Starting a consulting business can be challenging. Look at the 5 elements that should be in every consultant’s portfolio.
Starting a consulting business can be challenging. You have to learn how to manage yourself and market your services, often, you have to learn how to create a website to sell your work. There are many things that you have to learn, and one of those things is how to sell yourself.
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When you are working on landing projects and clients, your portfolio is how you sell yourself. If it is not up to par, you may be in the famine part of the independent business owner’s feast or famine phase. Let’s go on to look at 5 elements that should be in every consultant’s portfolio.
1. Who You Are – Brand Identity
Thousands of people do what you do, so why should people do business with you? What makes you special, and how can people benefit from your services versus those from someone else?
Ensure you are descriptive about who you are and vulnerable with your story. Oftentimes we like to think that business is separate from who we are, but people love to do business with people they like. If you can tell your story and let them get to know your personality a little, then it will be much easier for you to close the deal with clients.
It is true that if you tell personal information about yourself, some people will not resonate with what you say. The good news is that those are not the right clients and instead of working with people you do not enjoy working with, you can save time for clients that will be perfect for you.
2. What You Do
If people go to your website, they need to know what you do right away. If they go to your website and click away with a confused look because it was less than self-explanatory, you need to clean up your act.
While you want to have a place to tell your story and let people get to know you a little bit, it is most important to give a clear and quick description of what you do so that people can contact you and work with you. Once you have a clear and precise description, you can lead them to more information to give them details on what you do.
Besides, for the what of what you do, you can tell people how you do your work. What is your process? How will you help them through this journey as you work together? Answering these questions for people through your portfolio will help them see if you are a good fit for their project.
3. Work Examples in Your Consultant’s Portfolio
Why not let your work speak for itself. Put the examples of your work that you are most proud of in your portfolio. People want to see what you have done in the past because this is often the best predictor of what is possible in the future unless you’ve developed some new skills and if that is the case, you need to update your portfolio and work examples to reflect this as soon as possible.
You can also talk about what kind of work you enjoy doing and why you enjoy doing it. This is another way for people to get to know you a little better.
If you are applying for work in a certain niche and have already done it in that niche, you should immediately show them the work in their niche. This will allow them to see that you are already familiar with the topic and the audience.
4. Formatting That Is Easy to Navigate
When people go to view your portfolio, will they find something that is well-designed, sleek, and easy to navigate? Your website doesn’t need to be complicated and confusing to be effective. In fact, the less complicated you can make your website, the better.
You want everything to point to your work examples, your story about yourself, and the other parts of the website that are selling you. You don’t need them to pay attention to your flashy site or get confused when navigating.
5. How to Reach You
Of course, it is important to let people know how to reach you so they can hire you. You can put down different ways to contact you, but make sure they know the best and fastest way to contact you to set them up for success.
If you rarely check your email, you might ask them to call instead of sending an email if they want a faster response.
Conclusion
Making sure that your consultant’s portfolio is optimized and formatted in a manner that will get attention, keep attention, and compel people to give you their business may seem like a big task. You should commit much time and effort to this since it could mean the difference between hundreds and thousands of dollars.
People want to work with professionals, and when you show people that you are a professional and know how to market your craft and perform your work, they will be impressed and likely to give you an interview and hire you for their project.
