Quitting your job to set up a business is all about taking a big step into the unknown.  When you decide to resign you need to make sure you manage the leaving process well.

Remember that you are in charge of the resignation process.  You are quitting your job.  You are resigning from your post.  You will choose the timing of your departure and you will make those choices to fit your timetable.

Before you go any further, review your plans.

  • Are you sure you want to resign?
  • Are you really committed to leaving?
  • Are you ready to resign and to set up your own consulting business?

If you’re not sure, then wait.  Once you let people know of your intentions they will treat you differently.

Some will immediately treat you as if you have left.  They might ignore you.  They might exclude you from decision-making activities and so on.

Some people will want to dissuade you from resigning.  They’ll ask you if you really have made up your mind.  They’ll ask you:

  • Is now the right time to set up a business?
  • Is the economic climate right?
  • What will happen to your pension?
  • How will you pay your mortgage?
  • Have you considered what will happen if you get ill, or if you can’t find any work?
  • Have you thought about what will happen to the new project you’re working on?
  • What will we say to your customers/the people you work with?
  • Who will do the job you’re doing?
  • Do you realise how much extra work ….?

Plan your answers to the above questions.  Then you’ll be ready to take action.

How to quit your job gracefully

When you’ve decided to resign, and you are sure that now is the time to quit your job, think carefully about the way you intend to do this.

It’s not a good idea just to hand in your letter of resignation one morning and let your decision come as a surprise to every one.

Once you’re certain of what you intend to do, it’s good practice and courteous behaviour to warn your employer of your intentions.  You might only give a few days’ warning.  You might just ask for ten minutes with your line manager or with the senior person responsible for your work and performance to explain what you plan to do.

If pressed to give a reason why you want the meeting, don’t reveal your intentions.  Say it’s a private matter and that the meeting will deal with confidential issues.

However you decide to handle this part of the resignation process, make sure you inform senior people before you tell your colleagues.

If you have a meeting with someone senior, then keep the meeting brief.  Maybe you should stand rather than sit.  Maybe you should make sure you can see a clock all the time.

Here’s how to manage that meeting.

Thank your employer for his or her time.
Tell your employer that you’re leaving.
Tell your employer what you intend to do.
Tell your employer why now is the right time for you to make this career move.

Don’t dwell on any disagreements you might have had with your employer.

Don’t dwell on any shortcomings you might think your current organisation has.

This is a meeting about passing information from you to your employer.

The only additional issues that you might wish to discuss relate to the timing of your departure, if that is negotiable, and the practicalities of your departure.

How to quit your job professionally

You’ve prepared the way for your resignation.  Now’s the time to follow through on your commitment.

Senior people are now expecting you to resign.

Do what you said you would do.

Write a clearly worded letter of resignation.  (Letters are better than e-mails, even today.)

  • Give notice of your intention to leave your post.
  • Give the date when you will be leaving.  (Make sure this is the same as you agreed with senior people when you informed them of your intention to leave.)
  • Thank your employer for the opportunity to work in the organisation. Make a statement about how you have benefited from your time with the organisation.
  • Say that you are now moving onto a new career and that you are confident your experience with your current organisation will help you to succeed.
  • Hand in your letter of resignation at the time you agreed.
  • Make sure someone in authority acknowledges receipt.

Relax and congratulate yourself.  You’ve done it.

Get a good reference

You’re not looking for another job now, but references matter in business, too.

In business you will need testimonials and people who will vouch for you and your work.  Work out who could write a testimonial for you now before you leave employment.  Prepare the way for potential customers to contact your employer should you need a reference in the future.

You never know what you will need in terms of endorsements, so make sure your employer will be prepared to help you, if you need it.

That means that you need to behave impeccably during your notice period.

Working your notice

This is the hard part.

Lots of people will want to know why you’re leaving.

When you answer their questions, stress the positive.  Look ahead.  Don’t spend time rubbishing your employer and explaining why you couldn’t stand your job.  This would be very bad behaviour and it could damage your reputation throughout your industry.  Why risk it?

Learn the first lesson in business now.  You need to create lots of strong and positive relationships.  Focus your efforts on getting on well with as many people as possible.

