The Quickest Shortcut For Attracting Consulting Clients (with a catch!)

There is a surprisingly effective way to grow your consultancy practice - but it comes with some very specific limitations.

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If you don’t want to go through the arduous process of validating your niche, building an audience, and attracting leads; there is a shortcut.

Become a consulting partner for a technology platform.

Almost every significant platform will have partners and consultants they recommend to help clients. If you can get yourself on the list, you’ll likely have a relatively consistent stream of queries you can work with.

Winning those first contracts will still be challenging, but it can be easier than starting entirely from scratch if marketing isn’t your forte.

What Do Vendor Consultants Do?

The obvious thing to note here is these consultants are typically more vendor-focused than goal-focused.

The work will involve helping clients implement and optimise the products and services offered by vendor partners.

This might include:

• Designing the implementation (gathering business needs and designing the vendor implementation to match that solution)

• Product implementation (ensuring the product is implemented to those solutions).

• Training and education (teaching the client how to best use the platform)

• Relationship management (between client and vendor)

• Change management (preparing everyone for the change or implementation of the vendor)

That doesn’t mean there won’t be some typical strategy work. But it does mean there won’t only be strategy work. Clients usually care more about an excellent implementation of the vendor than having a consultant explain what their goals should be.

Two Types Of Consulting Partners

Let’s distinguish between two types of partners.

1. Unofficial partners. This is where you have developed a relationship with a platform vendor. Typically, this means you help promote each other and frequently collaborate. For example, you might host joint events or webinars or refer clients to each other.

   See: Mastering Strategic Partnerships. (I’m not going to cover this here).

2. Official partnerships. This is where you have an official relationship with a platform vendor. You have applied for and been accepted into a program that clearly shows each party's benefits. I’ll focus on this step.

Joining Official Partnership Programs

Every major technology platform has consulting and solution partners who help their clients set up and get the most value from the platform. While it’s possible to offer these services themselves, it’s not the business model they’re aiming for.

These consulting partners are featured prominently on the brand’s homepage and often benefit from direct referrals in the sales process. You can see an example of Salesforce’s consulting partners below.

So this sounds like an easy win; why doesn’t everyone do it?

The answer is that these vendors often charge a fee to join the program and have a set of requirements you need to surpass.

You can see an example set below:

There is often an annual membership fee to join these programs, and you must be certified on the platform. This takes time (and incurs additional costs). This puts joining these programs beyond most solo consultants' ability (or comfort level).

So, what can you do instead?

Become An Official Partner To Smaller Vendors

The big technology companies aren’t the only ones with official expert or partner programs. The smaller vendors in many niches do as well.

For example, this is the list of experts or consultants for Circle.so:

Even the mid-tier ones often have solo consultants featuring amongst the larger names. This is from Pipedrive (a former FeverBee client):

I suspect Paul, above, benefits significantly from being near the top of this list and being a clear soloist compared with a bunch of consulting-sounding organisations.

The great thing about these programs is they’re often free to join, have fewer partners, and increase your likelihood of attracting work.

The downside is the client budgets are likely to be much smaller. However, if you don’t want the hassle of trying to market yourself, this can be an excellent way to attract clients and launch your consulting practice.

And nothing is stopping you from…

1. Signing up to multiple vendors at once. As long as you have the expertise of each vendor, you can join numerous small vendors at once.

2. Moving to more prominent vendors over time. Once you build a client base and showcase a decent record of success, you can move up to the mid-tier vendor programs with bigger budgets.

The key to making this work is you have to be good at sales.

p.s. Sign up for the Technical Freelance Academy by

SeattleDataGuy

(access my sales and marketing course).

The Downsides Of Joining Vendor Partnership Programs

1. Loss of Independence and Objectivity. When consultants are tied to specific vendors, they may feel pressured to recommend partner solutions even when alternative options might better serve the client.

2. Financial Considerations Partnership programs often come with substantial upfront and ongoing costs, including certification fees, training expenses, and minimum purchase requirements.

3. Resource Constraints Managing vendor partnerships demands significant time and resources for training, certification maintenance, and administrative tasks. Consultants must constantly invest in staying current with vendor-specific technologies and updates, which can detract from core consulting work.

4. Market Positioning Challenges Being closely associated with specific vendors can transform a consultant's market perception from an independent advisor to a mere reseller.

5. Technical Limitations Partnership programs often restrict consultants to working within specific technological ecosystems, limiting their ability to implement custom or alternative solutions.

6. Contractual Obligations Vendor partnerships typically come with strict contractual requirements including compliance standards, marketing commitments, and detailed reporting obligations.

7. Business Risk Tying your business closely to specific vendors makes you vulnerable to their market performance and business decisions. If a vendor's reputation suffers, products fail, or they change their partnership program terms, it can have serious implications for your consulting practice and client relationships.

Good luck!

p.s. If you want to learn more about fees and selling consultancy projects, sign up for my Proposal Mastery course.