A prospect may be reluctant to commit to a consulting project if they’ve never worked with you. If you offer a service that is time intensive consider alternative ways to deliver the information. Make it easy for your prospects to buy and become your client.

Implement a multi-tiered pricing model:

• Low end: create a do-it-yourself kit that might be accompanied by an hour of free consulting.

• Mid-range: create a webinar or teleclass based boot camp where over a set time period you coach the participants on doing the work themselves. It’s helpful to have the kit already developed as this can be the content part of the boot camp.

• High-end: some of the participants purchasing the kit or the boot camp will eventually decide it’s worth paying for you to do the project. In the meantime you’ve given them an idea of what it’s like to work with you.

The objective is to make the prospect comfortable in purchasing. With the downtime consultants are experiencing, now is a perfect time to develop a multi-tiered pricing model and position yourself to sign on clients once the recession ends.

In early March I had my very first virtual advisory board meeting. I “met” with my three advisors for about 50 minutes. When I recruited them I committed to meetings that were limited to one hour so it was important not to go over.

One week before the meeting I sent out the:

• Dial-in information
• Meeting Agenda which included specific questions I wanted to address
• Reading materials, i.e. my marketing plan, summary of outreach activities and asked that they view my website.

One thing I learned on the day of the meeting is I need to resend the dial-in information.  One of the advisors was having computer problems and called me to get it.

Now I understand how my clients feel.  The experience was nerveracking.  Here were three people I had known for years professionally.  I didn’t want to let them down.  And facilitating my own meeting didn’t help. Next time I’ll ask if I can record it.

The discussion remain centered around my agenda covering the areas of business development and marketing.  Each advisor was generous with their suggestions providing food for thought and tactical solutions or steps to take.

Our next “meeting” will be in early June as I requested a quarterly schedule.  Sometime in the next week or so I will email an update of my activities to keep them in the loop.  This will be an interesting quarter as I am working on several new initiatives.