Question

Topic: Strategy

Ms-office Consultant - How To Start

Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 6/30/2004 at 7:04 PM ET 500 Points
I have a friend who is an expert at Microsoft Word and Excel. She has been making somewhat of a living for the past 8 or 10 years by consulting in this area.

The two services she has provided are:
- trainings for companies. This includes classroom trainings on the basics, tips and tricks brown bag lunches, etc. She has customer references.
- by developing complex programs using Excel or Word that allow companies to do their business a lot easier. This includes automating flow charts, databases, etc. Lots of macros and such. She has sample work available and customer references.

She has built the business through word of mouth only. No marketing, no web site, etc. She also got some business through a book she wrote on how to use Excel, but it is out of print as it was for an now obsolete version.

Business has been slow, and now she wants to try some marketing to improve business. I have some ideas, but thought I would throw this out to others and see what cost effective ideas to grow her business would be.

Location is San Francisco area, California.

Hit me with your ideas...

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 6/30/2004 at 10:04 PM Author
    Quick response - she realizes she will have to spend some money. I don't think she has a feel yet for how much she wants to spend.

    Of course, any money spent has to in the end pay more than for it self.

    Great suggestions. Many thanks.

    Anyone else want to take a shot at this?
  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 6/30/2004 at 10:47 PM Accepted
    Hi, Peter!

    I started my nubile career in software training, and it is certainly a hard thing to sell. If you can believe it, one of my first jobs required me to teach the corporate population how to use a revolutionary tool called EMAIL. The 1980s were amazing, hmm?

    Back to your friend's dilemma. She needs to get a domain name, her own email address (not "betsy@yahoo.com") and a simple website. The domain name and email hosting are dirt cheap. If she can't afford to hire an HTML monkey, she might try to barter her expertise!

    Periodically she should send her old clients, cousins and in-laws a tip via email, with her website URL in the signature. Tips that are useful will get forwarded! They don't have to be ground-breaking, because she already knows that 99% of her audience is blissfully ignorant of Office/Windows secrets. As an example... if you're on a web page, and you want to print PART of it, you can:

    1. Drag your cursor over that text
    2. Choose File>Print (do NOT click the Print icon!)
    3. When the Print dialog window appears, click the radio button next to "Selection"
    4. Click the OK button

    That'll save people some trees and ink, and she'll earn some word-of-mouse mileage every time the message gets forwarded. End each email with a kicker like, "What else would you like to know?"

    Last suggestion: She probably has some tried-n-true curriculum that she's been using. Take a fresh look at it with her and see what can be reconfigured into bigger or smaller courses. Think about hi-impact titles to apply to the new class. For example, "How to use Excel like Duct Tape for your small business." (Betcha she knows exactly what I mean by that!!)

    She's in an undervalued and unglamorous field, so she's got to put a creative spin on it and keep connecting with her customers. Most of her biz will be driven by repeat projects and referrals, that's for sure! The trick is to keep her service feeling NEW.

    - Shelley
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