Be professional.
Be businesslike.
You’ll stand more chance of success, if you’re both.

This is tip one in the series of one hundred tips to help you to start your consulting business.

What do you think about this as an approach to leaving employment?

If you’re already in business how did you manage the resignation process?

If you’re planning to start your business soon, will this guidance help you?

Leave a comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

If you like this post, please tweet about it.

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Changing your career. Leaving your job behind. Embarking on a new career. Starting a business. These are all exciting concepts. They’re all concepts you’ll be dealing with when you start your consulting business. There is, however, a little bit of work to do before you begin.

Since you need to complete this task before you start your consulting business, I’ll call this tip zero.

Leaving your job – who should you tell?

For most people there will be a time between handing in their resignations and leaving their jobs when they can begin to prepare for their new careers. When you’re working your notice there’s a very important task to complete.

This is letting key people know that you’re leaving your job and that you’re starting in a new career.

When I work with people who are thinking about changing careers and starting their own businesses, I always advise them to think carefully about who needs to know what they intend to do.

I ask them to make a list of thirty people they intend to inform that they’re leaving their current job.

I suggest you do this, too. (If you’re already in business you might still find this a helpful activity.)

If you struggle to create a list of thirty, then I wonder if you’re ready to set up your own business yet.

If you don’t know who to include, then perhaps you need to bit more focus in your planning.

Once you have your list start to subdivide those people into categories. Your principal categories are:

  • potential customers
  • potential referrers
  • potential collaborators
  • good people to know – people with influence in your chosen marketplace
  • others – no more than five of these.

Why are these people important?

This is the start of your list of business contacts. Your list of contacts will be important to you throughout your business career. You will nurture and build this list throughout your business life. You will want to keep in touch with the people on this list from now on.

You need at least thirty such people on your list when you start out because you will be building your business around relationships such as these. If you have a significantly smaller number of people on your list, you might struggle to establish yourself in business.

The people you inform must all be people who know you and your career to date. They must all be people who are familiar with your successes and your capabilities.

Write to them about your new career

Write a personal letter to every one on your list.

Yes, write a letter, not an email, to every one on your list.

Do this to help you to be confident that the letter reaches the intended recipient. Do this to try to ensure your letter will be noted and remembered. You stand a much better chance of achieving these objectives if you write an old-fashioned letter.

Leaving your job and moving on

It’s important that your letter is upbeat and positive.

Your letter should state in quite simple terms that you want to let the person you are writing to know that you are leaving your current role. It should also state when you will be leaving.

Your letter should also explain what you will be doing next.

You should indicate that you hope your path will cross that of the recipient again in the future.

You should not ask for work or even hint at a request for work.

By writing such a letter you’re closing the door on your current career and saying something positive about what you intend to do with your life. Even if you’re being made redundant you can still write this sort of letter.

If you leave quickly, that is if you resign – or are dismissed – and leave your job with hardly any notice period, you can write a letter saying you have left and then go on to state what you will be doing next.

Why are you telling people you’re changing your career?

When someone leaves a job his or her contacts are often uncertain about why this has happened. They are uncomfortable asking about the circumstances. Your contacts will respond in the same way. They won’t want to raise the subject of your departure.

If you make a point of telling your contacts in a very positive way that you are leaving and you have plans for your next role, then there is no ambiguity and no speculation as to what is happening.

Do this and you will have a clear road ahead of you. When your notice period ends, you’ll be able to pursue your new career and start your consulting business without any potentially embarrassing situations ahead of you.

By writing this letter you’re saying that changing your career is a positive act. Make sure the world sees your career change as positive, too.

What to do now

So, if you have already begun your consulting career, how did you let people know you were about to make a major change to your working life?

If you’re on the brink of leaving, will you find this approach helpful?

Leave a comment and let me know if you find this advice helpful. Share the post with your followers on Twitter if you’d like them to know about this tip.

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August 30th, 2010  Posted at   News, Starting A Consulting Business - One Hundred Tips
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If you’re just starting out as a consultant – or as an expert in any field – your first year in business will be difficult.

It will be difficult because you’re doing something new, something where you’re learning as you go.

