How to sell your Expertise as a Service

Wanna run your own show? Be your own brand, your own business? Not sure what you can sell? Sell your existing expertise! Leverage your knowledge and experience and provide high quality services as an independent consultant. Ten crucial points to understand:

1 — Your superpower is actually the combination of your standard powers — but a combination unique to you.

For example, if I say “I am a software engineer” — fine, but there are others as well, probably many of them better than me. If I say “I am a Scrum Master” — cool, but there are others as well, probably many of them with more years of experience than me. Etc. etc. But a Scrum Master with engineering experience is already narrowing it down. I’ve been travelling the world and meeting tons of different people — “people reading” skills hitting the roof. There are other travelers as well. But how many of them also engineers and etc. etc. Add the languages, soft skills, volunteer work, hobbies and you are becoming more and more unique. And more and more suitable to provide certain service.

2 — A resume is for an employee.

Your superpower is the combination of your standard powers. That said, DO NOT go and just list of all your skills, experiences and education in a resume. A resume is for an employee. And that’s not what we’re doing here. A resume is a list of ingredients. Ingredients don’t solve a pain point.

An example: I am hungry and I’m craving a “moqueca de camarao” (a traditional dish from a Brazilian state of Bahia). I visit a web page of a restaurant and there I get informed that the establishment in fact has coconut milk, dende oil and shrimps at their disposal. And I go like “great, happy for ya, but that still doesn’t solve my pain point”. My pain point being I’m craving moqueca. So I go ahead and visit a website of another restaurant where they kindly inform me that they can provide a moqueca de camarao for me. In addition, they mention, there is the content of their storage listed, if I feel like checking on the ingredients they have. But most importantly, they clearly state that they can solve my pain point.

The resumes work in the traditional, corporate environment. There is a job opening saying, fx, that the title of the position is such and such, it requires such and such diploma and certificates, min X years of experience, you will be working exactly Y hours per week, Z% of ot travelling, your will have N people under you, and you will report directly to the Head of M etc. etc. Then you send the resume, the HR does the matching etc.

But here we are talking about you landing a job (or rather selling your productized service) to a business that hasn’t listed any opening, that might not even know they need your service in the first place. You need to show them that you feel their pain and that you are the one to bring the solution.

3 — A resume is a list of ingredients.

Ingredients examples: creating high fidelity mockups, interactive prototypes, UX design etc. etc. Solving a pain point example could be: bridging the gap between the product owner and the front end development team. Just an example. If a company is experiencing this gap, if that’s their pain, they’re gonna relate.

4 — Think product. It’s a game changer.

Your expert service is like any other product.

You need: to find your niche, the pain point you can solve, your value proposition, your idea validation, your branding etc.. Going to networking events, talking to people, participating in forums and groups, can help you realize what is it that people are struggling with and that you can solve for them. Engaging with the community (online — like a FB group, and offline — like meetup.com) is important, and not only for getting direct leads for new clients. It’s also crucial to hear how people work, what issues they run into frequently and understand which are the pain points they come across. Because it might be exactly you who’s gonna solve it 🙂

5 — There is work “outside of work”.

Plan TIME for work “outside of work” (networking, learning, content creation etc.) and calculate it into your business plan (as the non-paid hours — but the hours that certainly do pay off:)).

6 — Smart businesses already identify their pain points on their own.

When contracting an expert for their service, the businesses more and more use their pain point description instead of a formal role name. Instead of saying “we’re looking to hire a project manager”, they’d rather make a post in a marketplace saying something like “we are a marketing agency developing an internal software tool — in need of sorting out our work processes and communication”. If a business experiencing difficulties with the team communication and work organization, ending up in misunderstandings, confusion, lost time etc. sees a value proposition like “I set up the dev team processes, async communication tools and smooth interaction so that you can focus on your product idea” — they’re gonna relate. It’s like a hungry person seeing a ready-made dish, one click away from being served to them on a fancy plate.

7 — Expertise as a Service (Expertise on demand) is the future of work.

Full time positions are less and less needed. There are more and more one-time (fx provide copywrite material), part-time (fx administrate emails and docs), on as-needed basis (fx maintain website) contracts. Lean companies, operating with high level of uncertainty, demand this kind of flexibility.

8 — We are all both service providers and consumers.

I am a freelance consultant setting up software product development processes for tech startups. That’s the service I provide. On behalf of my clients, I contract experts providing services in the domain of design, programming etc. For my own needs, I contract services like editing of my promo video, creating my logo, preparing the slides for my talks etc.

9 — It’s on you to adjust your services to the market needs.

Being an independent expert, it’s totally on you to adjust your services to the market needs (revise your value proposition from time to time) and also improve them (upgrade your product features) by lifelong learning, investing in courses, conferences, books.

10 — You are NOT an employee.

Don’t sit down and wait for somebody to tell you what to do. Choose the services you want to offer, improve them, brand them, sell them. Be creative. Be proactive. It’s you who is the expert, who’s gonna suggest to your clients how the things should be done. You’re the one making sure the amount of work and the organization of your work is as it suits the best in terms of your own productivity. After all, it’s a win win for everybody.