3 Things Every JD Edwards Consultant Should be Doing

Here are five common traits that Independent Consultants share:

1)  They are extremely bright people and do their jobs better than their employed counterparts.

2)  There engagements are usually longer than their employed counterparts, probably because they are better at what they do.

3)  They are usually older and their experience level is usually far Superior to their employed counterparts.

4)  They are usually one man shows, and don’t have any other consultants or employees on their payrolls.

5)  Because they are one man shows they are forced to do their own sales & marketing.

So the question that we ask ourselves is if they are forced to do their own sales and marketing, why don’t any of them actually do sales and marketing.  One of our closest friends is an Independent JD Edwards Developer, with a heavy Manufacturing background.  In the past three years he has worked on five projects.  So his average project typically lasts seven months.

Since we have known him he has worked hard and done a very good job for each of his customers, but none of his customers were actually “Direct Customers”.  What we mean by this is he seems to always use a middle man, usually an Oracle Business Partner that is currently involved in an implementation, and needs some extra bodies.  He usually does not find these Business Partners himself.  He usually announces his availability on a job board like Dice, or Monster and then waits for a Business Partner or a Headhunter to call him with news of a new gig.

Now as our Chicago friend enjoys saying so much “Come On!”.  This is a highly educated very experienced professional we are talking about here.  Surely there is a better way.  Let’s talk about why this scenario is so bad.

3 Reasons Dice is not enough

1)  It is by definition non-proactive.  Answering Job Postings and waiting on Headhunters is not proactive marketing.
2)  It is expensive.  The average partner or Headhunter earns at-least 25% of your billable time.  That equates to around $30k per project.
3)  It is not sustainable.

So why is it unsustainable you say?
Well if you go out to Google today and type in the keywords “JD Edwards Contract Billing Consultant” what do you think you find?  The answer is you find Oracle’s website, a bunch of Job Postings and some technology firms with very bad websites.  The question really is this - what is someone that types that keyword really searching for?

In our opinion they are either looking for software or consulting services.  We don’t believe they are looking for Job Postings.  If they were looking for Job Postings they would go straight to Monster or Dice.  So the question then becomes why are these Job Postings showing up on the first two pages of a Google search?  We believe it’s because their is not enough relevant information to put in place of the postings.

What is relevant information you ask?
In our opinion a personal Blog of a Contract Billing expert would be great content.  And generally speaking Google really likes those types of sites.  If you would like a Blog like this one and don’t have any idea how much it would cost or how to go about building one, give us a call we can generally get you up and going very quickly (1day) and it is also fairly inexpensive.  Fill out our contact us page.  We will get back to you usually within one hour.

The other thing that all independents should do, even if you are the most sales resistant individual in the world is you have to begin selling your services directly to the customers.  This does not have to be cold calls made to customers.  Make a commitment to yourself that you are going to email three new customers per day.  If you have no idea how to get email addresses, again, fill out our contact form.  We want relationships with Independent Consultants.  We have over twenty thousand email addresses of JD Edwards people in the United States.  We would be happy to help you out.  Especially if you are wanting to concentrate on a small geographic area and just don’t know who has JD Edwards in your area.

In Conclusion,  Here are the things you should be doing right now!
You are loosing 50K per year by not going direct to the customer, surely you can spend a little money on sales and marketing.

Put up a Blog and begin Writing about what you do.  Every day you work you have a new story.  Write about your problems - your Blog then becomes an on-line repository of your skills and at the same time gives you credibility.  It will also show up on Google very fast.

Advertise - again you are loosing 50K per year if you don’t believe us - call us we will explain more.  Every business needs marketing, even your consulting business.  Don’t spend an arm an a leg but there is high traffic advertising on the Internet that would cost less that a few billable hours for an entire years worth of advertising.  Remember one Direct Customer is worth $30K.

Make Email Drops - Three emails per day helps keep unemployment away.  It also turns into bigger, longer paydays.  If your pipeline is full you can be more selective with the contracts you take.

Please Drop us a message and let’s talk.