I have been a consultant for ten years in one capacity or another. I’ve been a technology consultant for three years and sold development services for most of that time.
These days, I’m a freelance developer writing Ruby and JavaScript and helping set up good development routines to help teams be super productive and happy.
Frequently, I get asked for advice on how to build a consulting business. Usually the people asking are developers just starting out.
When I share whatever I know, I usually ask the other person to keep me posted on how things turn out. I’m always curious to know if anything I’ve said was actually useful so I can stop boring people if when it’s not.
A few months ago, I spoke with someone starting a software consulting business with his friend.
Some months after we spoke, he wrote to let me know things were going well and they’d landed some clients. (I very rarely ever hear back from people later, so this was awesome for me!) Apparently, some of what I said was useful and fortunately for me, he took notes and shared them back with me.
I’m going to turn these notes into a few posts summarizing things I say a lot in hopes it helps someone out.
More importantly, I’m hoping sharing whatever I know can turn “sales” from something slimy and manipulative into clear and honest tactics for growing a small business.
UPDATE:
Here is the list of articles in the series:
Feedback is always welcome and very appreciated via GitHub or Twitter.
Thanks to Justin Spradlin for sharing notes back with me. If you’d like to talk to him about his business or hire him, try him on Twitter.
Written by Adarsh Pandit
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