Consultants Quick Start Guide 2e 2nd Edition

Elaine Biech's book is a terrific step-by-step manual for new consultants. This is actually more of a workbook than a book. You can read the entire thing in about three hours.This book is filled with checklists, forms, and questionnaires for starting a consulting business. The topics range from "Why Consulting?" and "Planning Your Consulting Future", to "Finding Clients", "Marketing", and "Surviving the First Year".Well-written and very thorough, this is an excellent book for those who are thinking about making the leap from full-time employee to independent consultant. I highly recommend it.Mitch Paioff, Author, Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant

This book was extremely helpful when I found myself unexpectedly starting my own consulting business about 10 years ago. It was a scary time and I'm glad I had some good references to get me through the initial fear.

Good checklist for new Consultants

Very useful book if you're interested in starting your own consulting shop. Full of practical advice and useful forms. Worth a read.

Purchased for my daughter's college course!

If you already know your own skill set, what you have to offer, and what type of business you want to run then don't bother with this book. The first few chapters of this book deal with analyzing your skills and determining what type of consulting you want to pursue and the general tone of the book assumes that you have no idea what type of consulting company you are opening. This book is good if you don't know what type of business you would like to start. This to me is unfathomable but I guess there are people out there that want to work for themselves but don't know what skills they have and how to utilize them. There are a lot of workbook pages in this book that ask you to analyze your attitude, aptitude and personality as it relates to the consulting business. The book asks you to describe your idea of an ideal future and gives you an idea of the financing involved in starting up a small consulting business. There are some really good things in this book. For example, advice on writing a business plan, form examples for budgeting your business, and some useful advice on pitching to new clients. HOWEVER, the book is extremely light in content. It does not go into detail on anything. It is, as the title suggests, A QUICK START Guide. I personally found the book a bit fluffy in the sense that it concentrated too much on your attitude by asking lots of questions like, "Are you happy?" The book also has an entire chapter dedicated to family planning around your business, which in my opinion is ridiculously trivial and providing a list of supplies that you will need for your home office (i.e. Stamps etc...). I think I can figure out that I need post-it notes, thank you! I found the one paragraph dedicated to building a Web site for your company particular disturbing. I am a professional Web programmer and no PROFESSIONAL web site should include, "a quiz, a self-assessment or puzzle." I'm sorry but that stuff is child's play and will turn all of your prospective clients off, if they are at all serious business people!!! If you don't sell puzzles then you shouldn't have one on your Web site! In fact disregard that entire paragraph on having your own Web site. Better not to have one at all then to have it done wrong!! Well, for those of you who are thinking about starting a business, this might be a good, BASIC guide but for those of us who already know what business we are in, know what we want to do for a living and have a basic knowledge of starting up a business, this book is simply too basic. I recommend, "Working For Yourself" by Stephen Fishman, which goes into much more detail about taxes, laws and other detailed aspects of independent consulting.

This book is a "must have" for all new consultants. It is especially helpful to those involved in corporate training development and delivery. I have used many of the forms in this book as templates.This was money well-spent!

Not a book I highly recommend. Sorry. It's a second edition, the first was written back in 2001. See  The Consultant's Quick Start Guide: An Action Plan for Your First Year in Business . Both have a Search Inside feature at Amazon. So you can compare the Table of Contents for each. They appear to be almost identical to me. But I've only read the Second Edition.The author is a consultant's consultant in the same way that Alan Weiss seems to be. They both write lots of books to promote their consulting and training practices. And both seem to be highly respected in the consulting field. I have read or skimmed a few books written by each. I generally like Weiss' stuff. I generally don't like Biech's. The difference is that Weiss writes books that sound like they are coming from someone who has been there and done that. Biech's books come across as though she's just a professional writer. I cannot determine if she has in fact been there and done that after reading her stuff.The instant book is supposed to be a "go-to" book for all new and aspiring consultants. And it is written kind of like a workbook, but I'm not sure it does a good job at that. I suppose if it had been more like "16 Weeks to Your Dream Business" (ISBN: 9780071588362), then I might have a bit more praise for this book. But even the sequence of the chapters was off for me.Consultants are typically expert on some topic or skill. Thus they should know who their potential customers would be, AND who their current competitors are. Knowing this information will help the wanta-be consultant know his pricing, his expenses, and how he might go from internal job to external consultant status. If this is so, then this book did not really need chapters 1-4 and 6. (See the Search Inside feature at Amazon for chapter titles.) And this would actually start the book where it should: Business Plans! Unfortunately I found the chapter on business plans lacking much. The author says one only needs to be 5-10 pages. That sounds more like a simple memo to do something rather than a roadmap to success.And the last time I checked, a marketing plan was a subset of a business plan. This book seems to treat it as a separate freestanding document. I was hoping there would be some real good content in chapters 8 and 9 regarding marketing. But, no, not much there. We certainly did not hear about how the author primarily markets her consulting practice - writing books. And we didn't hear much about the importance or method of doing Internet Marketing besides maybe having a Web site. I figured there would at least be some marketing help in Appendix A (Reading List), but that list only had two books listed: "Marketing Your Consulting Services" (Biech), and "How to Become a Rainmaker" (Fox). Neither of these books particular impressed me when I gave them a quick skim some time ago. Yes, one is written in 2003 and the other in 2000.If you plan to go out on your own and make a living as an independent consultant, then you need a business plan that is 25-35 pages long in written form. You will need to investigate and study your competitors in order to write the plan. And by doing that investigation you will learn what the best marketing tools and techniques are in your field and practice. Without becoming expert in marketing and having a solid marketing plan you will starve as a consultant. And that point is not made clear in the instant book being reviewed. Also, too much focus was placed on the wanta-be consultant in this book. There was not enough emphasis about the importance of knowing how other people do things so you can copy those things that are successful.If you want to be successful as a consultant then consider becoming an expert at Internet Marketing. Also, consider writing a book or books to help promote yourself - create an online platform for yourself. One book that might be a good lead-in for you on this matter would be "eBoot Camp" (ISBN: 9780470411599). I just read it and posted a book review on Amazon for it. And another book would be "The IndieAuthor Guide" (ISBN: 1434857689). 2 stars!

excellent

Feels like advice someone in my parents generation would give - "think about where you'll put your answering machine and fax in your office...file your project documents in colour-coded folders...". Some good advice in there for folks who have never consulted interspersed with dated methods.