Marketing a Consultancy Practice is not a straightforward case of simply advertising your presence to the world. Although I am sure that a full colour page on the back of The Sunday Times would attract a large number of enquiries, the nature of consultancy is not commercial in the same way as selling a product. Consultancy is about respect and recommendation, gradually building an image, instilling a sense of security and conveying trust in your ability and knowledge to a needful group of potential customers.
No matter which discipline you choose to work in – although some will require a less profound or legally binding imparting of information – the requirement for establishing evidence of your skills and advice remains the same. Consultants live by recommendation and perceived wisdom, which are not matters for advertising using conventional methods.
There are four main types of Consultant; those who offer long-term solutions and management advice to clients seeking professional assistance in creating a broader environment and business model for their properties; those that seek immediate action and help with urgent matters such as Court work and Claims; those that seek wisdom and information, including training and practical advice, and those who want to gain independent experience and specialist knowledge when working on one-off projects.
I appreciate that within those four parameters, there is potentially a wide gulf, but essentially, these four categories will cover the majority of enquiries. Our clients come to us for help and assistance they cannot find elsewhere. So many times, I have heard customers say to me that they did not know that such people as myself existed! ‘I wish I had known about you years ago!’
I would aver that the secret of success in developing a viable Consultancy Practice involves three main foundations – RESPECT, REPUTATION AND RECOMMENDATION. Respect can only be earned, and this is the essence of gaining a reputation. Respect comes from others, and in the case of consultancy, it is essential that those others are your fellow professionals. Gaining a level of respect sufficient to be recommended by your peers may take a few years to achieve. Building a consultancy should be seen as a long-term ‘Looking To The Future’ business plan, and there are no short cuts. Simply setting up a Practice and waiting for commissions is not a viable business plan.
One method that has proven successful for myself has been to build a Facebook profile. Not only my own Group or Page, but by carefully selecting those forums that welcome professionals and not the general public, and that only allow reasonable people access to the site, by monitoring comment and removing ‘unhelpful content’, and by answering questions or offering solutions to problems raised by others has
allowed me to build a strong and wide-ranging image on social media. Constantly, whenever suitable topics appear, usually from designers and contractors seeking advice for their problems, I have built up a reputation for being the ‘Go-To’ person by contractors and their clients in need of independent advice.
Never be afraid to share your knowledge. The stronger your advice, the better the results for your profile. Within two or three years, I have developed a network of social media groups with around 20,000 members. Numerically, very few will ask me to help them personally, but I receive around three commissions each month from their clients and their neighbours on projects being worked on by my FB contacts or ‘friends’. (NB; if you ever receive an enquiry from a social media source, make sure they remove your name from their ‘friends’ list to prevent any claims of collusion or bias) Of the 20,000 FB contacts in my network, I know no more than a tiny percentage personally, yet many more feel able to recommend me.
As garden designers, your work displayed on other social sites such as Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, Photoblog, 500X, Unsplash etc will enable you to build a ‘public’ image, where your work is admired and discussed, acting as a gallery for your work.
Other disciplines may find professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, Quora, Plaxo, Viadeo and XNING useful, although these will only reinforce your professionalism by providing information about your ‘pedigree’ and background rather than necessarily your work and image. Gaining positive recognition by your peers is invaluable to your practice.
Becoming a member of an Association that undertakes full vetting procedures should not be seen as a Marketing tool, although acceptance into membership will certainly reinforce your obvious professionalism. The Society of Garden Designers, Association of Professional Landscapers, The British Association of Landscape Industries and The Professional Garden Consultant’s Association all hold Registers of members, and inclusion will certainly help with your credibility and image, commanding respect and enhancing your reputation.
This image building amongst your fellow professionals is an extremely important part of establishing a reputation. Potential clients looking to pay for your services will value the opinion of their contacts in the gardening world. Whether they talk to their gardener, garden designer, landscape contractor, or anyone else who may have knowledge of information resources within the garden industry, their personal recommendation based on your ‘street cred’ will go a long way!
BUILDING YOUR TOOLBOX
Starting out to build a consultancy business requires a firm strategy, a clear pathway to embark on, with a firm end goal in mind. Due to the wide range of different types of garden consultancy work, the amount of foundation material required will vary, although the essentials remain the same. As consultants, we sell our knowledge and skills to our clients in a manner to suit their requirements at the time of commission.
