HOW TO SUCCEED AS AN ENGINEERING CONSULTANT
Engineering consultant are individuals that develop the ability to understand clients’ problems, empathize with their pain, and find solutions. The individual is also task with assisting the client with technical expertise and knowledge on a particular problem. People come to consultants for several reasons. So it is very important for all aspiring consultant to always make the client perceive you as being the best and a problem-solver.
Steps to succeed as an Engineering consultant
- Be better than anyone else in something; When you are better at a particular problem, you have the opportunity to get people coming to you because you have that expertise.
- Develop as many tools as possible while young; Try to always increase your knowledge. Learning constantly becomes more easy and it will help increase you technical know how. Also increase the size of your technical toolbox as much as you can.
- Offer a strong point of view; Your ideas and opinions are very important because your client are coming to enquire from you. So it is important that you have an ego because no one want to hear from someone that does not have a strong point of view. A client does not want to hear things like “Maybe you’d like to try this,” or, “It seems like a good idea to me.” Clients hire a consultant to provide an answer, and most clients are smart enough to recognize that you aren’t operating with perfect information. It is important that you form an opinion, defend it, and deliver it competently so as to get them back.
- Don’t be afraid of marketing; “Someone said the best marketing is done by people who may not be the best but who are persistent. Don’t let someone saying, ‘We’re not interested,’ because it will make you discourage. With consulting, you can explore different types of work to find what you want to do and find the types of clients with whom you want to work. So it is important that you do marketing because that the only way you can find them.
According to Stuart B. Brown, founder and managing principal of consulting firm Veryst Engineering, he said the best marketing is a a happy client. So it is important to work hard and make sure that clients are always happy.