NOTE: The chat scheduled for April 20 has been rescheduled to April 27 (see sidebar on right) due to a failure of Twitter’s search function. See you all next week!

Perhaps it’s the changing economy. Or perhaps this has always been the $64,000 question.  But these days, everywhere we turn, we seem to hear the same questions:

  • How does one market a consulting practice to nonprofit organizations?
  • What is successful?
  • Where are potential clients (both online and offline)?
  • How do we find them? More to the point, how do we find GREAT clients?
  • And once we find them, what is effective in marketing to them?

We hear these question often from new consultants. With more seasoned consultants, the same questions are expressed a bit differently:

  • As I grow personally and professionally, how can I identify new business strategies when the old ways just don’t seem to fit anymore?
  • How do I bring my clients along with me?
  • How do I move beyond the needs of current clients, and grow into the next stage of my work?
  • How do I create the kind of “fit” that moves from “marketing” to “GREAT client relations”?

We see this second set of questions a lot with the consultants we work with at the Community-Driven Institute.  They are learning entirely new approaches to consulting practices that are sometimes 20 or 30 years old – successful practices that just aren’t reaching for the consultant’s highest potential to create catalytic change in their communities.

  • Once we learn how to move ourselves forward professionally and personally, how do we market that new “thing” to clients?
  • How do we talk about it?
  • How do we find clients who “get it” when we talk about work that may be different from what they are used to?

Closing the loop, those questions begin circling back to the same questions new consultants ask – the questions that opened this post.

  • Where are our new clients?
  • How do we find GREAT clients?  (Ok, how can we find ANY clients?)
  • How do we approach them?
  • What strategies work?

That will be the topic of this month’s Twitter Chat for Consultants to Community Benefit / Nonprofit Organizations.  Join us on Tuesday, April 27 at 1pm US Pacific time, and share both your questions and your wisdom.

We look forward to seeing you there!

(Many thanks to Debra Askanese @AskDebra and Chanelle Carver @ChanelleCarver for suggesting this month’s topic!)