Some independent consultants developing their marketing strategies will say “I’ll be OK, I have many good friends in the industry”. This is not the red-carpet path it may seem to be. The trouble with ‘friends’ who may be sharks as far as their business etiquette is concerned, is that they can sometimes 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 getting set aside altogether.

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.

Maybe you are feeling that this article is more about identifying the problems there are likely to be in finding clients, rather than positive tips on how to find clients. However, it does stand to be said that advice on where the problems may be found are very 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 and others have search engines that will enable you to customise the search more narrowly for the field of consultancy you are working in, or intend to be working in.

But far beyond this, there is much more to forming an independent consulting business which is capable of generating a pipeline of regular clients. With the correct strategy and knowledge, it is not very difficult to create such a pipeline, but it has been difficult until now, to know where to get such stategies and knowledge.

Most consultants attempt to sell before they even market to prospective clients and this is often fatal, sealing the lid on any chance the consultant previously had on establishing that firm as a new client. There is a big difference between selling and marketing, and the sooner every consultant learns that – the better their bank balance will grow.