We should be prepared to always provide them with in-depth evidence-backed information. Even if the original brief was for a general report, any case can easily transform into something more profound.
Seemingly innocuous commissions may be subject to challenge by others, and you simply never know when a project may become the basis for a tribunal or Court case. Evidence based reports appear more professional in any event. Those that provide references and industry accepted standards become more powerful if they are cross referenced and ratified.
This is the primary reason for clearly establishing the type of report you are producing from the outset. What may start out as a Preliminary Report, or Initial Site Survey Report, can easily turn into a different document altogether requiring a fresh mandate and new financial agreement. Learning how to change the emphasis of a original report will come with time.
Information, gathering accurate and provable means of referencing other accredited sources is an essential part of your toolbox. Product leaflets and manufacturers guides should be collected, collated and updated on an annual basis. These documents may run into the hundreds, as it is important that you are able to quote from the latest available information, whilst at the same time, having due regard and knowledge of previous recommendations.
An example of previous recommendation may include laying techniques of paving products. In 2016, a laying guide for porcelain may have advised using a particular type of jointing compound or depth of bedding mortar, yet in 2020 that advice may have changed in the light of current trends or variations in production methods. The advice provided at the time of laying remains valid, and in a case of complaint against a contractor for poor workmanship in 2017 using 2020 advice would have to be seen against the 2016 information. It is the job of a consultant to be aware of these variations when producing reports.
Plant names and nomenclature are subject to changes, and recommendations for growing or pruning techniques may alter with fashion or current advice. Topsoil production methods and growing mediums are subject to trials on a regular basis, and it is the responsibility of the garden consultant to keep abreast of all things horticultural and remain up to date.
One excellent way of building your Toolkit is to examine and learn, in detail, a number of British Standard Specifications. The greater your knowledge, the better. In conversation with a customer, or when writing reports and conducting surveys, the stronger your grip on matters concerning BS numbers the more your confidence will shine through.
BS 3882:2015 (Replaces BS 3882:2007) General Purpose Topsoil
BS 8601:2013 Specific Purpose Topsoil (Mainly intended for low fertility soils used for species-rich biodiversity habitats)
BS 3969:1998 Turf, recommended for general purposes
BS 3921:1985 Bricks – Frost resistant, medium frost resistant and non-frost resistant.
BS 12:1996 Portland cement
BS 5385:2018 Porcelain tiling
BS 7533:2005 Paving – general terms
There are many such British Standards useful to our industry, and your ability to understand and quote their wording accurately when working on a project will greatly enhance your reputation and render your reports more useful in many different ways.
SELLING YOURSELF
Unless and until you have created a solid foundation for your consultancy practice, it will be difficult to attract commissions. Whilst all of the above comments regarding establishing yourself by reputation gained through respect are essential in building your business model, you will need to provide evidence of your skills and ability and this can only come about by means of examples of your work. Catch 22 – until you have been commissioned to carry out reports, you are unlikely to get any enquiries in the first place!
There are examples of genuine surveys and reports to be found elsewhere in this handbook, including in Chapters Thirteen to Sixteen. I suggest that you follow the general layout of these reports to produce your own versions based on actual sites, produced as though they were paid consultations. Because all of our work is confidential, we cannot use genuine reports for marketing purposes without redacting anything likely to allow a site to be identified, although there is no reason why you cannot create your own ‘fantasy’ reports, based on real sites and situations.
Taking a camera, notebook and pen, choose a garden that is open to the public, and charge yourself with producing a report – as wide ranging as you wish to begin with
– as though you had been given a brief from the owner. I enjoy walking around open gardens during annual holidays, and always find myself looking at things in a critical manner. Not necessarily criticising the site, but genuinely looking at how I imagine the site is maintained, what techniques do they use, how many staff they employ, how do they manage to do that?
Give yourself a strong and defined brief, set out in writing as though it was a real commission and set about your task. Perhaps using a visitor tour guide as your map for reference points, conduct a full survey as decided by yourself beforehand. It is easier to produce an existing site survey by allowing your imagination to dictate the format. At the end of the exercise, you should have a document – redacted (without naming the site or identifying it in any way) that could easily be a genuine report, commissioned by A N Other.
