Working with a consulting agency

[Kron3007]

Hello Everyone,

I am fortunate to work in a field with a lot of industry relevance/interest.  Over the years, I have had many companies approach me about consulting for them.  Despite this, I have only had one consulting contract go through.  It was a good gig, but has run its course and I would like to earn some extra cash.  Reflecting on my track record, I have come to the conclusion that my issue is I am not good at closing the deal.  To address this, I reached out to a consulting agency that works in my general field, but seems to lack expertise in my specific area. 

They bit, and I am now working out details to consult for them.  Hopefully I am better at closing this deal than my track record suggests, but I think the chances are good as it would be mutually beneficial and we have verbally agreed to it.  I suppose I am posting this to see if others have worked in this type of situation (as a side gig) and what the typical arrangement is.  I assume they will take a proportion of the hourly fee.  Any other tips, suggestions, etc? 

[mamselle]

Your school's on board with this, yes?

(And with the previous one?)

M.

[Kron3007]

Your school's on board with this, yes?

(And with the previous one?)

M.

Yes, our contract is very clear that we can do this, within limits etc.

[mamselle]

So, my experiences are related to booking consultants for labs and pharma departments; my sense of how those connections are built have been, by observation:

1) Former instructors whose expertise can be tapped for oversight and a wider sense of the field of research and directions/trends it's going in. The one I recall best had been consulting for years, for their former student (my boss) and had a very continuous sense of presence.

They were good at trouble-shooting, seemed to be convivial with newer and older employees alike, and while they enjoyed the usual dinner, lunch meetings, etc., they were very task-focused: If this set of tests wasn't working correctly, why, and what, exactly, should be done?, etc.

2) People whose recent publications either dovetailed exactly with the work in question, or provided some new angle on it, or a bit of both. An invitation might be sent out after a conference presentation that my boss had heard that they wanted to explore further with the lab team.

Those might be one-time visits, or they might morph to something steadier, it depended on the applicability of the 'new thing' to the 'old thing' and how convenient it was to bring the other person in (in-town or a few miles down the road was favored, of course) as well as the 'lab chemistry'/personality factor. Those who preached themselves weren't usually asked back, those who listened and explored options together with the bench staff were.

3) Intentional one-offs organized by coincidental nearby conference attendance or other in-the-vicinity serendipities. A different person for whom I worked was a bit of a genius at organizing these--they kept little piles of rubber-banded business cards grouped by region, country, or whatever.

When they knew they were going to be in an area, they'd flip through the cards to see if anyone came to mind as having previously tendered an invitation and contacted them--sometimes, several 'thems'--to see if a talk or a consult were wanted.

By my observation, an invited talk would precede a consultation invitation, and it might take several talks at several different places before a consult request was forthcoming; some places could get what they needed with one contact, others got a taste of what was on offer and wanted more.

This last person wangled visits in Vienna, Japan, and South America, among other places, while I was there; they'd obviously been playing the game for a very long time....they'd parlay one group paying their way and back, and then the other places would piggyback on that (it was so much fun doing the accounting afterwards, I will say, but if it was set up well to begin with, it wasn't too hard).

So, maybe, tl; dr: start by booking a buncha individual talks, like speed-dating, and see if something sticks.

M.