How do you market a consulting business?

I have a good sized marketing budget, I have the necessary experience/expertise, an I am starting a consulting business. I have everything except the marketing part figured out.


This works for entreprenuers who are interested in starting a new product line too. If you can give all the essenital information for your product, we can locate someone to do it in China in 2 days. (95% of the time)


So far,its a 3 person business, I have 2 good partners on the ground in China. I plan to do this nice and slow, I am not in any rush.

So what are some of the ways that I can market my business. I live in a mid-sized city in the U.S.

Obstacles-
I am terrible on the phone. I am not sure why but I stutter and even confuse myself sometimes on the phone, so I guess cold-calling is out of the question. I am totally fine when I am not on the phone.



Any Other Marketing Ideas would be greatly apperciated. Like I said, I do have some limited funds reserved for a marketing campaign.

THANKS

Welcome to the fastlane. It would probably help us give you a relevant answer if you would give us some info on your background. Where have you been? What have you done before? What worked and didn't work? Good luck.

Background-

I used to work for a regional real estate company and at the "height" of my career, I rose to the level of VP. My past role included assessments of real estate projects in China and market research in that market. As a result, I have traveled to China and spent some quality time there. I have been to over 30 different cities total there and logged thousands of miles in traveling in China. I have also had the opportunity to get to know a lot of solid Chinese business contacts.

What I have tried -

So far, nothing. My website is stillbeingdeveloped and obviously I want to wait for that to come out. I am also having someone designing a direct mailing promotion package, complete with brochures, flyers, etc.

Please do let me know if you have any additional thoughts as to how I can effectively allocate my funds and market my business. Like I said before, I am not exactly articulate on the phone, so I guess cold-calling is out of the question.

THANKS

Thanks for the background info. Since you seem to be emphasizing that you are not good at talking on the phone why not get someone to help coach you in that area. You can make a lot of practice calls and record them for critiquing. You could eventually develop a script and "what if" scenarios.

I have personally started to look into this venue.

I would like to do some personal coaching and business consulting myself. I have a client base I already train so I am starting with that. I guess the ideas that pop into my head is...

1.) Get someone to try it (maybe even for the cost of a great reference).

2.) Advertise. Direct mailing works great for me. You can get really targeted lists out there on the web if you Google 'business mailing lists'. Along these lines figure out what the businesses are actually looking for, yes, I know you have a product, but how does that product give them what they want?

3.) As much as it sucks you need to learn the phone. Practice makes perfect. I HATE cold calling but I can get almost anyone to purchase if they call me. Maybe if they call you, you would be more comfortable? This is a subject I've become fairly adept at, if you want some more advice on this let me know I'd be happy to help.

4.) If all else fails, hire a sales person. They are a dime a dozen. Offer great compensation and you'll get great sales people. I really think that even though sales has always been a big profession, it is going to explode in the next couple years. Look for the experts before the job market is flooded with green sales people.

Once you get your business ready perhaps you could hire a number of sales people to work on commission based pay to make cold calls and have business owners sign up.

As Kung Fu Steve says maybe let the first customers try your service with a money back guarantee or for free that way you can prove your concept and use your first customers as a reference.