts about the client’s business in the first conversation. Letters worded in general