It will be difficult because there’s so much you need to get done and to get right before you start to experience success.

If you’re going to make a success of your business you need some help. That’s where my series of one hundred tips to help you succeed comes in.

Over the coming months I’ll be posting one hundred tips to help you to make the right decisions and to focus on the right things for your consulting business.

Even before you start your consulting business there are things you need to do.

Setting up a business – the practicalities

You need to think about lots of practical issues linked to being in business.

  • Where will you work from?
  • How will potential customers find you?
  • How will potential customers get in touch with you?
  • How will you contact them?
  • Will you be setting up a sole tradership, a partnership or a limited company?
  • Who will you need to inform when you set yourself up in business?
  • How are you going to support yourself in the early months of your business life?
  • How much do you hope to earn in the first six months?
  • All of this will take time, so it’s worth doing some of the thinking before you actually start trading.

    There is something else that’s really important to think about at this stage, too.

    How are you going to motivate yourself to succeed?

    Of course, you need to think about the practical issues. You need to make sure you have the skills to succeed. You’ll need to finance your business. You’ll need to work out what sort of consultancy you’re offering and how you’re going to get business.

    You’ll also need to think about you.

    Businesses succeed or fail because of the motivation, commitment and sheer determination of their owners.

    If you’re going into business on your own you’ll need to think about how to make sure you maintain your motivation.

    This is especially true if you’ve been used to working in a corporate environment with line managers, team meetings and the like. You may not be aware of the work your employer does to motivate staff, but it’s there.

    For the future you’ll need to supply the will to succeed yourself.

    Do some thinking about this. Can you supply the motivation yourself, or will you need some external support?

    If you’re serious about starting a consulting business, you’ll be working in a businesslike way long before you start your business. Before you begin on your journey to business success make sure you cover all these points.

    Focusing on the practicalities is important, but thinking about how you will fare in business is also important.

    So what do you think?

    If you’re already in business what did you do to prepare yourself before you started trading?

    If you’re just about to start your business, which of these suggestions are you working on at the moment?

    Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

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    August 20th, 2010  Posted at   Pricing
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    Pricing professional services is something that causes most experts – consultants, accountants, surveyors and so on – problems. Most professionals know what they would like to charge but sometimes the market thinks otherwise.

    If you’re going to succeed in your consultancy or professional services business, you need to find a pricing model that will deliver the right level of return on your investment in developing your abilities and your business. You also need to ensure that people will actually be willing to buy your services at those prices.

    The problem is that pricing models can be difficult to get right whatever it is you’re selling – as many businesses find out to their cost.

    Coins on the tableThere are several ways of pricing consultancy and other professional services.

    If you choose the wrong pricing model it could cost you thousands of pounds.

    That’s why it’s worth taking the time to review the way you currently set your prices and consider if the price you’re charging really is the right price for your business.

    Check out your current pricing strategy against the three models below because getting your pricing right is essential to your business’s success.


    Pricing models: costs plus a percentage

    This pricing model is probably how most businesses price their products and services in the early days. They don’t want to undercharge and lose money. However, they want to make sure they cover their costs and then make a little profit. The costs plus a percentage pricing model is, therefore, attractive to them.

    Unfortunately, the costs plus a percentage model doesn’t work.

    If you use this approach you will always be focusing your attention inwards.

    Using the costs plus a percentage pricing model means you are looking at your business in isolation and coming up with a price based on your calculations about how much it costs to bring a product or service to market. Those calculations are not tempered in any way. You don’t take into account what anyone else is charging. You don’t think about the value you are supplying, and you don’t know if your customer will think your prices high or low.

    If you use this approach you’re unlikely to choose the best price for your offer.

    Lots of organisations delivering professional services get their pricing very wrong, by using this pricing model. Usually the prices are too low, but sometimes they are much too high.

    In short, pricing on costs plus a percentage leads to unrealistic pricing.

    If you use this model – give it up.


    Pricing models – the going rate

    Charging what you think is the going rate is a popular approach to pricing.

    Professionals who use this approach look around their marketplace and try to find out what their competitors are charging and what the market rate for what they do is.

    Once they have this information they have three choices.

