This is an interesting question now you’ve given the AC route considerable thought. Throughout this series of articles you would have noticed that I constantly say, “if this is the right route for you” and now is where you have to be brutally honest with yourself and list your skills, your strong-points and your weaknesses to give you an idea about the direction in which you wish to go with your business. There are many things to mull over like offering a broad spectrum of services or sticking to two or three services and creating a niche for yourself in the virtual world.
You may have prior experiences at the companies where you have worked but you need to change your mindset as now you are taking the entrepreneurial path and that is a whole different ball game. You need to breathe and think like a business owner which in itself requires a number of other skills if you’re going to be successful. In any case you can take your current skills and build on them so you get better and better but to start you must look at your personality as a whole to determine your strengths and your weaknesses and list the services you would be fit to offer potential clients ensuring a job well done.
Much of this would depend on how much time you have, I mean are you going to be a full-time Administrative Consultant or will you only be doing this part-time? This is an important factor because some AC services require you to be available to your clients a few hours a day and normally during their office hours so bear that in mind when you’re brainstorming.
What Type of Services Do Administrative Consultants Offer?
There is an immense amount of services a Administrative Consultants can put out there. Think of various types of businesses and think about the type of work they generate to get the ideas flowing but take a look at this impressive list I’ve put together and I’m sure you’ll be surprised at the amount of fields you can become involved in:
| Word Processing | Bookkeeping |
| Translation Services | Real Estate Services |
| Legal Administration | Insurance |
| Web Design | Database Creation |
| Academic Research | Proofreading |
| Event Planning | Marketing & Press Releases |
| Internet Marketing | Internet Research |
| Sales | Customer Services |
| Phone Answering | Admin Support |
| Blog Maintenance | e-Book Writing |
| Data Entry | Digital Audio |
| Digital Photography | Digital Video |
| Mail Services | Directory Publishing |
| Email Management | Fax Services |
| Graphic Design | Human Resources Services |
| Editing & Retouching | Interactive Training |
| Programming/ Software Design | Powerpoint Presentations |
| Personal Assistant | Website Maintenance |
| Office Management | Technical Support |
Analyze yourself…Crucial to your business so choose wisely
This list is only intended to orientate you a little but don’t limit yourself to the services listed here as they can be expanded on according to your own skill level but you’ll agree that Administrative Consultants have an extensive catalogue of services to offer and areas you can personally get involved in and make your own. With thousands of Administrative Consultants out there perhaps it would be a good idea to focus on a couple of the above ideas and find a way of standing out from the crowd. Analyze the services you’d be comfortable in offering before branching out and exploring new skills but beware of guaranteeing a client a particular service only to find you can’t deliver. It’s not good business sense and it will soon earn you a bad reputation in the AC world.
The next obvious question would be: How should I price my services?
Hang on! We’ll be discussing that in another chapter so stay tuned for that and make sure you don’t sell yourself short.
