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a counselor or a therapist". Highlight your own strengths and don't oversell your skills and capacities. Clearly show what you can do, how your service is designed to tackle a problem or issue that is specific to the client. Provide the client with a simple checklist to help them choose which type of consultant is needed, for which specific purpose and at which stage or point in time such support is useful (see box).

Few, if any solo consultants can offer complete "all-round" services. So it is a good idea and an effective way of widening your range of capacity by cooperating with fellow consultants with complementary skills. Outsourcing or sub-consulting is another common practice. Alternatively, offering your services to a more established consultant as his/her/their sub-consultant can be an effective strategy to gain a foothold in the market as well as experience and most importantly,keep that cash-flow active. Such alliances may allow you to blend rare combinations of capacities and to respond flexibly to a client's various business and management needs. Your effectiveness in assisting with organizational change and in identifying market-oriented solutions to the problems at hand will be higher than presenting yourself simply as a task or sector specialist. Keep in mind true experts are always learning, improving their "hard and soft skills" while striving to offer their clients "best practices" oriented services that adhere to international standards for the profession.
Whether you are an "old" or new consultant, to stay on board the ocean cruiser called "globalisation", your professional skills, consulting expertise and approach as well as the type and range of working partnerships you can embrace will distinguish you as someone who is "in for the long haul". It may sound like a contraction, but in the fast paced global business environment of today, in order to provide timely, sharp and effective consulting services, you should not expect to be providing quick fixes. Both you and your client want to prosper and progress, not hop from island to island.

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Notes

(1) A business plan is simply a written document that describes the future path of a business. A good business plan explains the business concept, summarizes the objectives of the business, identifies the resources (both in terms of money and people) that will be needed by the business, describes how those resources will be obtained, and tells the reader why the business will succeed. A very easy to use interactive planner can be accessed online at: http://www.cbsc.org/ibp/

(2) The Small Business Help Center (http://www.helpbizowners.com) is a one-stop assistance center for information on running a small business, providing many free resources and information.

Learn more about this author, Glenn Brigaldino.
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