    • They can charge about the same as their competitors.
    • They can charge more than their competitors.
    • They can charge less than their competitors.

    In all cases they will be making the wrong decision.

    If you decide to price what you do based on the going rate, then you’re saying to the world that what you do is much the same as what every one else is doing. In other words, there’s not much to choose between you and your competitors. Like it or not if you charge at a similar level and at a similar rate as others, then you’re the same as other professionals – at least in the eyes of those who are buying.

    Pricing at the going rate doesn’t work either.

    If you’re any good at what you do, you’ll want to create your own pricing structure, because one of the most important things you’ll be doing is differentiating yourself from other people – your competitors.

    So the advice is simple. Don’t charge the going rate because you’re not the same as every one else.

    Create a rationale for your pricing based on the third pricing model.


    Pricing models – pricing on value

    How much are you worth?

    How much are your services worth?

    Do you know?

    Do you feel uncomfortable asking these questions?

    Do you feel even more uncomfortable, if you offer an answer?

    Start to meet this challenge today because you need to set your fees with reference to the value you deliver. I’ll qualify that statement. You need to set your fees with reference to the value your customer believes you deliver.

    Value-based pricing is the best approach to pricing because it’s an approach which helps you to differentiate yourself from the competition. It also forces you to think about your customers’ problems and to propose solutions to help them overcome those problems.

    When you adopt this pricing model you are saying you are special.

    Your special approach could be linked to the way in which you bundle your expertise. It could be linked to your customer service. It could be linked to the way you deliver your services. You need to know what makes you special in the eyes of your customers. More importantly you also need to communicate that difference to your customers.

    Whatever it is you do, you also need to ensure your customer sees the benefits of buying your services. Your customer needs to know the value he or she will receive as a result of doing business with you.

    Once you can get this message across you’re ready to use the value-based pricing model.

    It’s worth working on this because value-based pricing usually enables you to charge what you are worth. In most cases that means charging more than what you would charge using the other two models.

    Try it out next time you’re creating a proposal.


    What to do now

    First, in the comments section, tell me which pricing model you feel most comfortable with – and why.

    Next, if you like this post, please share it via the retweet button below (or via your preferred social media channels).

    Finally, if you’ve any questions on pricing that you’d like answered, then ask them in the comments section or send them to me in an email. (I’m building up a list of questions to answer when I get to the end of my series of posts on pricing.)

    See you in the comments and let me know what you think.

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    August 12th, 2010  Posted at   News


    How to get the most out of this site.


    Welcome!

    Thanks for joining me at Margaret Adams.

    I’ve been working with quite a few businesses and public sector organisations where the decision-makers realise they need to adopt a new approach to business development, marketing, promotion and business communications if they’re going to survive, profit and grow in 2010 and beyond.

    Experts, consultants and people selling professional services are beginning to realise that they need to find new ways to build and sustain relationships with their marketplace and their niche, if they’re going to achieve the success they are capable of.

    I’m being asked how to do this because this is what I’m doing with my business.

    I’m going to help you to do the same via this site.

    There are lots of important questions you need answers to, if you’re going to change and adapt. You can ask them here. I’ll also be raising some of them and giving you the chance to think about whether or not you are dealing with the issues I raise as well as you could.

    I’ll be taking the really important issues and setting out what you need to know in straightforward language and in an easy-to-work-with format. I’ll teach you some useful strategies that will help you to change your business for the better.

    So, as we get started, let’s think about a few things you should do right now to make sure you get all the information you need and don’t miss anything.


    Hints, tips and updates

    Sign up for my tips and updates to help you to achieve more profits every month. Clicking anywhere in this paragraph will take you to the signup page.

    I spend a lot of time noting what is happening in the business world. I see what is succeeding on-line and off-line. I’ll let you know about what is working. I’ll also give you guidance on some of the things you can do to make your own business more successful.

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    Contact Margaret Adams

    Get in touch. Use the comments box below or the contact form. – Ask me questions about how to build your business and your profits.

    I don’t guarantee to know all the answers but I’ll answer what I can and find out the rest.
    That’s it.

    Simple.

    Now let’s start to build your business.

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