A lot of organizations offer QuickBooks consulting, and sometimes at a pretty steep price. But the only way I have found to make a profit in this arena has been to group together a large number of people for a seminar. To this day, several seminars that I held made more profit relative to effort than any single activity I’ve ever done.
QuickBooks consulting works best when it’s an ancillary service offered in conjunction with another recurring activity such as bookkeeping, accounting, tax or other financial services. When offering it as a standalone service I’ve always found it very difficult to earn a profit once I subtracted out the significant amount of free initial (go nowhere) meetings with people who were searching for nothing more than a free push in the right direction.
Once I landed a QuickBooks engagement, the rates typically were below market due to there not being any real barrier to entry this activity. Just about anyone can call themselves a QuickBooks consultant.
Consulting on QuickBooks, in my opinion, is a great idea for CPA firms who can offer these services to existing clients. The smartest way to offer QuickBooks consulting to the general public is via seminars so that anyone who is not already a client can be told to register for the session as a first step (paid) and if there are issues or questions they still have then they can retain you for a paid follow-up.
See how you just converted a request for a free initial meeting into a paying engagement? And you can make money by offering these seminars/conferences as well.
Wayne Schulz is the founder of Schulz Consulting. He began his career working for two professional service organizations and managing their consulting divisions. He has been active not only with the implementation of Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 accounting software but often is engaged to help clients design or evaluate their current accounting procedures.
The philosophy of Schulz Consulting has been built around one of being a consulting firm first and a sales company last. This is evidenced by Wayne’s unwavering claim that he is the world’s worst salesman but perhaps one of the top at providing client service to his loyal base of clients (many of who have been with him since 1986).