This report will become a powerful marketing tool as an example of how you approach a commission, setting your own terms and methodology to achieve the end document to show as a typical example of your work. You may need a few attempts before you are content with the results, but once written, it may be used for years to come as an example of your work. An illustration of the power of such documents; I was commissioned by a major London Estate Agent, who was responsible for the running of a group of London ‘Squares’ on behalf of the tenants. My brief was to produce a Working Practice Survey, as they had recently taken over the running of the area, and recognised there were many ‘issues’ that needed to be assessed.
Having completed the commission, I retained a redacted copy for my fi for future use as required. (I went on to produce several different types of reports for the same client over the years) This original report was to prove a major element in gaining future projects, initially involving Working Practice Surveys over the following years. The simple fact of producing the report offered me the opportunity to hold that document as part of my marketing strategy as evidence of my skill and ability.
A few months later, I was invited to attend a meeting at a major educational site somewhere in England, who had very recently employed a new Estates Director. They required a Working Practice Survey to establish the precise nature of the gardens and grounds and how well they were being run by the existing gardens department before formally handing the area over to the new Director.
I was able to produce the redacted London Square report, which was similar in scope to the report needed by the School Provost, as an example of my work. On the strength of that redacted report, I was commissioned by the school to produce a Working Practice Survey and went on to become their Garden Consultant for years afterwards before retiring from the fi The more reports I produced, the greater my library grew, although I never needed to show another example of my work thereafter, they were always available.
Before you can consider selling yourself and marketing your practice, you need total confidence in your abilities, a confidence that can only be achieved by due diligence, research and possessing a library of information to underpin your work. No matter how you receive your initial contact, you should aim to be in a position to respond positively, immediately and adequately. Most of our customers are in need of help and advice, often at short notice due to an emergency of some kind, real or imagined, looking to us to solve their problems.
I suggest you design a general practice document – a leaflet perhaps – setting out your terms of engagement, including rates and conditions, and also your insurance and bank details, together with any other important information. This should be produced and available to send to the enquirer, by mail. Using the post will allow you to add further information, including examples of your work – all subject of course, to the nature of the enquiry.
RECORD KEEPING
A consultant’s work revolves around accurate information, including recording all previous contact with clients. Ensuring full and due compliance to GDPR, by keeping all such information safely stored away, a well-researched schedule or list of contacts is an essential part of our work. Personally, the majority of my work involves Court work and dispute issues, although I also have a strong background of working with Stately Homes and other large properties. Knowing, and being known by, important individuals is another key to success.
I have a full list of every solicitor and solicitor’s practice that I have ever dealt with, including names and their specialty services. Some are well versed in matters of construction, others in dispute matters and general litigation. I know of at least a hundred solicitors, and their current status in their firms. I know their postal and email addresses, and direct telephone lines. Most importantly, they know of me and my practice. I have certain individuals I pass enquiries on to with a recommendation if required, and in return, they recommend me. All of this is perfectly above board, as we all understand the need to follow Court’s Protocol, and we maintain high standards of professionalism.
I also know, and am known by, most stone suppliers and manufacturers, as the majority of my Court work involves paving, walling and hard landscaping materials. Once again, I have personal contact details for individuals, hoping to be their first port of call in the event of any suitable enquiries.
Getting to know your potential clients, their names, addresses and contact details is crucial to the success of your practice. Our work is based on KNOWLEDGE and the correct and appropriate use of whatever consultancy subject you wish to specialise in. As previously stated, even though we may offer our services as specialists, many potential customers have no idea what or who they really need, and they will make contact simply because you are a Garden Consultant. As a result, you need to be ready for all types of enquiry, passing on those that you may not wish to deal with to other consultants in your region.
A strong element of marketing in the world of consultancy is a willingness to recommend others, as by way of ensuring that the customer obtains the help they need, you also forge relationships with other consultants who will recommend you in turn. After almost thirty years of working as a consultant – initially only part-time, now full-time – I have made many solid friends and associates in the business.
This inter-relationship element of consultancy is important. I refer to the practice as Association Through Integrity, and I am willing and happy to recommend fellow consultants who have earned my respect through their proven integrity.