Thursday, September 17, 2015

15 Questions Every Safety Consulting Business Plan Should Address

Every chapter of The Consultants Business Development Guide is penned by a professional safety consultant; each offers proven strategies and practical tips that can be applied by an OSH practitioner launching a consulting business.

For example, the chapter “Creating a Business Plan” is written by Samuel J. Gualardo, CSP, a veteran of the safety profession and OSH consulting business expert. In it, he explains why you need a business plan, and gives start-up owners a list of 15 questions their business plan should address. Here are the first five:

1) What problem will the firm’s product and/or service solve?
2) What niche, if any, will it fill?
3) What is the solution to the problem, and is this solution different from potential competitors?
4) Who are the customers?
5) How will products and/or services be marketed and eventually sold?

Read the complete list by downloading a complimentary excerpt from The Consultants Business Development Guide. Aspiring consultants will reap the rewards of Gualardo’s decades in the field, including four key lessons he learned after a few early career missteps.

The guide’s other chapters are equally enlightening, covering a range of critical business aspects such as finances, insurance, legal considerations, employees, marketing and networking. And in the last chapter, editors Carol Keyes, J.A. Rodriguez Jr. and Pamela Walaski have compiled essays from several seasoned consultants on insights from their experiences, giving the reader real-life examples of the ups and downs one can expect when embarking on that journey.