FUNDAMENTALS OF ESTABLISHING A
CONSULTANCY
by
Emma O. Omuoijine
B.sc MBA LL.B LL.M BL FNIVS
Emma O Omuojine
• Fellow, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors
& Valuers
• Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of
Nigeria
• Principal Partner, Omuojine & Associates
• National Secretary,NIESV,1990-1992
• Registrar,ESVARBON,1995-2003
• Member of National Council,1986-2003
• Member ESVARBON 1992-2003
FUNDAMENTALS OF ESTABLISHING A
CONSULTANCY
• INTRODUCTION
• Consultancy is the art of giving advice and solving problems in a
professional respect by a Consultant. In simple language a
Consultant is one who gives professional advice or services. You
work in a particular field and offer your expertise to help others with
their problems in the field that you know best. You simply share the
tips, tricks and techniques that you have acquired over the years.
• Anyone can be a consultant as long as you have the knowledge,
skill and experience in your chosen occupation or profession. You
do not need to be the ultimate best in your field to become a
Consultant. The first step is to take an honest look at your own
training and experience in your chosen occupation or profession.
You may have worked all your life in a particular field and received
special training and education along the same lines. You may also
qualify as a consultant if you have taken any advanced academic
degrees, certification or special studies in your area of expertise.
The key is to choose an area in which you have garnered some
experience and one that you enjoy doing.
FUNDAMENTALS OF CONSULTANCY
• EXPERIENCE
• The sine-qua-non to being the master of your trade or
profession is experience. It is given that when you have
done a particular job over and over again you become
an expert in that particular job, trade or profession.
Experience allows you to acquire the necessary tools for
tackling professional problems from different angles and
perspectives given different variables and situations. It is
experience that qualifies you to the toga of consultancy
while your basic training entitles you to becoming a
professional in the first instance. To succeed in the
consultancy business you must be ardent at recognizing
problems and shaping solutions to those problems; and
the tool to just doing that is experience.
Why do you want to become a consultant?
• As a professional with years of experience you are dissatisfied with
the corporate environment and finding consulting to be a rewarding
alternative.
• As a parent you do not want to work full time, choosing to work from
home while taking care of a child or parent.
• Finding yourself unemployed and realising you have a life time
opportunity to finally start the business of your dreams.
• Being offered consulting work and realising that you would like to do
more of It.
• Wanting to supplement your existing job by moonlighting.
• Retiring but wanting to keep busy.
• Being downsized and discovering that other companies need
someone with your skills, but not on full time basis.
• Realising you want more control over your life.
• Facing medical issues that prevent you from working full-time.
• Fulfilling a life long dream of running a corporate professional
business empire.
• BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
• Once you have decided to set up your business as a consultant you
will want to consider your business environment against political,
social, cultural, economic, regulatory and competitive
considerations.
• LEGAL REQUIREMENT
• It is best to formalise your business structure right from the start. A
business can take any form depending on its size and nature. The
Common forms of business are sole proprietorship, partnership, and
corporations or limited liability companies.
• You have to make a decision whether you are going into a one-man
business in which case you will register a Sole Proprietorship
Company with the Corporate Affairs Commission or a partnership
with a colleague or a group of colleagues in which case you will
register a partnership. By virtue of Section 19 of the Companies and
Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 1990, the membership of a partnership
must not be more than twenty (20) unless it is a legal practice of
legal practitioners or accounting firm of chartered accountants or a
corporative society registered under the provisions of any enactment
in Nigeria.
• As a condition precedent to running a professionally recognised
consulting business in Nigeria, a number of regulatory bodies
require special licensing or registration with such regulatory bodies.
For an estate surveying and valuation practice, you are required to
register your firm with the Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration
Board of Nigeria (CAP 111 LFN 1990).
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CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY
Being self employed and starting off a consultancy could be a beautiful idea
and a risk worth taking but a journey into the unknown is not without its
doubts and contemplations. This is where a thorough self-assessment
becomes germaine.
