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I started a consulting business doing CRM work on nights and weekend about five years back that’s now running close to $100k/mo. It all started from a former c

I started a consulting business doing CRM work on nights and weekend about five years back that’s now running close to $100k/mo. It all started from a former colleague who’d moved onto a new role and asked me to help them set up their CRM. This colleague talked to their friends, I started mentioning it in casual conversation and more referrals started pouring in. This process of working nights and weekends meant I could scale it without pressure. Your network will be your best asset early on because you have no brand awareness not evidence that you can do the job. Folks will be working with you because they know and trust you. We’re now at an inflection point where that method of driving business won’t scale as fast as we want so we’re now relying on channel relationships we’ve built with the CRM provider. We also work with consultants in related fields that don’t want to do CRM work which has been a huge boost to our bottom line as well. On the flip side I have a friend trying to break into devops consulting who couldn’t get a single customer despite relying heavily on his network so take both anecdotes with a grain of salt.

JamesBarney 7y ago
Hmm that's not what I expected. I always thought DevOps consulting would be an easier to break into because your professional network is also who you'd sell to. Because as a developer I know where to find tons of developers, I have a large network of developers. But the only type of software they or their employers want to buy is staff augmentation.
- shartshooter 7y ago
  It's possible he's terrible at devops, terrible at selling himself or was generally barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn't recommend taking my comment as a nudge away from getting into devops consulting but just that a friend I know struggled with it
jlu 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what does CRM consulting look like? Is it autonomous job (configuring servers and applications) or face to to face to work?
- ben_jones 7y ago
  Not OP but CRM consulting work usually involves customizing existing CRM solutions (often Salesforce) for a client's needs. This means interpreting vague requests from usually non-technical users and finding a way to bash it into the really terrible developer experience that CRMs have. The reasons its pays so well are several: 1) Most CRMs are initally setup by non-technical users and suffer from a litany of performance issues stemming from bad architectural decisions (i.e. lets do all our analytics in Salesforce Apex (java-like) code instead of a mainstream ETL solution). 2) The process of customizing a CRM is the epitomy of enterprise development, there is a severe lack of standardization and many examples of close but not quite: Salesforces SOQL is kind of like normal SQL but with lots of weird quirks, Salesforce lignteningforce components are like some front-end frameworks but not quite and with lots of weird quirks. 3) Most development knowledge is tribal, meaning you learn Salesforce by going through the trenches and then that knowledge lives or dies by you and your team. It's difficult to learn and train for legacy development (training docs are often for the ideal cases which rarely exist in the wild) thus you get to charge whatever you want. Often the really tough questions can only be solved by wading through the customer support muck (if your licensing allows it) until you get to denvercoder9. 4) Every few years the Sales reps of the CRM company shove new development techniques and methodologies at their clients which can mean a large refactoring or migration is needed.
- shartshooter 7y ago
  Both. You've got to work with the client to get an understanding of how they want to use their CRM, guide them on best practices and then pull the levers to configure things correctly. You can niche out and focus on one of the three areas but we find solving issues end-to-end is what our customers are looking for. They want us to come to them with issues we've found, best practices on solving them(as they apply to THEIR business) and to also take the steps to put it all in place. All of our work is remote so there's no face-to-face per se but we do come on-site or take them out to lunch every quarter or two
  - jlu 7y ago
    Appreciate for sharing the insight!
twic 7y ago
Is this business just you, or do you have employees now? If it's just you, how are you billing? If you're working on a day rate, 100k/mo is something like 5k/day, which seems high but not absurd. Or do you have retainers or something where you can essentially bill for access rather than time spent?
- shartshooter 7y ago
  I've got a team now...growing. We do have both retainers and hourly rates

JamesBarney 7y ago

Hmm that's not what I expected. I always thought DevOps consulting would be an easier to break into because your professional network is also who you'd sell to. Because as a developer I know where to find tons of developers, I have a large network of developers. But the only type of software they or their employers want to buy is staff augmentation.

shartshooter 7y ago
It's possible he's terrible at devops, terrible at selling himself or was generally barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn't recommend taking my comment as a nudge away from getting into devops consulting but just that a friend I know struggled with it

jlu 7y ago

Out of curiosity, what does CRM consulting look like? Is it autonomous job (configuring servers and applications) or face to to face to work?

ben_jones 7y ago
Not OP but CRM consulting work usually involves customizing existing CRM solutions (often Salesforce) for a client's needs. This means interpreting vague requests from usually non-technical users and finding a way to bash it into the really terrible developer experience that CRMs have. The reasons its pays so well are several: 1) Most CRMs are initally setup by non-technical users and suffer from a litany of performance issues stemming from bad architectural decisions (i.e. lets do all our analytics in Salesforce Apex (java-like) code instead of a mainstream ETL solution). 2) The process of customizing a CRM is the epitomy of enterprise development, there is a severe lack of standardization and many examples of close but not quite: Salesforces SOQL is kind of like normal SQL but with lots of weird quirks, Salesforce lignteningforce components are like some front-end frameworks but not quite and with lots of weird quirks. 3) Most development knowledge is tribal, meaning you learn Salesforce by going through the trenches and then that knowledge lives or dies by you and your team. It's difficult to learn and train for legacy development (training docs are often for the ideal cases which rarely exist in the wild) thus you get to charge whatever you want. Often the really tough questions can only be solved by wading through the customer support muck (if your licensing allows it) until you get to denvercoder9. 4) Every few years the Sales reps of the CRM company shove new development techniques and methodologies at their clients which can mean a large refactoring or migration is needed.
shartshooter 7y ago
Both. You've got to work with the client to get an understanding of how they want to use their CRM, guide them on best practices and then pull the levers to configure things correctly. You can niche out and focus on one of the three areas but we find solving issues end-to-end is what our customers are looking for. They want us to come to them with issues we've found, best practices on solving them(as they apply to THEIR business) and to also take the steps to put it all in place. All of our work is remote so there's no face-to-face per se but we do come on-site or take them out to lunch every quarter or two
- jlu 7y ago
  Appreciate for sharing the insight!

twic 7y ago

Is this business just you, or do you have employees now? If it's just you, how are you billing? If you're working on a day rate, 100k/mo is something like 5k/day, which seems high but not absurd. Or do you have retainers or something where you can essentially bill for access rather than time spent?

shartshooter 7y ago
I've got a team now...growing. We do have both retainers and hourly rates