How to find an economic consultant - The Consultants' Corner - Column

Business Economics, Oct, 1998 by Carolyn Scott

The single question that was raised with the greatest frequency among those who responded to the initial column was, "How do I find clients?" Even among seasoned veterans, the need to keep the client pipeline full is a never-ending challenge. It is very likely that effective marketing ideas will be a continuing conversation in The Consultants' Corner.

To begin this discussion, however, we are going to turn this question upside down: "If someone were looking for an economic consultant, where would they look, and what would they find when they look there?" So often we focus so much of our marketing resources on identifying and soliciting potential clients (who don't know they need our services) that we neglect the much more appealing prospects who are actively looking for what we sell. In particular, we need to ask whether a potential customer, searching for a consulting economist, will find us.

This quarter's Consultants' Corner is a description of my recent attempt to find economic consultants the way a potential first-time client might. I hope the notes from my journey may provide some guidance for those of you who might be interested in finding a new customer.

Of course, sophisticated buyers are not likely to visit some of these places. Government agencies, corporate staff executives with big budgets or others who use our services frequently may seek us out directly. Even these more experienced buyers, however, may turn to some of these sources to augment their traditional list of personal contacts and referrals to provide even more addresses for their sixty-page RFPs.

It is also true that most of our engagements can be traced to personal contacts and referrals. First-time clients may very well avail themselves of their network of friends and acquaintances as a first step in their search. Because there are myriad avenues for developing and nurturing these sources (that most of us actively cultivate) and because new consultants may not have a broad network to depend on, I have excluded this avenue from my current itinerary. Finally, I cannot claim to have taken any but the most obvious approaches to this search. I hope that those of you who have knowledge of other pathways that customers have followed will share these anecdotes with us for inclusion in future episodes of this conversation.

Reference Sources

Yellow Pages. I always start looking for suppliers in the yellow pages. Using the Chicago Metropolitan Business to Business book as an example, you would find two promising categories in the index: Business Consultants and Management Consultants. A distinction without a difference? Apparently not. There are roughly 300 firms listed in the broad category of business consulting and only 700 or so in the smaller segment of management consulting. Forget about economics; the word is only mentioned once.

The listings are quite professional in that there is usually just a name, address, and telephone number. Fewer than twenty firms list any areas of specialization. The management consulting listing is large enough that Ameritech has provided (at additional cost, I'm sure) a "Management Consultants Guide," listing firms under categories of specialization. Only eleven firms signed up to be listed under one of eight categories (none of which was economics).

It was instructive, however, to see how some of the major national consulting organizations choose to be listed. Arthur Anderson is a business consultant, while Coopers & Lybrand and Deloitte & Touche are management consultants. Ernst & Young is a business consultant at an office in the suburbs and a management consultant in downtown Chicago. McKinsey & Co. is listed under both categories but only in bold face type in the management category. Arthur D. Little is also listed twice, but both times in the business consulting category (Arthur D. Little and Little Arthur D., as the yellow pages business listing does not use commas). I'm sure Chicago is an aberration and these organizations maintain consistent listings across the rest of the United States.

Reference Librarians, whether at public or private libraries, are another source of information for locating listings on business consultants. The librarians I talked to could not identify any ready source but suggested I try searching the Internet.

Internet. On the Internet I began my naive and unscientific search using the various search engines automatically available when you click on the search button of your browser. The search engines available to me were: (1) GoTo, (2) Excite, (3) Infoseek, (4) Lycos, (5) AltaVista, (6) LookSmart, and (7) Yahoo. I have not summarized all of the search engines but rather have chosen some illustrative examples of my travels.

GoTo. When I chose GoTo from the menu options and searched on the key word "Consultants," a list of sites was returned. Heading that list was The Expert Marketplace (http://www.expert-market.com/), which summarized itself as: "The ultimate resource for consulting services. Free searchable databases of over 200,000 consulting firms, including the largest network of prequalified consulting firms." The site was the home of the Premier Expert Net Group, a commercial clearinghouse for consultants.