What is the level of your training and experience? Can you cope with
independent work?
Are you confident and organized?
Are you competitive?
What level of risk can you take?
How good is your health and without a benefit plan?
Do you have skills, knowledge and experience that private individuals,
agencies and companies will pay for?
Will your family support your decision?
Do you have a fall back position or a safety-net? Can you recover, survive if
you do not make it?
Can you sleep at night not knowing when the make or mar fee-cheque will
come in?
Are you an extrovert with good public relations and interpersonal
skills, or an introvert?
Do you have good communication skill and manner of speech? Do you
have good negotiating skills?
What is your self perception? Are you an achiever, a goal getter a
professional’s professional?
Your honest answers to the above questions will determine whether you are
a Finder, Minder or Grinder ( Harry Brelsford, 1998) and what manner and
type of consultancy business you may wish to set up.
• FINDER PERSONALITY
• The finder quality in you as a consultant has to do with your public
relations ability and how you are able to relate and sell your person
and trade to would be clients and stakeholders in your line of
business. It is the art of marketing and striking new business deals.
It may involve cold calls, socialising with stakeholders, being a
participating member of social, philanthropic and recreational clubs,
attending business meetings, giving speeches and networking.
• Surprisingly and strongly enough most professionals do not enjoy
the finder role as it runs counter to the more introverted personalities
of most professionals.
• MINDER QUALITY
• What type of minder personality will you be? You have gotten a
business brief through your initial contracts. How do you manage it?
What is your delivery time? any follow up by way of a thank you
card to the client and follow up of clients as to referrals. A good
wine needs no bush. A good job will definitely sell itself but you need
your existing clients to publish your work and worth to attract
additional clients and improve on your clientele base. How good are
you at keeping records and maintaining a standard accounting
Practice?
• A GRINDER PEROFESSIONAL
• This is the art of performing work. Rare is the professional who does
not like to grind or do the work. In fact the super grinders more often
forget, neglect or refuse to attend seminars, conferences, CPD’s
etc., thereby jeopardising their professional competence vis-a-vis
modern trends and techniques in their chosen professional field.
Capacity and capability
• Having considered the fundamentals, how do you go
forward running a consultancy business? Suffice to say
that consulting involves great work, high risk but the
reward could be tremendous. But you have to be
realistic. You evaluate yourself against the finder, minder
and grinder model.
• Experience has shown that you can get two out of three
in a given person (Harry Brelsford, 1998). How you
manage the third requirement will foretell how well you
will succeed in your enterprise. The shortfall can
however be remedied through a complementary
employment profile or by entering into a partnership.
• BUSINESS PLAN
• Like any well thought out business it is essential that you prepare
your own business plan. How and where to commence operation;
From home, a one or two room office or a corporate office? Your
business organization, marketing strategy and funding will be issues
to be addressed under the plan.
• MARKETING
• Once you have set up your consulting business the next step is to
let people know that you are now on your own and that you are
available for work. Your first step is to start with people you already
know, your friends, associates, colleagues, bosses and existing
industry contacts.
• Your marketing through brochures and capacity documentation
should focus on packaging you as a consultant and an expert in
your field of practice and highlighting the value-added that you could
bring to your prospective clients; that you have the required
expertise to help solve their problems.
• Some of the ways of growing your clientele and increasing
awareness about your consulting business include the following;
• (a) Networking, (b) Referrals, (c) Cold Calling, (d) Public Speaking,
(e) Books, Articles and Newsletters, and (f) Advertising.
CONCLUSION
• Starting a consulting business takes more than
expertise in your chosen field. It takes a lot of
business sense, confidence, loads of financial
smarts, good public relations, personal
communication skills, marketing know-how
,negotiating prowess, gusto, resilience, good
people, good will, wisdom and above all the
special Grace of God to succeed. Thereafter you
will find consulting to be very rewarding and
personally fulfilling.
• Thank you for listening.